The Whispering Swarm: Book One of the Sanctuary of the White Friars

Set in a marvelous multiverse, this fantasy adventure-plus-memoir grapples with questions of identity, creativity, heroism, and the very structure of storytelling.

Postwar London, Swinging Sixties London--a time and place of creativity and social change. Young Michael Moorcock embarks upon adulthood as both editor and writer of science fiction and fantasy, helping shape the genre into its modern form through his work and his friendships with other writers. His marriage is new and fresh; his children are young and raising them, an adventure.

But no adventure lasts forever, and Moorcock begins to chafe under the grind of work and family. What seems a chance encounter with a monk--one of the White Friars--leads to a secret at the heart of London. Massive yet phantasmal doors lead to the Alsacia, a hidden world inhabited by great heroes of both history and fiction. Captivated, Moorcock rides as a highwayman and finds himself drinking in the company of all four Musketeers, though he misses his children and his increasingly-estranged wife.

The Alsacia's dangerous politics come to a head just as Moorcock's wife divorces him, each catastrophe feeding on the other as two realities pull on the emotionally struggling writer.

Part memoir, part adventure novel, The Whispering Swarm--the first book in The Sanctuary of the White Friars series--is both an evocation of a now-vanished London and the beginning of a new journey through the multiverse, created by a master of science fiction and fantasy.

Author: Michael Moorcock
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 05/09/2023
Pages: 480
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.16w x 1.25d
ISBN: 9781250868305

About the Author
Michael Moorcock has received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and SFWA's Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award as well as the Nebula and the British Fantasy Award. Perhaps best-known for Elric of Melnibone (part of the Eternal Champion cycle, which spans multiple series and multiple realities), Moorcock is also the author of Mother London, Byzantium Endures, and Gloriana. He keeps homes in Texas (USA) and Paris (France).