I've seen him say in an interview that he doesn't like to do pompous archaic language, but he actually does it all the time, and it often comes off as extremely awkward. He has the occasional sentence that's really evocative, but much of it is awkward. It feels as though Moorcock has played too many video games, except that there were no video games when he wrote these.

Many of Elric's foes fight to the death with suicidal recklessness where any reasonable person would hesitate or run. It is one of the most pivotal events of the whole series and of Elric's life, and Moorcock devotes less than a sentence to it. The worst example of rushing is the scene in 'The Singing City' where Elric accidentally kills his lover Cymoril We never get the sense that there's any danger. And Moonglum just sneaks in and steals Stormbringer back, offscreen. but then his captor promptly releases him. For example, in 'The Stealer of Souls', Elric gets captured and loses Stormbringer (his magic sword). Each story has a lot of things happening, but Moorcock hurries though it all so fast that no event really has weight. I think my greatest problem with Moorcock is the pacing.

I found it much less good than I remember it. I reread several of them this month: 'The Dreaming City', 'While the Gods Laugh', 'The Singing Citadel', 'The Stealer of Souls', 'Kings in Darkness' and the first 3rd of The Sleeping Sorceress (aka The Vanishing Tower). I did not like the later ones, but the early ones like Stormbringer and The Sleeping Sorceress and several of the short stories I remember fondly. I remember that I liked the early Elric stories from the 60s and 70s. It was some of my first fantasy fiction, after Tolkien and Dragonlance. I read Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné series back in 2005 or thereabouts.

Michael moorcock elric