Styles. Resurrected Post.
I���ve nearly completed re-reading ���The Worm Ouroboros,��� E.R. Eddison���s underappreciated masterpiece. It is a mine worth delving into again, its depths not fully plumbed, its treasures still unmeasured. If I haven���t made myself clear, I love it. The villains are Shakespearean, complex and fascinating. The heros are Homeric, grandly larger than life, embodiments of virility and arete. The language is gorgeous, archaically poetic.
An aside: I know Tolkien read and appreciated ���The Worm Ouroboros��� despite Eddison���s philosophy, as espoused in the book, being antithetical to Tolkien���s. But I wonder how deeply ���The Lord of the Rings��� was inspired by ���Worm,��� if at all. I mention it, because while reading a description in ���Worm��� of a mustering of troops I was reminded of the scene in ���The Fellowship of the Ring��� when Pippen is watching the arrival of soldiers before the siege of Gondor, the description of the men, the naming and characterization of the leaders, their homes, etc. A side by side comparison would be interesting, I think.
I���m also in the last third of Steven Brust���s most recent Vlad Taltos novel, ���Hawk.��� ���Hawk��� is about as stylistically far away as it is possible to be from ���Worm.��� It is written in first-person smart ass. It is terse, sarcastic. Descriptions are sparse. The language is colloquial, contemporary. If I haven���t made myself clear (and I probably haven���t) I love it.
There are many who cannot appreciate ���Worm.��� The prose is too dense, too purple. The speech is stilted, unnatural. And he who requires a novel to reaffirm his socio-political convictions will not make it through the first fifty pages.
There are many who cannot appreciate the Vlad Taltos books. The prose does not conform to some readers��� notions of what period fantasy should be. It is unabashedly contemporary. He who requires immersion in faux-historical language will not make it through the first page (though this particular reader might enjoy the ���Phoenix Guard��� novels.)
Me, I love the gamut. I look for a good story, and I don���t care if it is vintage or modern. So I���ve got that going for me.
