Rating: 
Summary: Political Intrigue - Not Fantasy
Review: Poor Queen Gloriana can't have an orgasm. Not for lack of effort, though. She keeps a menagerie of sex slaves hidden in the walls, everything from young girls to albino giants to neanderthals. She's quite the skank. Her lack of sexual fulfillment is repeatedly compared to her empire's illusion of romantic peace and stability. Much of the book dwells on the contrast between this romantic illusion and a colder reality; there is peace in the empire, yet horrible things must be done to maintain it. Each of the three key characters represented either romance, reality, or a combination of both. There was also a King Arthur aspect to the story, but instead of making king of whatever lucky bloke pulled the sword from the stone, it was whoever could bring Queen Gloriana to orgasm. There were very few elements of fantasy in Gloriana, save for that it took place in an alternate history. Instead of fantasy, there is a great deal of court intrigue and scheming. Moorcock spends and undue amount of time talking about costumes. Fans of the Gormenghast novels might potentially find enjoyment in Gloriana; it is much the same, but not as fulfilling.
Rating: 
Summary: reprint of a late 1970s award winning satirical fantasy
Review: Queen Gloriana rules the greatest empire in the history of the world, Albion. Under her rule, the vast kingdom has thrived as peace has led to enormous prosperity. Everyone in the vast realm from the Americas to Asia believes that Gloriana's enlightened leadership has led to the Golden Age as never heard of before.
On a global scale, Queen Gloriana knows she has a place in the future history books; on a personal level, she cannot achieve an orgasm as the weight of her monarchy has taken its toll. Though her image is that of high morals, Gloriana has tried every fetish known and a few unknown to get relief. To hide her debauchery she depends on ruthless Chancellor Montfallcon to brutally keep everyone in line. He spies on everyone at court. However, he alienates his best operative Quire, who begins a plan of vengeance starting with the destruction of Gloriana that will consequently extinguish Albion, starting with seducing Her Highness to fall in love with him.
GLORIANA, OR THE UNFULFILL'D QUEEN is a reprint of a late 1970s award winning satirical fantasy that holds up well in a world filled with spin doctors and the Lewinsky incident. The story line focuses on a Queen Elizabeth I like character whose public image is so different than her private reality. Gloriana has unfulfilled needs that send her seeking any form of sexual encounter to scratch her itch while acting virginal pure to her adoring subjects. Though at times the plot seems long winded as Michael Moorcock insures his audience sees the duality (duplicity) of Queen Gloriana, fans of erotic fantasy filled with plenty of treachery and intrigue will feel fulfilled with this tale.
Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Surely one of Moorcock's best work! This one is far more subtler than some of his other books bust still the strength of his writting is here. All of it! Along with his usual poetic, and ironic, language. The book is quite difficult to wrap your mind around, and this coupled with a little overbearing writing may turn some people off (especially the ones who can't understand it or who haven't read the more staple of Moorcock's work). But for the ones that can bear it they will find one of the most beautifull, lyric, ingenious, work of literature of the last decades. It's a book that it will stay with the reader for ever, causing him to think over and over again even the smallest of the ideas it presents.
Rating:
Summary: Superb writing and characterisation only matched by Peake
Review: The cleverness of this book takes my breath away. No wonder it won the World Fantasy Award and no wonder Peter Ackroyd, among others, picked it as his Book of the Year (and seems to be dipping into it ever since!). As a student of Elizabethan, Jacobean and Carolignian literature, I am highly impressed both by the underlying philosophical argument (very late Renaissance) and the prose, which is more Carolignian than Elizabethan. Moorcock specifically says that while the book has some direct reference to Spenser's The Fairy Queen, it has none to Elizabethan England. What always astonishes me is how readers who don't read widely seem to know exactly why a book is bad! This is very much a book for grown-ups and I suppose it wouldn't appeal to bigots, but it's very hard to see bigots even beginning to understand it. The main characters represent Virtue and Vice, very much in a Jonsonian mode, but the plot has a more Jacobean feel -- Captain Quire the assassin, who enjoys his work and practises it like an art, an intellectual killer with a rationale subtler than Hannibal Lector's, and Gloriana, the burdened symbol of her Empire, the embodiment of all her nation regards as virtuous, yet unable to enjoy an organism and devoting all her free time to that quest, desperately seeking it in sensation, because she cannot trust herself to love. The book falls into four parts, following the seasons, very much a late Renaissance idea, and contains parodies of public poetry. The range of other characters, both comical and sinister, is brilliant. And so are the scenes -- the dance on the ice, the great masque, the hunt -- a major set piece for each season. Platonicism instead of Christianity. This is a well-considered and profoundly knowledgeable book, like most of Moorcock's ambitious fiction. This follows in theme books like Behold the Man and The Brothel in Rosenstrasse -- how much of the person is the embodiment of others' desires ? How do those desires mould the destiny of the person ? This is a superb piece of literary fiction. It is foolish to list it as generic fiction at all. It deserves a demanding and literate readership.
Rating:
Summary: Superb new edition
Review: This new special edition not only includes BOTH of the controversial penultimate chapters but an illuminating afterword by Moorcock, AND several of the lyrics from his aborted musical version. It is the best version of a classic novel praised by the likes of Angela Carter, Peter Ackroyd, D.M. Thomas, Michael Chabon and many of the best contemporary writers and there's nothing much more I can say about it except buy this edition rather than any other. There is a Fantasy Masterworks edition done in the UK, but it isn't a patch on this, either for production or 'extras'. Far easier to get into than Peake, there are obvious relationships to Gormenghast as well as to Spenser's The Fairy Queen, The Pilgrim's Progress and other conscious allegories. It bears up well on rereading!
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