Der Wurm Ouroboros

The Zimiamvian Trilogy #0

by E.R. Eddison

The Worm Ouroboros weaves strands from Norse saga, Greek myth, and Elizabethan drama together with magical adventure to produce one of the most eccentric masterpieces of English literature. Anticipating J. R. R. Tolkien by a few decades, E. R. Eddison imagined an Other World full of wonders and a huge cast of warriors, witches, and monsters. He also invented one of the truly distinctive styles in English prose. Its language is densely ornamented and deliberately archaic, but also precise, vigorous, and flexible enough to convey wistful tenderness one minute and violent action the next. In the decades since its first publication in 1922, The Worm Ouroboros has become a touchstone for lovers of fantasy literature, influencing several generations of writers and treasured by readers who fall under its spell.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Classics, High Fantasy, Science Fiction, Literature, Epic Fantasy

508 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Eric Rücker Eddison was an English civil servant and author, writing under the name "E.R. Eddison."

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Worm Ouroboros is a fanciful, frilly and extravagant fairy tale written in an elaborate baroque style… And it is a real gold placer of the archaic and rare bookish words…
One night the romantic narrator of the saga boards a chariot driven by hippogriffs and departs to the dream world of Mercury… Straight into the castle of Lord Juss, the mighty sovereign of Demonland… And a tiny martlet – a mythical heraldic birdie – is his guide…

…and the first low beams of the sun smote javelinlike through the eastern windows, and the freshness of morning breathed and shimmered in that lofty chamber, chasing the blue and dusky shades of departed night to the corners and recesses, and to the rafters of the vaulted roof. Surely no potentate of earth, not Croesus, not the great King, not Minos in his royal palace in Crete, not all the Pharaohs, not Queen Semiramis, nor all the Kings of Babylon and Nineveh had ever a throne room to compare in glory with that high presence chamber of the lords of Demonland.

Demons are valorous and noble warriors… But there is a powerful enemy… The greatest villain – the sinister king of Witchland – perfidious and heartless… And he craves to rule the entire dream world…

A furnace glowing in the big hearth threw fitful gleams into the recesses of the chamber, lighting up strange shapes of glass and earthenware, flasks and retorts, balances, hour-glasses, crucibles and astrolabes, a monstrous three-necked alembic of phosphorescent glass supported on a bain-marie, and other instruments of doubtful and unlawful aspect. Under the northern window over against the doorway was a massive table blackened with age, whereon lay great books bound in black leather with iron guards and heavy padlocks. And in a mighty chair beside this table was King Gorice XII, robed in his conjuring robe of black and gold, resting his cheek on his hand that was lean as an eagle’s claw. The low light, mother of shade and secrecy, that hovered in that chamber moved about the still figure of the King, his nose hooked as the eagle’s beak, his cropped hair, his thick close-cut beard and shaven upper lip, his high cheek-bones and cruel heavy jaw, and the dark eaves of his brows whence the glint of green eyes showed as no friendly lamp to them without.

Villainy… Machinations… Collusions… Treachery… Carnage… The tale is a chronicle of war… The merciless war with all its horrors, sorrows, ravaging and harrying…
While the timeless and mysterious wyrm Ouroboros holds the whole dream world in mystical thrall…

“This is a great wonder thou tellest me; whereof some little part I guessed aforetime, but the main I knew not. Rightfully, having such a timeless life, this King weareth on his thumb that worm Ouroboros which doctors have from of old made for an ensample of eternity, whereof the end is ever at the beginning and the beginning at the end for ever more.”

The eternal battle of good and evil continues even in dreams.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an odd book. It begins with a frame story the author abandons after a score of pages, and features a host of characters whose names sound like the imaginary friends of a clever six year old (Fax Fay Faz, Goldry Bluszco, Lord Brandoch Daha, etc.) and a meandering narrative often slowed by page upon page of magnificent but hardly essential description. Its style is an Elizabethan pastiche of leisurely--and often difficult--sentences crammed with "hard words" and crowded with allusive phrases bordering on direct quotation (mostly from Shakespeare), not to mention whole songs lifted word-for-word from the works of 17th century poets.

Yet it is partially the oddness of the book--particularly the eccentric and unique prose style--that gives it power. These characters do not live in a world that sounds like ours, and they do not speak as we speak, and this helps Eddison capture the majesty—and strangeness—of his epic warriors. His heroes share a combination of lofty nobility and careless contempt for others that puts them in the exalted company of Homer's Achilles and Shakespeare's Hamlet. These men are too great to worry about being good, let alone being likable, and they set an exalted standard for fantasy characterization that has never been equaled. Only Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone comes close.

[J.G. Keely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though now largely forgotten, Eddison's early works of Fantasy inspired both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who never surpassed him in imagination, verbal beauty, or philosophy. In terms of morality, both later authors painted their worlds in broad strokes of black and white, excepting a traitor here or a redemption there. Like in the nationalistic epic 'Song of Roland', evil and good are tangible effects, borne in the blood.

Though similar on the surface, Eddison's is much more subtle. Though he depicts grand heroism and grand treachery, both are acts motivated by social codes and by need. Neither goes unquestioned, so that even when honesty is lauded and treachery is condemned, there is a certain self-awareness and irony in play.

In Fantasy, as in the Epic before it, there is an inherent conflict between the hyperbole of the high action and the need for sympathetic characters. A character without flaws cannot be sympathetic, for such a character has no humanity. A flawless hero in a world of simple morality can only be a farce, expressed either as satire or propaganda.

Eddison's characters and philosophies are too complex for propaganda, which is unsurprising since he takes his cues from Shakespeare. Like The Bard, Eddison does give us some overblown cliches, and occasionally lets them ride, but the setting and the supporting cast balance them by opposition. In no way does Eddison give up on the action or melodrama of the Epic tradition, but he tempers it with undertones of existentialism and realism.

Breadth of character complexity is not all Eddison borrows from Shakespeare, however. 'The Worm Ouroboros' is a whimsical exploration of the imagination, and is unapologetically stylized. The language is purposefully archaic and evocative of the Metaphysical poets, the Nordic Sagas, and Chaucer.

As a linguist and translator, Eddison's language is seasoned and playful. Some have expressed discontent at trying to read it, but it is usually more simple than Shakespeare's, and rarely as difficult as Chaucer's.

There are some truly lovely, almost alien passages in the book, but they are not Tolkien's wooden reconstruction of epic language, they are truly a language of their own. This is especially true of the scenes of war and the emotionally fraught interplay between characters. Though much of the interaction plays out along the lines of chivalry, nobility, and duty, there is often a subtext of unspoken, conflicting desires and thoughts. As with any formal social system, chivalry may be the mode of interaction, but it is rarely the content.

Like the Metaphysical poetry of Donne, Sydney, and Shakespeare, though the surface may be grand or lovely or innocent, the underlying meanings subvert. Unlike Tolkien, this underlying meaning is not a stodgy allegorical moral but an exploration of human thought and desire.

Also unlike Tolkien, Eddison is not afraid of women. His women are mightily present, and may be manipulative, vengeful, honorable, powerful, and self-sacrificing as the men. The women are often defined by their sexuality, meaning their beauty and availability. The book neither praises not condemns this social control, as it is the form which chivalry takes, but these ideals entrap the men just as strictly. Though he doesn't create female knights like Ariosto, neither are his women Tolkien's objects of distant and uneasy worship.

However, one can see in Eddison's Queen Sophonisba a prototype for Galadriel. Likewise the destruction at Krothering is reminiscent of the industrialization of Isengard and The Shire. The 'seeing stones' prefigure both the palantir and Galadriel's mirror. Gorice XII working magic in his black tower could be Saruman, nor are these the end of the parallels between the books.

It is a shame that modern fantasy authors did not take more from Eddison than his striking imagery. We could do with more subtle character interaction, more sympathetic foes, characters remarkable not for their prowess, but for their philosophies, and a well-studied depiction of arms, armor, war, ships, architecture, art, food, hunting, and culture.

The depth and detail of each table or boot or sea battle truly shows the mastery of the author, and the supremacy of his knowledge. The world is full and rich and alien and yet remains sympathetic. The play of language is complex and studied, and second in force only to a master like Mervyn Peake.

Rare is the author who has picked up the resonance of the early fantasy works of Morris, MacDonald, Dunsany, and Eddison, but there are some, such as Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock, and though they are sadly few, they represent remarkably unique visions within the tradition. Eddison's own vision remains without peer to this day, as no author has been able to combine studied archaism so effortlessly with childlike enthusiasm. Perhaps no one ever will.

Ebook readers should be happy to discover that his works, including this one, are readily available for free online.

My Fantasy Book Suggestions

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Worm Ouroboros! It goes around and around and around... and back around again!

This is the story of the Lords of Demonland, their arch-foes the Lords of Witchland, various others (Lords of Goblinland and Impland and Pixyland et al), and their endless conflicts and political maneuverings and deeds of derring-do and black-hearted villainy and mystical quests into the heights of dark mountains and women so awesomely beautiful that it means instant infatuation and fearsome magic that swoops down on both victim & conjurer alike and battles at castle gates and battles at sea and battles, battles, battles. Don't think of "Demons" and "Witches" as, well, demons and witches... those are just words used to describe the superhuman residents of the planet Mercury. The entire book is over the top, larger than life: delirious fantasy pitched to operatic heights, filled with ornate description, stylized dialogue, far-flung dream journeys and dreams of ever more glory. The Worm Ouroboros is an intricately designed relic and a work of strange, byzantine splendor.... This Mortal Coil as a grand and never-ending odyssey of Constant Adventure. I have read nothing like it.

If I were to look at the plot alone, this would be a 3-star book. The narrative is an enjoyably breathless series of scenes full of cliffhangers and courtly intrigue. Fun. But also deeply problematic in a couple ways. The first problem: this book appears to glorify war in the most naive way imaginable: an endless boys' adventure where fighting is always the goal and peace is never the solution. The title and the "ending" in some ways subvert this analysis. I don't know how ironic or critical Eddison intended to be, but the basic idea of endless adventure being an self-perpetuating cycle... that does provide a certain depth as well as an ambiguous response to all of the naivete on display. More problematic is the near complete focus on the aristocrats of the world, enacting their grand battles using thousands upon thousands of common folk as their disposable chess pieces. One aristocrat dies - oh the tragedy! A thousand soldiers die in one minor sally - eh, that was a bad loss but whatever, the game must go on. There is something obviously very wrong about that kind of glorification of battle for battle's sake, no matter the cost. So for an action-packed narrative that is also naively offensive: 3 stars for the fun and 3 stars for the lack of humanity.

But what makes this novel uniquely enjoyable is the language. It truly lifts The Worm Ouroboros to a higher place. It was both a constant delight and a constant challenge. The language itself is highly artificial - archaic even; the descriptive passages are dense, complex, luscious; the heroes and the villains are characterized in the most Olympian terms possible; the Nietzschean morality on display is illustrated with an almost feverish passion; there is a swooningly homoerotic vibe in how the men are depicted; the arch displays of humor and mockery are both sneakily subtle and quaintly broad; a quest by one brother searching for another becomes dreamily transcendent through the author's use of hallucinogenic prose. It is all so intense that it becomes hypnotic. Fully engorged testosterone carefully wrapped up in layer upon layer of dainty filigree and velvety shadow. High Fantasy that is as high as a kite. I smoked it all up; the language often put me to sleep but, just as often, it kept me wide awake with a kind of heady glee. It stimulated parts of my brain that hadn't been stimulated before.

Here is a typically odd, amusing, and rather beautiful passage:

' So speaking, the King was come with Gro into his great bath chamber, walled and floored with green serpentine, with dolphins carved in the same stone to belch water into the baths that were lined with white marble and sunken in the floor, both wide and deep, the hot bath on the left and cold bath, many times greater, on the right as they entered the chamber. The King dismissed his attendants, and made Gro sit on a bench piled with cushions above the hot bath, and drink more wine. And the King stripped off his jerkin of black cowhide and his hose and his shirt of white Beshtrian wool and went down into the steaming bath. Gro looked with wonder on the mighty limbs of Gorice the King, so lean and yet so strong to behold, as if he were built all of iron; and a great marvel it was how the King, when he had put off his raiment and royal apparel and went down stark naked into the bath, yet seemed to have put off not one whit of his kingliness and the majesty and dread which belonged to him.

So when he had plunged awhile in the swirling waters of the bath, and soaped himself from head to foot and plunged again, the King lay back luxuriously in the water and said to Gro, "Tell me of Corsus and his sons, and of Laxus and Gallandus, and of all my men west over seas, as thou shouldest tell of those whose life or death in our conceit importeth as much as that of a scarab fly. Speak and fear not, keeping nothing back nor glozing over nothing. Only that should make me dreadful to thee if thou shouldn't practise to deceive me." '

A shout-out for Lord Gro: a sinister and devious Goblin Judas, a dainty dandy and a star-struck dreamer as prone to flights of romantic fancy as he is to fits of melancholy and despair, inconstant as Hamlet, destined to forever betray his masters, villain and hero, a gloriously unique creation. Go, Gro, Go!

And So: If thou shalt drink deep of the pleasures of language, if thou dost seek fearsome challenge brimming o'er with fantastickal wonder, dread enchantements and treacherous peril... then thou must hasten to consume this rare delight! A lovely treasure, burning boldly, ever-bright!

[Christopher Paolini · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Worm Ouroboros is incredibly dense and it’s written in faux Jacobean English. It took me three tries to get through this book, so take that for what it’s worth.

The great thing about it is that it's written from a different perspective than Narnia or Lord of the Rings in that both of those stories are explicitly or implicitly Christian. E.R. Eddison took a very different approach, a pagan one—“pagan” in the sense of the old Vikings or similar–and it gives the story a very different flavor.

It has great battles, great descriptions, and the prose itself is just a challenge and a joy. The book is definitely one of my favorites and one of the novels that had a great deal to do with the author I became. I recommend The Worm Ouroboros if you’re looking for something out of the mainstream and beautiful.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

2025 re-read thoughts:

And thus the worm comes full circle in my 2025 re-read of Eddison’s fantasy works. I’ve always appreciated, and often enjoyed, Eddison, but I think this may be the first time I have loved him.

The Worm was, as is the case for most who find him, my original introduction to Eddison, though this time it proved to be the tail end of my journey. It is, I have to say, a lesser work than the Zimiamvia trilogy, displaying far less complexity, though certainly not without moments of beauty and power. Lush and beautiful (nearly to the point of overdoing it), the language is even more arcane here, though the premise of the story is much more simple than what was to come.

It is a more or less straight ahead adventure tale, though some of Eddison’s idées fixes can’t help but pop up, if only in outline. Strength of purpose, decisive action, and drinking the cup of life, for both good and ill, to the dregs are central to all of Eddison’s works and certainly no less so in the Worm. While arguably not truly a part of the Zimiamvian series, I would suggest that it nonetheless shares a kinship and several direct linkages with the later books that make it more than simply a separate stand-alone. I am also beginning to think that, taken in the long view with the later books, the presence of Lessingham in the introduction to the novel is in no way incidental, but actually essential to Eddison’s program. Lessingham is the lynchpin of the series, for all that he is often only tangentially involved in several of the volumes, and the Worm exemplifies the essence of the search for one’s heart’s desire that underpins everything Eddison wrote. The wish to strive against the greatest odds to achieve the seemingly impossible, or die in the attempt, is present in spades, but (it must be said) the overarching role of the feminine principle of Aphrodite so central to Zimiamvia is glaringly absent. There are some strong, sensuous women to be sure: Sriva, Prezmyra, and Mevrian each play significant roles (though the latter is Artemis as opposed to Aphrodite). It might even be said that the three of them together could perhaps embody something akin to Fiorinda, Eddison’s ur-depiction of Aphrodite’s avatar. Even so, the men seem often unmoved by their presence (with the surprising exception of Gro whose devotion to both Prezmyra and Mevrian must have some level of sublimated desire however Platonic he makes it seem. Indeed he rarely fails to throw a line their way in the hopes of dazzling them with his riz…which alas he sadly lacks, to whit: “Gro answered and said, ‘Tell me first if thou that speakest art in truth the Lady Mevrian, that I may know whether to human kind I speak or to some Goddess come down from the shining floor of heaven?’” (326) Oh Gro! Nice try my dude.

It is undoubtedly an aristocratic power fantasy, one might even go so far as to call it a love song to war and acts of violent courage that unfortunately has no time to spare for the place of peace save as the birthplace of boredom, laziness, and decadence. The ends of war are apparently to bring glory and propagate itself eternally, certainly not to bring peace.

While many of the characters here are pale caricatures to those of Zimiamvia (especially the ‘good guy’ demons who are fairly one-note, with perhaps the exception of Brandoch Daha who swings from laconically urbane to thrill-seeking ne’er do well at the drop of a hat) I have to say that there are several that bring much more to the page. Gro, the fated betrayer and learned philosopher; Corund, the gruff but clear-sighted and almost honourable lord of Witchland; Prezmyra, his fiery, beautiful, and devoted queen; and even poor Mivarsh, the ill-fated companion on the demons’ trip to Impland.

There were also some great moments that I had forgotten: Gro and Mevrian back to back against the witches and the heroic return of Juss and Brandoch Daha; Gro killing a lord of Witchland in battle, seeing Corund and then immediately killing a demon soldier before being killed by Spitfire; Prezmyra and her fierce suicide amidst the demons in victory.



Original review: Another love-it-or-hate-it book. Mannered in its language, weird in so many ways, and chock-full of larger than life characters acting in ways that most people just don't get. If you have a problem with something written in an archaic style, then you probably won't get much out of it, but if you like that kind of thing I think the book repays reading and is definitely worth it.

First off a caveat: it took me two reads of the book to appreciate it and a third to decide that I thought it was genius.

The Worm is definitely unlike almost anything else out there and is a throw-back to much older works. The first sign, as mentioned above, is the prose itself. Eddison uses a faux-Jacobean that is certainly foreign to most people's preference for Hemingway-esque 'transparent prose'. Don't worry overmuch about this though, for Eddison knew what he was doing and he is one of, if not the, only writers post-Renaissance who actually can get away with this style. He knows what he's doing, as opposed to the myriad other fantasy authors who try to add 'realism' to their stories by sprinkling it with 'thee's' and 'thous' without knowing how to properly use the language. This was a man who intimately understood the archaic form of the english language and used it to perfection...he was a stylist and thus anyone who hates stylistic prose will not likely be
drawn to him, but anyone who appreciates the crafstmanship of language (think Morris & Dunsany) has to at least appreciate if not love Eddison. Reading this book is analagous to partaking of a sumptuous feast, so long as you enjoy devouring words.

The characters are not perhaps as 'psychologically realistic' as what is generally expected these days, but I'd definitely say they are more than just names. Think of them as archetypal 'supermen' striding across the pages performing great deeds for their own sake. They don't really want to save the world, just experience it to the full, so they may not be particularly sympathetic according to your world view. I always found that they generally had very distinctive characters, but they did each generally represent one dominant trait or way of looking at the world.

If you want a larger than life adventure in exquisite prose then I think _The Worm_ is great. If you want something else you should perhaps skip it.

[Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

So strong in properties of ill is this serpent which the ancient Enemy that dwelleth in darkness hath placed upon this earth, to be a bane unto the children of men, but an instrument of might in the hand of enchanters and sorcerers.

A messenger arrives at Krothering Castle with a demand to the gathered lords of Demonland from the king of Witchland. They are to come to his court at Carcë and swear him fealty as his loyal subjects, or he will enforce his demands by force of arms. Thus begins a grand tale of war that inspired several gargantuan fantasy epics.

E. R. Eddison has now been largely forgotten by the world of fantasy writing, but he remains back there in the shadows as another of the founding fathers of the modern genre. He inspired Tolkien and Lewis (and even attended meetings of the Inklings) and a whole bunch of others. And while this book unfortunately is horribly dated, even for a lover of the archaic like myself, there are plenty of examples of sentences and plot points where Eddison remains an important source of inspiration.

Part of The Worm Ouroboros is a mess. The frame story serves no purpose; the plot, while often interesting, is poorly organised; and the setting is unremarkable. I must admit to some annoyance at the naming practices (Demonland, Witchland, Impland, Goblinland etc.), but I learnt to get used to it eventually.

I am always a fan of flowery writing, and it has the potential to make me instantly fall in love with a story. However, I personally found the general writing style of E. R. Eddison to be tediously boring, with little of the grace and eloquence found in the works of authors he has inspired. On the other hand, Eddison has one big strength when it comes to the writing, and that is that many of his descriptions are positively gorgeous. Like dark Carcë, capital of Witchland…

Dismal and fearsome to view was this strong place of Carcë, most like to the embodied soul of dreadful night brooding on the waters of that sluggish river: by day a shadow in broad sunshine, the likeness of pitiless violence sitting in the place of power, darkening the desolation of the mournful fen; by night, a blackness more black than night herself.

Actually, the entirety of Chapter 4 (Conjuring in the Iron Tower) was absodamnlutely amazing. Which explains why all the quotes in this review can be found in that chapter. Which, unfortunately, also says something about the rest of the book.

That should prove that I can actually say something positive too. And beyond my complaints, I am happy to have read this classic. It is a dated, flawed book, but it is enjoyable in its own way. It is one of the first examples of modern fantasy, and of moving away from the land of fairytales and into the territory of grand stories on an epic scale.

I would also like to give it extra praise for this last quote, which reminded me why I feel so strongly about fantasy…

”And for thirty days and thirty nights wandered I alone on the face of the Moruna in Upper Impland, where scarce a living soul hath been: and there the evil wights that people the air of that desert dogged my steps and gibbered at me in darkness. Yet was I unafraid; and came in due time to Morna Moruna, and thence, standing on the lip of the escarpment as it were on the edge of the world, looked southaway where never mortal eye had gazed aforetime, across the untrodden forests of the Bhavinan. And in that skyey distance, pre-eminent beyond range on range of ice-robed mountains, I beheld two peaks throned for ever between firm land and heaven in unearthly loveliness: the spires and airy ridges of Koshtra Pivrarcha, and the wild precipices that soar upward from the abysses to the queenly silent snow-dome of Koshtra Belorn."

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book on my Kindle, primarily on planes and in airports.

This was incorrect.

I should have been sitting in a high-backed leather chair, preferably in a tall-ceilinged octagonal library paneled in dark wood, lit by a gas lamp when the rays of the setting sun coming across the moorlands of my estate no longer provided sufficient light. Instead of a tiny plastic cup full of ice and Diet Coke I should've had, oh, let's say, a vintage port or cognac poured from a crystal decanter.

I would, of course, have been wearing a smoking jacket but the actual pipe & tobacco would've been entirely optional.

The Worm Ouroboros is a frankly magnificent, although not especially accessible fantasy novel from the 1920s. After a very brief framing story (as was the style at the time) it proceeds to tell the story of a great war on the planet Mercury (no, not that planet Mercury) between Our Heroes the Demons (no, not those kinds of Demons) and the villains of the piece, the Witches (no, not those kinds of Witches).

Other races inhabiting the planet include the Pixies, Imps and Goblins. Plus the Ghouls, although they were exterminated in a great war a few years prior to the events of the book. (And they totally had it coming; they were bad eggs.)

The Demons are represented by Lord Juss (the King), his brothers Goldry Bluszco and Spitfire, and their cousin Brandoch Daha. They're all impossibly handsome, brave, courteous and gallant and have little horns growing from their foreheads. (Some of them are also a bit rash and easily goaded into poorly-judged but impossibly heroic actions.)

On the distaff side we have the Witches, represented by King Gorice, wielder of Dark and Terrible Powers, plus the nobles Corund, Corinius and Corsus, and their sometimes-ally and advisor Lord Gro of Goblinland.

And there are ladies! Including, but not limited to, Lady Mevrian of Demonland and Lady Prezmyra, a Pixy but wife of Corund. And they actually do things! And some of those things (we are led most delicately to infer) are at times of an intimate nature ...

As to the meat of the story ... It's both too simple and too complicated to summarize easily -- at the beginning of the book, Gorice, who asserts himself rightful ruler of the world, including Demonland (a position with which the Demons have no truck) and Goldry Bluszco have a wrestling match to decide who has the right of the matter. Although the match is settled with one side most indisputably the victor, there then follows a great series of battles, betrayals, intrigues, dark gramaries and lengthy treks across inhospitable wastes.

Although the Demons, if you scratch too far beneath the surface, come out as essentially Edwardian landed gentry having Jolly Adventures, and the Witches, if so scratched, come out as essentially Edwardian landed gentry who fail to demonstrate proper nobless oblige and are otherwise bad sports, the whole thing is carried to dizzying heights by Eddison's sweeping and mighty language. To wit:

THAT night they spent safely, by favour of the Gods, under the highest crags of Koshtra Pivrarcha, in a sheltered hollow piled round with snow. Dawn came like a lily, saffron-hued, smirched with smoke-gray streaks that slanted from the north. The great peaks stood as islands above a main of level cloud, out of which the sun walked flaming, a ball of red-gold fire. An hour before his face appeared, the Demons and Mivarsh were roped and started on their eastward journey. Ill to do with as was the crest of the great north buttress by which they had climbed the mountain, seven times worse was this eastern ridge, leading to Koshtra Belorn. Leaner of back it was, flanked by more profound abysses, deeplier gashed, too treacherous and too sudden in its changes from sure rock to rotten and perilous: piled with tottering crags, hung about with cornices of uncertain snow, girt with cliffs smooth and holdless as a castle wall. Small marvel that it cost them thirteen hours to come down that ridge. The sun wheeled towards the west when they reached at length that frozen edge, sharp as a sickle, that was in the Gates of Zimiamvia. Weary they were, and ropeless; for by no means else might they come down from the last great tower save by the rope made fast from above. A fierce north-easter had swept the ridges all day, bringing snow-storms on its wings. Their fingers were numbed with cold, and the beards of Lord Brandoch Daha and Mivarsh Faz stiff with ice.

If you can countenance another 500 pages of such stuff, then I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Myself (to be clear), I enjoyed it mightily and look forward to following up with Eddison's Zimiamvia trilogy.

[Manny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sure people have been recommending him this book all day. But having read it, I'm afraid there are few useful details concerning technique.

[Jonathan Terrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fantasy genre has become unfortunately muddled in recent history. For every Tolkien work you have a Shannara novel, for every Narnia you end up with an Eragon. Now I'm not an elitist type of reader. I don't disqualify a novel from being entertaining simply because it may be poorly written or a 'clone' of other better fantasy novels. However, that said, the staying power of a fantasy novel diminished when that novel is punctured through with unimaginative cliché or a derivative story.

The point of writing that brief above paragraph is to point out my point. The point being that I am making the point about fantasy novels and confusion. In fact I think my point is being made about confusion even further. A lot of fantasy is written like this to its detriment, giving fantasy a poor reputation as merely escapist entertainment for the geeks, nerds and fanboys/fangirls.

It is works like The Worm Ouroboros which reveal that fantasy has merit as a work of art and as true literature. This is fantasy written in the sweeping style of the epic, a highly beautiful and poetic style that serves to convey truths and interesting narratives at the same time. The result is that The Worm Ouroboros cannot be equalled by many current fantasy novels in its grandeur. Perhaps older tales like the Iliad, The Odyssey and Le Morte d'Arthur may have the same quality, yet I have not read those yet.

The Worm Ouroboros focuses on a long fantastic history of war between Demonland and Witchland. The very names of these two lands strive to provide an ambient, overwhelming, moral greyness to the world created by Eddison. It is a world where you assume at first that those members of Witchland are the enemy and then turn to consider those of Demonland as the enemy. In so doing the overall analysis is that in war there are two sides who perceive the other as the enemy. In many ways Eddison's tale is a narrative about the other and as he so clearly states, not an allegory.

The language is beautifully archaic, a mixture of Modern and Middle English utilised perfectly by Eddison to describe his world like a painter using molten words for colour. His adjectives bristle with life and energy, in fact his words contain an exuberance lacked by many writers now or ever. This is not only a fantasy classic but a classic of classics.

If you are one of those readers who deny fantasy as a genre, content to allow it to sit as the realm of nerds who dwell alone, then I fully recommend that you seek out this novel instead. It is one of the great classics of fantasy and of literature which reveal the value of using the traditions of epic narrative and to some small degree fairytale to reveal truth. I won't discuss what truths are in this story as I feel that that is up to the individual reader, however I fully recommend this novel to any reader, particularly anyone who has a set idea of fantasy as dull and dead.

Addendum
I must add that I first found the novel hard to get into. However with perseverance I discovered the magnificence of the novel and with much thought have come to recognise how great a masterpiece it is. It is not necessarily easy reading, I believe I missed some minor details here or there, but it is excellent reading serving the purposes of all fine literature!

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

On this ‘re-read’ of Eddison’s fantasy classic I listened to the audio version produced by Librivox. Now normally Librivox recordings, given that they are free, can be pretty hit-or-miss. This, I am happy to say, is a case where they stumbled upon an excellent reader. Jason Mills tackles Eddison’s delicious, albeit often difficult and certainly archaic, prose with panache and style. For me his accent didn’t hurt either and leant the reading a somewhat exotic flair (for those of us across the pond at least). The reading was smooth and very well paced, with emphasis and inflection exactly where I would expect it and just the right mood injected into each scene…very well done. If you’ve had trouble overcoming Eddison’s prose due to its idiosyncrasy on the page then perhaps listening to this version might be your best gateway into the Worm.

Ah the Worm...how to describe it? I would liken it to an opera scored by Wagner with a libretto written by Shakespeare based on a story cribbed from Homer. I’ll admit that statement is in some ways blatant hyperbole, but I think it still aptly express the ambience of the book. I’ve written a previous review on the Worm so I won’t go into too much of an overview of the story itself and will instead record my impressions of things that struck me from this re-read. One thing to note in general though: this is without a doubt an elitist work. As far as characters go if you are not one of the great and mighty, whether good or evil in disposition, you need not apply (with the possible exceptions of Mivarsh Faz and the single chapter given from the POV of a common soldier of Demonland and his family, but even then they display a distinctly worshipful attitude towards their ‘betters’). So if you cannot abide a fantasy world that does not model itself along the right-thinking ideals of liberal democracy then you might want to give this one a pass.

I’ve mentioned in my previous review how many of the characters are archetypes – supermen striding across the page generally lacking in psychological realism. I’d still generally stand by that statement, but I did notice that with perhaps the exception of a few of the Demon (good guy) princes quite a few of the characters displayed much more complexity than I had previously given them credit for: Lord Gro of course is an interesting character – a philosopher and courtier so in love with lost causes that he is driven to betray his friends and allies when they ascend too highly on Fortune’s wheel, and who is also the hapless lover of two peerless ladies who may admire him but can never return his love; Corund the stalwart general of the Witchland armies who is no hero, but displays a nobility of character and strength of personality that makes him admirable for all his villainy; his wife Prezmyra a lady of peerless beauty and iron strength of will, utterly devoted to her husband and her brother and who will never back down from her convictions once she has set herself a goal. Corund and Prezmyra are fast becoming my favourite characters in the book and who better to express their virtues than Eddison himself through the mouth of Lord Juss, their enemy:

For royal and lordly was Corund, and a mighty man at arms, and a fighter clean of hand, albeit our bitter enemy. Wondrous it is with what cords of love he bound to him this unparagoned Queen of his. Who hath known her like among women for trueness and highness of heart? And sure none was ever more unfortunate.

It is a book chock-full of cinematic moments against which you can almost hear the swelling score as in the return of Lords Juss and Brandoch Daha to Demonland from their expedition to Impland, or the return of the Demons to the steppes of the Moruna as seen through the eyes of Lord Gro. Not to mention the death of Gro: both in its manner and the actions that precipitate it, which are just so apt, so expressive of who he is and the tragedy of his life, that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry upon reading it. I was struck as well by how much the expedition to Impland made by Juss and Brandoch Daha seemed so similar to something you might read in Malory with its constant procession of tests and marvels that are stumbled upon in the wild and which our heroes must simply accept and overcome. I was also a little surprised to note that Juss’ testing on the mountain of Zora Rach Nam Psarrion had glimmers of the Lovecraftian in its expression of existential horror: “…but that pain was a light thing beside somewhat he now felt within him the like whereof he never before had known: a deathlike horror as of the houseless loneliness of naked space, which gripped him at the heart.” Or again:

The cloud had lifted from the mountain’s peak and hung like a pall above its nakedness. Chill air that was like the breath of the whole world’s grave: vast blank cloud-barriers: dim far forms of snow and ice, silent, solitary, pale, like mountains of the dead: it was as if the bottom of the world were opened and truth laid bare: the ultimate Nothing.

But of course one of the primary reasons to come to this book and fall in love with it is the language. Whether Eddison is describing an epic action of great heroism or villainy, or simply a commonplace occurrence seen with the eyes of glamour he provides the reader with a veritable feast of words. Here are a few choice excerpts I noticed this time around:

On sleeping in:

Corund answered, “Truly I was seldom so uncivil as surprise Madam Aurora in her nightgown. And the thrice or four times I have been forced thereto, taught me it is an hour of crude airs and mists which breed cold dark humours in the body, an hour when the torch of life burns weakest.”

The ambiguity of the fall of night:

Behind them rolled up the ascent of heaven the wheels of quiet Night: holy Night, mother of the Gods, mother of sleep, tender nurse of all little birds and beasts that dwell in the field and all tired hearts and weary: mother besides of strange children, affrights, and rapes, and midnight murders bold.

Sunrise and the hope of morning:

Day goeth up against the tyrant night. How delicate a spirit is she, how like a fawn she footeth it upon the mountains: pale pitiful light matched with the primeval dark. But every sweet hovers in her battalions, and every heavenly influence: coolth of the wayward little winds of morning, flowers awakening, birds a-carol, dews a-sparkle on the fine-drawn webs the tiny spinners hang from fern-frond to thorn, from thorn to wet dainty leaf of the silver birch: the young day laughing in her strength, wild with her own beauty; fire and life and every scent and colour born anew to triumph over chaos and slow darkness and the kinless night.

Dive deeply into Eddison’s fantasy or don’t enter at all. It is like a heady draught of strong wine that pleases the palate as it ennobles the spirit and gosh it’s a lot of fun!

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why read The Worm Ouroboros?

Two reasons, chiefly. The first is that it’s fun; the second is that it’s a pleasure to read something whose author is so obviously in love with the English language, reveling in its intricacies.

To the first reason, if you’re looking for strong, character-driven plots or philosophical ruminations on Man’s condition, look elsewhere. Ouroboros is a celebration of the most pagan warrior virtues of the Western tradition. The basic story is the epic war between Demonland (the “good guys”), ruled by the brothers Juss, Spitfire and Goldry Bluszco, and Witchland (the “bad guys”), ruled by the deliciously wicked Gorice XII. Despite comparisons to Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Eddison’s ethos derives from Homer and the Norse Sagas stripped of their Christian veneer. Our heroes and our villains both are mighty and valiant fighters; and their women are uniformly fair. What sets the Demons and their allies apart is their sense of honor and a barbaric chivalry.

To the second reason: Eddison obviously loves English, most particularly Elizabethan English. Perhaps it’s because I have been reading and watching a lot of Shakespeare these last few months and my brain is more apt to translation than otherwise but I could wish our modern authors were as conscious and as careful and as exuberant in their prose as Eddison. An example taken entirely at random:

“Therewith he looked on the Demons, and there was that in his eyes that stayed their speech.

In a while he spake again, saying, `I sware unto you my furtherance if I prevailed. But now is mine army passed away as wax wasteth before the fire, and I wait the dark ferryman who tarrieth for no man. Yet, since never have I wrote mine obligations in sandy but in marble memories, and since victory is mine, receive these gifts: and first thou, O Brandoch Daha, my sword, since before thou wast of years eighteen thou wast accounted the mightiest among men-at-arms. Mightily may it avail thee, as me in time gone by. And unto thee, O Spitfire, I give this cloak. Old it is, yet may it stand thee in good stead, since this virtue it hath that he who weareth it shall not fall live into the hand of his enemies. Wear it for my sake. But unto thee, O Juss, give I no gift, for rich thou art of all good gifts: only my good will give I unto thee, ere earth gape for me’”

(p. 161).

And this is the tenor for the next 400 pages. Despite that, the prose is very readable and if you can make it past the first chapter or two, the reading is worth the effort. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to encounter Elizabethan-style prose in every book I read but one of the things I don’t like about a lot of what passes for literature out there is the dull, turgid writing that ignores English’s rhythms, has its characters talk like denizens of the 21st century, and refuses to push the envelope in what English is capable of.

A third reason I enjoyed The Worm Ouroboros peculiar to myself is Eddison’s ear for names. Sometimes, he produces a real clunker like “Goldry Bluszco” but, on the whole, his instincts are true and when he names a character or a place it “feels” right – Gorice; Corsus, Corund & Corinius (Gorice’s chief generals); Lord Juss; Krothering Keep; Morna Moruna; Lady Mevrian; Carce; and so on.

The gods know I wouldn’t want to live in a world of Demons and Witches but I had a lot of fun vacationing there.

[Teresa Edgerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE WORM OUROBOROS

Rambling, obscure, written after the style of the seventeenth century, filled with characters it is difficult to even like, much less love, and the story is supposed to take place on Mercury, though it is not science fiction and there is no particular reason why the author should have hit on that planet more than any place else — this hardly sounds like a recommendation, I know, yet the book is, deservedly, considered a classic.

The story begins when King Gorice XI of Witchland lays claim to Demonland and demands the fealty of her rulers, Lords Juss, Goldry Bluszco, and Spitfire. (Do not concern yourself with the names. The more you think about them, the less sense they will make. Demons, Witches, Pixies, Imps ... none of these means what you think it does, and names of many of the people and places seem to come from a mishmash of sources.) The Demons, as Gorice surely expects, refuse. A wrestling match between the hulking Gorice and Goldry, not mean wrestler himself, is arranged to decide the matter. Since Gorice has decorated his palace with the skulls and and bones of the ninety-nine champions he has already defeated, he is confident of his triumph. However, when the contest begins to go against him, he cheats, and is still defeated. He loses the match and his life in the process. The Witches, having cheated, accuse the Demons of treachery and murder, refuse to keep their part of the bargain, and depart.

And this sets off a series of kidnappings, battles, defeats, victories, treacheries, heroic deeds, more battles, treason, poisoning, battles, and suicide.

The most fascinating characters are the antagonists, that is, the inhabitants of Witchland, and one Goblin who switches sides so often it is hard to keep track of whose side he is on at any given moment. Yet Gro is no opportunist, for there is something in him that forces him ever to take the losing side when he already knows full well that it is about to suffer a staggering defeat. It is not quite compassion; it is undoubtedly a compulsion; it may be on philosophic or aesthetic grounds. Gro does not appear to be entirely certain himself. Corund, if ruthless and ever willing to advise his overlord to triumph by trickery and outright cheating, is nevertheless steadfast, and perversely honorable in his way. King Gorice XII, a sorcerer of great renown, and in some way a reincarnation of all the previous Gorices (another thing not to think about too much, Eddison often had several incarnations of a character living at once) is simply compelling in his own unmitigated wickedness.

Gorice is monstrous in his will to dominate. He cares for no one and nothing but his own ambitions, but Corund — great-hearted though not good-hearted (a subtle distinction) — forgives his one-time friend Gro his treason, although almost certainly in part to please his wife, the supernaturally beauiful Pryzmyra. Pryzmyra is all magnificent contradiction, by turns fierce and sensuously languid. We are to understand that she was given to Corund in marriage when she was barely more than a child, and he at least in middle age. Now he is old, while she has reached a gorgeous maturity. But she is fierce in her affections, and though naturally attracted to the high and noble, is deeply attached to her husband, even when it causes her great difficulty reconciling her loyalty to himand to the Witchesm with her equally fierce affections for her brother La Fireez, Prince of Pixyland and a staunch ally of the Demons. Why she should feel anything but contempt for Gro is a mystery, but something about him touches her.

The protagonists, however, are hardly less monstrous than the Witches, though in a different way, being egotistical in the extreme. Lord Juss’s bedchamber, for instance, is decorated with murals depicting, not the magnificent deeds of his ancestors, which would be too commonplace, no, his chamber is adorned with murals of his own glorious deeds. In their defense, each of these characters seems to admire the others as much as he admires himself. They are presented as beneficent overlords, yet two of them leave their people when war is threatening, in order to pursue a personal point quest. When given a choice between the easy way and the seemingly impossible they always choose the difficult and dangerous course in order to satisfy their heroic nature -- even though their swift and safe return home is desperately needed in order to turn the tide of battle. One gets the feeling that the people they rule do not matter in the least, and only exist to give these lordly characters someone to rule over — for men such as they must rule. It is in their nature. We wish for them to succeed, partly in grudging admiration, and partly because the results of their failure would be so much worse.

Eddison obviously admired the men of an earlier age — or at least an idealized version of them— and longed for a time when men were heroes and women were goddesses, or else not worth thinking about at all. Much of the book is taken up with the rather tedious adventures of Juss and his friend Brandoch Daha. Thankfully, there are also sections devoted to the Witches’ invasion of Demonland, a tender subplot about unrequited love, and another about the jostling for power among those of Gorice’s henchmen sent to lead the invasion.

One reason why the book succeeds is that the author has perfect command of the style he adopts. Writing in the 1920’s, late Elizabethan/Jacobean English is spot on, and he frequently uses it to create stunning and breathtakingly beautiful t effects. As you may have guessed ,from the description above, in spite of its weaknesses, the story is melodrama at its most heart-stirring and magnificent best, it’s characters, if infuriating, so very much larger than life. If you are up for a truly challenging read, you could hardly do better than The Worm Ouroboros.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a strange book. It has always been a strange book, even when first published in 1922. But it’s a very satisfying strange book, and it contains what may be the most fantastic sentence I’ve ever read in a work of fiction.

The author, Eric Rücker Eddison, was an English civil servant. He was also a translator of both Norse sagas and an expert in medieval and Renaissance poetry; therefore, he had a lot in common with C.S. Lewis. In fact, he knew both Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein, and interacted with their “Inklings” circle. But he was decidedly not Christian, being best described as “neo-pagan”—as is this book.

“The Worm Ouroboros” is one of the first high fantasy novels (preceded, perhaps, by William Morris’s “The Well at the End of the World”). An “ouroboros,” for those wondering, is the ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail. It is a sign of eternity and recurrence, and it also represents Jormungand, the World Serpent of Norse mythology, arch-enemy of Thor, who lies coiled around the Earth, and whose uncoiling will precipitate the final battle, Ragnarok. You can tell from this that the book is closely tied to Norse sagas; it also echoes Arthurian legend. In both cases, it is not the content that is echoed, but the themes.

So while the themes are not wholly original, the content is. Eddison created an entire new world (as is the nature of high fantasy), populated by complex heroes with flaws and villains with virtues, striving for power, love, and, most of all, transcendence through personal glory in heroic accomplishments against insurmountable odds. As with any good high fantasy novel, the characters are not flat, but are still archetypes we recognize, and in some of whom we see things we are or want to be. Strange names and strange people, yet they are us withal.

Sorry about that “withal.” I just fell into it naturally after reading this book, because what makes it most challenging is that it is all written, very deliberately, in English of the 16th Century. But it’s not faux archaic; it never slips from its own created world, and the language is probably necessary to convey the mood. Nonetheless, it does make it a slow start and a slow read, because between sentence structure and obscure words (I do not own the OED, but I assume they are all real, but archaic, words), it takes time. It’s not tough going—but it does take time, though it’s worth the effort. Surrounding all this are detailed descriptions that seem overdone on first reading, but seem just right and limitlessly evocative on the second read.

In the early 21st Century, we are used to two basic kinds of high fantasy. One is exemplified by “The Lord of the Rings”—it has a distinctly Christian sensibility, where the correct, moral choice is clear, and heroes and villains are also clear, though the characters are not always purely good or bad (think Boromir). Heroes fight evil because that’s what is the right thing to do; they seek their own glory as well, sometimes, but as a side benefit. Heroes are aware of the costs of their action on the civilian and the common soldier; they take into account how what they do affects others. At the end, evil is defeated. Such fantasy is, like fairy tales, meant both to amuse and to morally instruct us.

The second type is more modern and is exemplified (right now) by “Game of Thrones” (or, technically, I suppose, “A Song of Ice and Fire”). It has an amoral, anarchistic sensibility. Bad things happen to both good and bad people equally. Good people are only good until their inevitable corruption. Moral choices are always unclear and nobody is really good or really bad. Blind fate crushes all. Glory is a myth; the grave awaits us all, and nothing more. In some ways this is more like real life, and certainly more like modern real life. However, it lacks the magic of the first type—it entertains us, though often with an unpleasant aftertaste, but it does not improve us, and is not meant to.

“The Worm Ouroboros” is a third type, which has few modern analogues, if any. It is not Christian at all, but it does have a very specific moral sensibility—that of the pagan Norse. The characters, of whom there are many, fight because fighting brings glory and it’s fun (or, in the case of the villains, because it brings power, and glory, and it’s fun). That’s all they do, in between falling in love with beautiful women (who themselves are all scheming either to bring their families glory or to be part of the aristocratic excellence), and eating big feasts in fancy halls. The elite, those who are most excellent, are all that matter. The role of the common people is to die to maintain the standard of aristocratic excellence (and, spoiler alert, in fact, when the heroes finally win the day after enormous slaughter of their own people, they are bored and at loose ends, so they pray to the gods, and their enemies are thereby restored to life and power, in order to begin the cycle of violence again). This makes it jarring to those who like the straightforward moral conception of Tolkein, and odd to those who like the calculatingly self-interested characters of “Game of Thrones”, since the heroes here constantly act on a purely heroic conception of self-interest, frequently to their immediate and permanent detriment. The heroes here are not amoral or anarchic in the least (although it is like “Game of Thrones” in that relatively significant characters die with regularity), though their morality and adherence to law is nonetheless alien to us. Yes, there is a fair bit of scheming and alliance-making, but the frame shows clearly that all that matters is the quest for glory. I am not an expert on this, but this seems very like Beowulf, and perhaps like other Norse sagas, like the Poetic Edda. What it is not is like any other fantasy with which I’m familiar.

In any case, totally aside from this are the endless riveting passages of the book, and the plot, which is strangely compelling, though wholly odd and frequently interrupted for what seem side happenings. For example, the principal heroes are the rulers of Demonland (though there are no demons in the sense of evil creatures in Demonland). The primary heroes are the King, Lord Juss, and his cousin, Brandoch Daha (yes, all the names are weird—apparently Eddison came up with them as a small child and kept them). They sail to Impland, a blasted land in the far South, searching for the brother of the king of Demonland, kidnapped and held in an inaccessible fortress by an evil spirit summoned by Gorice XII, ever-reincarnated king of Witchland, the main villain. Among other adventures in Impland (having lost thousands of their own men drowned or killed in battle, over which they agonize not at all), they encounter three bewitched generals from a war years past, each with his army. The first pursues the second, thinking he was betrayed by him, yet has no knowledge of the third. And second pursues the third, thinking likewise and knowing nothing of the first—while the third pursues the first, in an endless circle. Spoiler—all of these people die too.

Plus, there are very many compelling characters. The main heroes are medieval paladin archetypes. The villains, led by Gorice, are more complex. And then there are frankly unique characters like Lord Gro, a man of great talents (technically, he’s a Goblin, but all the “races” are interchangeable and clearly human, except for a single mention of horns on the Demons), both physically brave and an inveterate schemer. So far not too original—but he has the strange characteristic of habitually feeling compelled to betray whomever he serves—not at their lowest ebb, for personal advantage, but at their moment of greatest success, to his own disadvantage. He explains this by saying, “But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet love her when glutted with triumph she settles to garish noon? Rather turn as now I turn to Demonland [then on its last legs], in the sad sunset of her pride. And who dares to call me turncoat, who do but follow now as I have followed this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and the morning and the evening star? Since there only abideth the soul of nobility, true love, and wonder, and the glory of hope and fear.” There’s a lot to unpack it that, and it’s far from the only such passage. Gro is also fond of such repeatable aphorisms as “He that imagineth after his labours to attain unto lasting joy, as well may he beat water in a mortar.”

Ah, but you’re wondering—what is the “most fantastic sentence I’ve ever read in a work of fiction”? It is this: when the main heroes are in Impland, they choose to take the way to the Moruna, where their local guide, Mivarsh Faz, tells them “None may go thither and not die.” “They laughed and answered him, ‘Do not too narrowly define our power, sweet Mivarsh, restraining it to thy capacities. Know that our journey is a matter determined of, and it is fixed with nails of diamond to the wall of inevitable necessity.’” That’s fantastic. I’m going to use it in daily life, no matter if people stare at me. When my Uber driver says he can’t take me somewhere, I’m going to tell him that “my purpose is fixed with nails of diamond to the wall of inevitable necessity,” even if he then tells me to get out. Meanwhile, you should read this book, if you have any interest in fantasy at all.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

The witches of Witchland are the bad guys, but they're not your typical witches. They don't own cauldrons or black cats and they don't recruit women for their rituals or armies. These witches are hardened imperialists and fierce, treacherous foes who have conquered many lands already.

But unlike Tolkien's irredeemable orcs, the witchlanders are essentially human. They represent all manner of vice, with each of their commanders sporting a different weakness: alcohol, arrogance, greed, etc. But they have relative virtues too, and Eddison often portrays their downfalls as noble tragedies.

Scenes set at the Witchland court take on a Shakespearean feel, with soliloquies, complex motives, romance, and skullduggery. Plus, as in Hamlet, most of them die in a poison-packed climax!


The Witchlander emblem is this nasty crab!

So who are the good guys in this fantastical war? The demons of Demonland. Yes, demons are the good guys and they're also basically humans (but with little horns.) They're also a stoic crew of nobles who travel the land, climb the tallest mountains, evade armies, encounter mysterious spirits, and battle legendary monsters; adventure yarns basically.

This is an epic fantasy that predated The Hobbit by fifteen years. The writing is dense and the plot features some shocking twists considering the simple story of good-versus-bad. The Worm Ouroboros is a significant literary influence, its manifold loops visible if you look closely.

Edited 8-21-2024

[Cheryl Terrel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I never knew what bloated meant until I read this book. At least 50% of this book described flowers and clothing. The other 50% was ridiculous. Since it was written following the First World War, I can imagine it being a commentary on the absurdity of the British cultural position toward warfare, but it would have been nice for at least ONE character to be sort of likable/reasonable/intelligent/NORMAL.

The story in a nutshell: one of three brothers is kidnapped, the remaining brothers and their friend must save him while protecting their kingdom from the evil bad guy trying to steal it from them. So two of the three set off to find where the brother is located, practically arriving at his doorstep, only to discover that they must go all the way home in order to retrieve the magic item that will allow them to cross the threshold.

The characters in a nutshell: two dimensional (probably more like one) war-mongers who are dearly beloved to their soldiers for their prowess, honesty and virtue. Nevermind that by the time the book ends, there can't possibly be a single able-bodied man alive in either kingdom, and NOBODY feels like it's a shame that this many people are dying, primarily for no real reason.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a 'classic'. A lot of high-powered writers liked it. I tried several times to make it through it before I managed it. The language is almost constructed - it doesn't flow for me as much as writhe around before I finally pin it down. It's in an odd style (Elizabethan?) with a story that reminds me of the Iliad or the Odyssey. Great story, sucky style. Why he writes such long, convoluted sentences with archaic words in such a stilted style is beyond me. All the critics like it, but I doubt it will ever be popular with the masses.

Once I got past the style, the story was a lot of fun. It's an imaginative world where the inhabitants are demons, witches & the politics are as bad as those of the Iliad. Heroes abound & they journey about committing deeds of bravery.

[Anna Spark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, horrifying, so beautiful it made me weep, in places unreadable. I am in awe.

[Димитър Цолов · Rating 3 out of 5]

Сетингът на романа беше любопитен, героите - достатъчно интересни и "сиви" в хубавия смисъл на понятието, а краят - изключително хитроумен и нестандартен, за да разбера защо влиятелни фентъзи творци (любимият ми Муркок, например) сочат Е. Р. Едисън за свой вдъхновител и учител. Но в противовес на споменатото, не харесах особено литературното изпълнение. Твърде мудно, твърде накъсано от пространни описания на облекла и помещения, твърде много изреждане на имена на личности и географски понятия, без особено отношение към действието, просто в стил "телефонен указател". В тоя ред на мисли една карта на света, приложена в началото на изданието, въобще не би била излишна.

Въведението ми се стори абсолютно ненужно (даже не го и разбрах), а "спойлерите", мяркащи се в описанията към някои от главите яко ме издразниха. Давам пример (условен): "Глава еди-си-коя: За битката на тоя с оня и как тоя/или оня я загуби"... Кое му е интересното да узнаеш изхода на дадено събитие, още преди да си започнал да четеш за него?

Разбира се, вземам предвид стоте и кусур години, минали от написването на текста - време, през което жанрът се е развил експлозивно и критериите ни разбираемо са се променили. Държа да уточня и друго - аз не съм особен почитател нито на Толкин, нито на К. С. Луис, нито на Ле Гуин, чиито суперлативи са изтипосани на кориците на родното издание (без по никакъв начин да отричам значимостта им за фентъзито), та впечатленията ми твърде вероятно не са най-меродавни за техните фенове. В заключение, не съжалявам, че се запознах със "Змията Уроборос", романът безспорно е наваторски за годината на написването му, но към днешна дата не мога да дам по-висока оценка от Среден 3.

[Alex Klimkewicz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Epic high fantasy! Compared to Lord of the Rings! Rich and majestic!

Well, I guess all of those are true to certain degrees. E.R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros is a challenging read because it is written in Jacobean prose, about 200 years after it went out of style. Here is a fantasy story of epic supermen battling equally powerful and very evil enemies on the fields and in the mountains and on the seas of Mercury. Yes, that Mercury. The planet. They are the lords of Demonland, four epic heroes against the evil king of Witchland. Ugh.

The book was impressive in it's use of language. I will give it that much. It is interesting to read, and I suppose for Eddison, to write in Jacobean prose, but I found it annoying, because to me it didn't feel authentic, and because at times its seemed anachronistic. In particular: His highness swapt him such a swipe o' the neck-bone as he pitched to earth, the head of him flew i' the air like a tennis ball. (p. 395) Tennis ball? Really? In the ancient days of knights and goblins?
Also, football, which in some early incarnation probably was around, but still seems out of place in the novel: I am now resolved never to put up my sword until of thy bleeding head I may make a football. (p.458)

Okay. Maybe those are too nitpicky, but something like the following excerpt seems really silly: And some shot at them from the wall, until a chance shot came that was like to have stove in Corund's helm, who straightway sent word that when the rout was ended he would make lark-pies of the cow-headed doddipole whosoever he might be that had set them thus a-shooting, spoiling sport for their comrades and endangering their lives. (p.90) And yet I continued for another 400 pages after that line made me stop and laugh.

Most of The Worm Ouroboros is not so funny. Some of it I actually found beautiful, such as the description of the jade lily vase on p. 136: They sat here and there as they listed on chairs and benches, near a huge tank or vase of dark green jade where sulphur-coloured lilies grew in languorous beauty, their back-curled petals showing the scarlet anthers; and all the air was heavy with their sweetness. The great jade vase was round and flat like the body of a tortoise, open at the top where the lilies grew. It was carved with scales, as it were the body of a dragon, and a dragon's head agaping reared itself at one end, and at the other the tail curved up and over like the handle of a basket, and the tail had little fore and hind feet with claws, and a smaller head at the end of the tail gaped downwards biting at the large head. Four legs supported the body, and each leg was a small dragon standing on its hind feet, its head growing into the parent body as the thigh or shoulder joint should join the trunk.


Despite the over elaborate descriptions of all the set pieces, and the clothing of the characters, I felt that none of the four Lords of Demonland were distinguishable from each other. The villains were similarly vague. So King Gorice starts a war just because he is full of himself and wants the other kingdoms to bow to him? That's the motivating conflict! I didn't find that too believable. Where were his advisers telling him maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to lead his country in a war against the four men that the entire world (of Mercury) acknowledges are the best and brightest (and strongest and bravest) chaps to ever live.

At least the violent battles scenes are good. They seemed very intense for being published in the 1920s. Here are some good bits:

Neither man nor horse might stand up before 'em, and they faring as in a maze now this way now that, amid the thrumbling and thrasting o' the footmen, heads and arms smitten off, men hewn in sunder from crown to belly, ay, to the saddle, riderless horses maddened, blood splashed up from the ground like the slush from a marsh.
(p.392)

Never saw I such feats of arms. As witness Kamerar of Stropardon, who
with a great two-handed sword hewed off his enemy's leg close to the hip, so huge a blow the blade sheared through leg and saddle and horse
and all. (p. 394)

And our own folk fell fast, and the tents that were so white were one gore of blood.
(p.395)

Unfortunately these violent bits were few and far between. Most were in the final battle at the end of the book. Much of the rest of the novel was spent describing the great exploits of Lord Brandoch Daha, Lord Juss, Lord Spitfire, and Lord Goldry Bluszco while they wrestled, climbed mountains, and retold stories of their past glories. Fortunately, their manly feats of strength are much less clunky than their love-making:

But Brandoch Daha, seeing how her face became on a sudden such as are new-blown roses at the dawning, and her eyes wide and dark with love-
longing, came to her and took her in his arms and fell to kissing and
embracing of her. On such wise they abode for awhile, that he was ware
of no thing else on earth save only the sense-maddening caress of that
lady's hair, the perfume of it, the kiss of her mouth, the swell and
fall of that lady's breast straining against his. She said in his ear
softly, "I see thou art too masterful. I see thou art one who will be
denied nothing, on whatsoever thine heart is set. Come." And they
passed by a heavy-curtained doorway into an inner chamber, where the
air was filled with the breath of myrrh and nard and ambergris, a
fragrancy as of sleeping loveliness. Here, amid the darkness of rich
hangings and subdued glints of gold, a warm radiance of shaded lamps
watched above a couch, great and broad and downy-pillowed. And here
for a long time they solaced them with love and all delight. (p. 166)

This is not all that bad though. There are times when the text is annoying, and I think the author even recognized this by putting in a scene when some of the characters read an ancient tome and comment on how antiquated the language is. The language is a stylistic choice, and not a flaw of the story. The main flaw of the book is that it starts with a plot device of a magical bird taking an Earthman from his English conservatory and a magical journey to Mercury, and then that plot device is never returned to again. I think it would have been best just to set this story on some unnamed planet, and then also renamed all the countries so that they were something different than the uninspiring Pixieland.

Overall, while I wouldn't say that I enjoyed the book, I would say that I am glad to have read it. I managed to slough through it, and I did come away with some nice gems in between the dense prose. I'll end with one of my favorite's (of a knave rebuffed by the most beautiful woman in all the land): Like the passing of a fire on a dry heath in summer the flame of his passion was passed by, leaving but a smouldering desolation of scornful sullen wrath: wrath at himself and fate.
(p. 362)

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This classic is an epic fantasy masterpiece. A perfect example that proves that works of this kind need not be sprawling volumes in sprawling series. Beautifully told (in an albeit antiquated prose style) and lusciously described it features everything that one might want including perilous journeys, great characters, court intrigue, dangerous sorcery and epic battles.

The characters are great heroes and villains of old, paragons of virtue, loyalty, determination or treachery. They deliver speeches to each other with great rhetorical effect. They jest, banter, jibe and insult each other subtly and mercilessly. They are all likeable (the villains loveable rouges) but they are not what we would think of in this day and age as well fleshed out characters. We never really get a sense of what they are thinking and feeling other than indirectly through their actions, sayings and expressions. Consequently they do not feel real but then they don't need to; this is a fantasy in the fullest sense of the word. Unlike modern fantasy in which the reader expects real characters put into unreal worlds, here the reader cannot expect to empathise and engage with the protagonists. Not a flaw in my opinion but mentioned to give warning to others who might see it as such.

In a brief introduction to the book, the author states: "It is neither allegory nor fable but a story to be read for its own sake". This defies anyone's attempts to find greater meaning underlying the surface but I personally think that it is hard not to feel one learns something about humanity in this story. If nothing else we learn that it is that the struggle and striving that is most important, not the achieving of our goals.

[Caleb CW · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be just an idiot but even an idiot can appreciate a good story.

This one of those books that I am not smart enough to fully grasp everything that is going on. It's written in old English and whenever letters are written between characters that old English becomes olde English. I chastised myself several times while reading this for not keeping a dictionary or my phone readily available to look words up because I needed one almost every time I picked it up. The writing is absolutely beautiful but I know the way it is written will irk some of my fellows but for me it was a win.

The book is about four lords trying to regain their honor after it has been slighted by the king of Witchland. There are hippogryphs, manticores, goblins, pixies, demons, and witches though not in the traditional sense for most of these. There are a few epic battles and adventures with some brutal deaths as well. There was a man who sliced with sword so hard that he slashed off the leg of a man, cut through his saddle, and cut his horse. Bah. Honor is the most important thing of these characters and I love a story where the dignity of enemies is on full display. The mains all showed respect to their enemies to the bitter end.

I can't tell you how many times I uttered "oh shit" and gasped at a beautiful passage that just struck me to the quick. I loved this and think I have found my horde novel, that one book that every time I see it in the wild from now on I will be grabbing a copy.

I leave with you this, "I ever was a fighter. So, one fight more." - Zeldornius

There it is and there you have it.

[Patrick Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to even start?

I found this to be an exceptional book. A work of the imagination alone, self-sustaining and self-excusing, an Ouroboros indeed, feeding mainly on itself it need ask no permission and make no explanations.

You would need a few degrees in English to do forensics on the language I think.

I read this aloud over a few weeks, encountering each new element as I gave it voice and I would recommend that as an excellent method of encountering the book. Before and above anything it is a word of sounded prose (either sounded aloud or sounded inwardly) and if you don't like that part of it then I can see little reason for you to deal with it at all.

The story is introduced through a dream-visitor from our world who possesses a chamber which allows him to experience a saga in a single night. The dream and a magical bird summon our man to the planet Mercury and introduce him to the Lords of Demonland and their intrigues.

All of this is forgotten within a few chapters, the dreamer disappears, it doesn't really matter that its Mercury, being entirely unlike any version of that planet from either fiction or any record of reality.

We are left with a pocket-world full of feudally top-heavy pseudo-cultures. As in chivalric tales, the economy and peasants are simply a background and substructure created in order to allow the existence of Magnificent Heroic Nobles who roam about the place doing incredible things.




PARACOSM


http://www.ereddison.com/fantasy-nove...

"In his autobiography Eddison’s childhood friend, Arthur Ransome, reflected on their early games, which included characters from The Worm Ouroboros, ‘The language, the place-names and the names of the heroes were for me an echo of those ancient days when Ric and I produced plays in a toy theatre with cardboard actors carrying just such names and eloquent with just such rhetoric. Gorice, Lord Goldry Bluszco, Corinius, Brandoch Daha seemed old friends when I met them nearly forty years later’."

This seems to have been based on a paracosm created by Eddison in childhood, and simply built up upon for years and years afterwards.

It has some of the same strange structure of other Paracosm fiction, especially of those developed since childhood, like Year of Our War by Steph Swainston and Gondal by the Brontes.

There is a deep sense of the accretion of detail, with one conception being layered on another, without disavowing it, but only embellishing and complexifying. It feels like layers of flesh with a hot heart beating underneath. Much of the construction is adult but the core motivations and primal concepts are things that would make sense to a child. They are like an engine, still working at the centre of the story.

The strangeness and the layering of different qualities of idea, some from the child self, some added by the adult self, is part of this. The ideas of a child can be good or bad but when they are good they are usually original, strong and indifferent to integration in a wider more comprehensive world. They make less 'sense' but have more power.

The ridiculous, intense boyishness of the world exemplifies this. It is a place for heroic men to roam around having amazing fights. Many of the deepest emotions are around heroism, honour, bravery, respect and hatred for equally honourable, or dastardly enemies, love of movement and having amazing stuff. The home, in this, is a place to fill with amazing stuff, defend from or rescue from invaders, or to invade yourself, like boys from one side of the classroom charging across it to collapse a fort. The rest of the time it is barely lived in, though it has most of the signs of life, it is a place to leave and to return to.

As in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (and I don't know how many other fictions) friends are people you rescue after they get captured, usually traveling across half of reality to do it, and who you *do things with*.

The feeling and concept of space is vast, and the areas described regularly referred to as 'the whole world' or 'the entire world', but if you look at it, its demographically small - about the size of Ancient Greece or the North Sea. I have found that most adventure worlds tend to even out at about this size, for no doubt complex and subtle reasons. They are a neat scope for things to happen in, for some things to be distant, others close and small enough for everything to affect everything else, while also having enough range for wilderness and places to hide.





LANGUAGE

It’s been described as pseudo-Jacobean, but I'm not sure if any Jacobean or Elizabethan ever spoke, thought or wrote like this. It seems to me the language of play itself in its purest form. Eddison has reached out to grasp the whole history of a language, run his fingers though it and grabbed gold and gems and jammed them together in ways pleasing to him.

Here is a piece of the internal monologue of one of the best characters, Lord Gro, towards the end of the book;

.........................

"Gro said in himself, "How shall not common opinion account me mad, so rash and presumptuous dangerously to put my life in hazard? Nay, against all sound judgement; and this folly I enact in that very season when by patience and courage and my politic wisdom I had won that in despite of fortune's teeth which obstinately hither to she had denied me: when after the brunts of divers tragical fortunes I had marvellously gained the favour and grace of the King, who very honourably placed me in his court and tendereth me, I will think, so dearly as he doth the balls of his two eyes.

He put off his helm, baring his white forehead and smooth black curling locks to the airs of morning, flinging back his head to drink deep through his nostrils the sweet strong air and its peaty smell. "Yet is common opinion the fool, not I," he said. "He that imagineth after his labours to attain unto lasting joy, as well may he beat water in a mortar. Is there not in the wild benefit of nature instances enow to laugh this folly out of fashion? A fable of great men that arise and conquer the nations: Day goeth up against the tyrant night. How delicate a spirit is she, how like a fawn she footeth it upon the mountains: pale pitiful light matched with the primeval dark. But every sweet hovers in her battalions, and every heavenly influence: coolth of the wayward little winds of morning, flowers awakening, birds a-carol, dews a-sparkle on the fine-drawn webs the tiny spinners hand from fern-frond to thorn, from thorn to wet dainty leaf of the silver birch; the young day laughing in her strength, wild with her own beauty; fire and life and every scent and colour born anew to triumph over chaos and slow darkness and the kinless night.

"But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet lover her when glutted with triumph she settles into garish noon? Rather turn as now I turn to Demonland, in the sad sunset of her pride. And who dares call me turncoat, who does but follow now as I have followed this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and the morning and the evening star? since there o


The very high tone - "when after the brunts of divers tragical fortunes I had marvellously gained the favour and grace of the King"


Solidity, and specificity of sensual detail - "so dearly as he doth the balls of his two eyes."


It is high, it is labrynthine, it is solid and sensuous. Almost no-one in the book says anything stupid. They are wrong, often insanely utterly wrong, but they are wrong in the most interesting and exciting way available to them. Everyone says and thinks the best possible thing at the best possible time.

There are people who did speak like this; they are the heroes of memory and recollection, not of fact, they are memories of great events, polished by bards like water over stones, until they say only the most concrete but beautiful thing they could possibly say. They are the people of the minds eye and their speech is the poetry of performed recollection, here not recalling but bringing to life. (And we see again that the mind of memory and transmission and that of creation and invention are like proteins folded across different axis or ghost images in the same optical illusion).

The language and forms would fit Zelazny's Amber perfectly. Like that, this is a court drama expanded into an epic.

It also reminds me of nothing so much as the better speech of the better 'Historical' films of the 1950's, which, I assume, mimic the speech of the theatre of the early 20th and late 19th Century. Not necessarily the high poetry or the well-known plays, but the 'upper middle' of theatre, what Charlie Brooker would call the Gourmet Burger theatre. It’s an archaic (to us, about 70 years old) impression or creation of what that generation would have considered deeply historical speech.

It's even a little like 'Merry Marvel' olde-timey language, if it was very good.








CHARACTERS

Characters in The Worm are simple one or two point individuals. They have direct, overwhelming emotions and desires which tend to proceed one at a time. A lot like small boys, action heroes and Greek heroes.

They sometimes have one or two other emotions that conflict with or contextualise their main emotion or desire at moments of high drama.

The energy, innovation, intensity, cleverness and particularity of the characters in speech, action and form comes from this deep layering and enormous concentration of imagination and thought onto how they express themselves in the world. They are like little diamonds glimmering under the enormous pressure of Eddisons concentrated mind, spilling out spectra of wild colour, simple in arrangement but vomiting rainbows.

Greek heroes really, in the bodies and amazing costumes of Renaissance courtiers. Their opposites are villains of magnificent badness, awesome power, marvellous flaws and hissable nastiness. Nobody dies in a pale way. Glory and magnificence, especially at the end are what is called for; suicide after the murder of friends due to enchantment, torn to pieces by an uncontrolled hippogriff, suicide by poison at the death of husband and hope, pierced through the guts while smashing your greatest enemy to the ground, in the middle of an exploding tower of magic, gutted after one too many betrayals. Heroes and villains both hate and mourn each other.

These traits could only really sustain us so far, which is why the comparative shortness of the book, compared to other epics like LotR, is so vital and important. The 'heroic' Greek morality and relative simplicity of inner character would become deeply wearisome if continued too long. Tolkien was probably an inferior prosidist, and he could not glitter and shine like Eddison, but he could make people you could spend time with, Eddisons characters are magnificent in scenes but they would poison a continuing world I think.


In a Manichean world (which this is not quite, but it is a world heroes and villains which is close) there is always one 'grey' character who absorb all the misty paling of humanity squeezed out of the other characters and concentrates it. A Snape essentially.

In this world that part is taken by Lord Gro. The academic, introspective, cunning, occasionally brave, lucid, perceptive terminal and continual traitor. Before the book begins he betrays his original lord for Witchland, then finally betrays Witchland for the Demons, and that is not the end of his twisting and turning.

None of his betrayals are for personal advantage, he is moved by some complex inner drive. As he says, he worships the morning and evening, but hates power in its ascendancy, and so shifts like a shadow. He holds to this deeply odd inner nature with perfect sincerity.

He seems to hate being alive. At one point, when accused of dishonesty, he asks his friend to kill him rather than doubt him, and seems utterly sincere. Gambit or truth? Probably both

The other most-interesting character, Brandoch Daha, of a below-given splendiferous description, doesn't hate life, and seems to enjoy it, but he does seem to share somewhat in Gro's alienation from the world. His almost ridiculous lightness, courage, competence and extremely airy and sardonic attitude is fascinating, frustrating and captivating. He is reminded multiple times by his closest friends that his ridiculous attitude is a massive liability, yet they would never be without him. Both the best and worst friend you could have.

He exemplifies the charisma, violence, courage, invention, bravery and nobility of the Demons, and he seems more perceptive than some of them. His lightness may come from his recognition of the closed role of the Demons; they are pure heroes and while that is a magnificent thing to be it is, in its way, a limited thing to be.





LISTS

Clothes, food, entertainment, architecture, magical accoutrements, aspects of the environment and especially feudal levies are listed in incantory rubrics, which are much better read aloud, but even then get a little bit much after a while.

As in Spencer and I think in Shakespeare, processions give geography as both a scene and a list. Every feudally loyal group comes from a particular place on the map, when summoned they gather and file past in a line, and are counted and named, so the strength of a kingdom on the land becomes a line of men, becomes a list of names and places and becomes a poem of the power of a kingdom all in one. Here is the 'bad guy' list from the King of Witchland sending his guys out to conquer Demonland;

"And on the fifteenth day of July was the fleet busked and boun in Tenemos Roads, and that great army of five thousand men-at-arms, with horses and all instruments of war, marched from their camp without Carce down to the sea.

First of them went Laxus with his guard of mariners, he wearing the crown of Pixyland and they loudly acclaiming him as king and Gorice of Witchland as his overlord. A gallant man he seemed, ready-looking and hard, well-armed, with open countenance and bright seaman's eyes, and brown, crisp, curly beard and hair. Next came the main foot army heavil armed with axe and spear and the short Witchland hanger, yeoman and farmers from the low lands about Carce or from the southern vineyards or the hill country against Pixyland: burly swashing fellows, rough as bears, hardy as wild oxen, agile as an ape; four thousand fighting men chose out by Corsus up and down the land as best for this great conquest. The sons of Corsus, Dekalajus and Gorius, rode abreast before them with twenty pipers piping a battle song. Surely the tramp of that great army on the paven way was like the tramp of Fate moving from the east. Gorice the King, sitting in state on the battlements above the water-gate, sniffed with his nostrils as a lion at the scent of blood. It was early morn, and the wind hung southerly, and the great banners, blue and green and purple and gold, each with an iron crab displayed above it, flaunted in the sun.

Now came four or five companies of horse, four hundred or more in all, with brazen armour and bucklers and glancing spears; and last of all, Corsus himself with his picked legion of five hundred veterans to bring up the rear, fierce soldiers of the coast-lands that followed him of old to the eastern main and Goblinland, and had stood beside him in the great days when he smote the Ghouls in Witchland. On Corsus's left and right, a little behind him, rode Gro and Gallandus. Ruddy of countenance was Gallandus, gay of carriage and likely-looking, long of limb, with long brown m moustachios and large kind eyes like a dog."

Eddisons glorious and sensual descriptions of clothes, rooms, castles and nature perhaps are not quite lists, but they are rhythmic, processional windings of near-verse back and forth the physicality of the described world.

This is the initial description of Brandoch Daha, the 'lancer' of Lord Juss and after Gro, perhaps the most interesting character in the book;

"His gait was delicate, as of some lithe beast of prey newly awakened out of slumber, and he greeted with lazy grace the many friends who hailed his entrance. Very tall was that lord, and slender of build, like a girl. His tunic was of silk coloured like the wild rose, and embroidered in gold with representations of flowers and thunderbolts. Jewels glittered on his left hand and on the golden bracelets of his arms, and on the fillet twined among the golden curls of his hair, set with plumes of the king-bird of Paradise. His horns were dyed with saffron, and inlaid with filigree work of gold, His buskins were laced with gold, and from his belt hung a sword, narrow of blade and keen, the hilt rough with beryls and black diamonds. Strangely light and delicate was his frame and seeming, yet with a sense of slumbering power beneath, as the delicate peak of a snow mountain seen afar in the low red rays of morning. His face was beautiful to look on and softly coloured like a girls face, and his expression one of gentle melancholy, mixed with some distain; but fiery glints awoke at intervals in his eyes, and the lines of swift determination hovered round the mouth below his curled moustachios."

It's one thing to simply say your characters are the greatest, it’s quite another to paint them in words like Rembrant or Holbein, and yet another to have them speak like, if not Shakespere, then at least Marlowe. Layering in language, embossing in action, gilding with sensible beauty and hanging lists of magnificence like necklaces of amber or diamonds around their necks.


(Goodreads wouldn't let me post the whole thing - try here https://falsemachine.blogspot.com/201... )

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has the best ending ever. Well, one of my favourites, at least.

It's only when one gets to the end of The Worm Ouroboros that one learns what the story is really all about and can glean some kind of understand thing that there are some thoughtful underpinnings to Eddison's otherwise brashly heroic tale, that's brashly modelled on a range of sources with it's overtly ornate mock-Jacobean prose, snippets of classic poetry and larger than life but strangely one-dimensional heroes and villains.

The clue is in the title, but there's a wonderful red-herring, since Eddison leads the reader to believe that the Ouroboros - the one that will be continually reborn - is King Gorice and that his evil will perhaps never be thwarted. That's partially true, but Eddison's smarter conceit is that the heroes wish for him to be reborn and that they want the fight to continue forever since without they are lost. It's only when we understand this is it possible to appreciate how the book links in with storytelling and traditional narrative and even why the Lessingham framing device is important. As readers of fantasy stories we are all wannabee heroes, like Juss, Brandoch and Goldry, desiring to read about and take part in heroic exploits over and over to the extent that, once the story is over, we wish it reborn. If what happens in the real-world is finite, what happens in stories and the imagination is potentially infinite.

There's also, of course, a less romantic reading of the ending that gives it a harsher, more cynical edge that speaks to humanities insatiable appetite for war and sees these heroes as encompassing both the best and worst aspects of our humanity. If one puts this idea alongside the other, then it muddies the concept of reading heroic narrative in a quite brilliant way.

On another level, this book is just awesome because it has fantastic prose, great scenarios, characters and battles. It's nonstop excitement that doesn't really falter from page one, with the action taken to levels beyond most - later - fantasy works through the power of Eddison's amazingly colourful descriptions that I simply never tire of reading. The book is at its height when Juss and Brandoch head out to Koshtra Pivrarcha and Koshtra Belorn to rescue Juss's brother Goldry, the narrative taking on a dreamlike, magical quality (almost hallucinogenic at one point) whioch really recalled the Arthurian quest for the holy grail to my mind. If nothing else in the story could top this, the continual descriptions of battles or in-court feuding or general sense of wonder, regardless, never ceases.

This is often described as a flawed masterpiece. That may be true, but I love it regardless and it remains one of my favourite books after re-reading it for the first time in 10+ years. The Worm Ouroboros is one of the first modern day ambitious fantasy epics - even though it has an old-school heart - and, beyond being highly influential, it's still one of the most readable and one of the best.

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well...this is a beautifully written book. It has flowing prose, a touch of poetry and you can see the influence of a good early twentieth century education in the story telling.

But I freely admit I wonder why a writer writing in 1922 (or shortly before) chose to relate his tale in 16th century English. I know some love it and I also freely admit it is great for "portentous" storytelling:

And it came to pass that the King of Demon Land did challenge the monarch of Witch Land to wrestle (Wrastle). And they did wrastle and lo the fur did fly and great events were foreshadowed and thou shalt seest great and really apocalyptic stuff....

I know this is a much loved book that some like as much as The Lord of the Rings or The Gormenghast books, but (and I'm sorry) I can't go there. It's well written and I believe much of this is a matter of taste... But I can only go 3 on it.

[Fantasy boy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was listening to the audiobook version and reading the E-book version at the same time. I think just listened to the audiobook of this book that was too challenging. Also It was a chance to have the experience of reading and listening to it. After all, The Worm of Ouroboros is deliberately used archaic writing style. Nowadays, Not many writers are able to write like that.

The Worm of the Ouroboros is a classic fantasy book which had the influential impact on Tolkien and fantasy genres. The chapter 4, the Iron Tower has the scene that the king was using magic by the Grimoire. That scene would be easily reminisced of Saruman casting spells in TLoR book. It is one of the book I wanted to read in English when I was reading books in English first time. I think now I am satisfied by finishing reading it, as it should be the first 100 books to be read in English for me. What can I say, too many fantasy books need to be read. To be frank, I think modern fantasy writers’s writing might not be able to satisfied my taste of reading. I want unique, special and powerful writing. It is not necessary to write purple proses or flowery writing, but it must be competent at constructing sentences and creating images in reader’s mind. In Worm of Ouroboros, E.D Eddision has done it and shows to readers that his writing is stylish in quaint proses. His writing definitely is above average fantasy authors I think also is above many authors in other genres as well. But sometimes I think his verses might be too archaic to be appropriate. Nowadays people think funny things are not like speaking in archaic style speech.

The reading experience definitely is novel to me to immerse in this book with epic battles between witch lords and demon lords. I can feel the writing somehow resonates my soul at some specific paragraphs. The summoning in the Iron tower, the siege battles, Gro’s was being a turncoat and met the lady by the lake etc. however, I had mix feeling about this book. Because I think the plot is interesting enough to continue reading the story but not enough to compare some fantasy books which I have read that have very intriguing plots and setting. But I think reading at the right time, it wouldn’t be the problem. Just listening to the breeze and bird sounds outside and enjoying this archaic tale was written by an author with prowess at writing.

The characters are good to be memorized, such as Gro, Lord Juss, Corinius, Lady Mevrian. Like the title of the book. At the end of the story which is the beginning of the story. It made me wonder that, when the witch lords were defeated by the demon lords, Gorice, the king of witch land cast his last spell is the consequence of the ending? Like many skillful writer, who invariably hide messages between pages to pages. And like Lord Gro who also is a philosopher, the story is full of philosophical meanings.

Personal rating: 8.5 points, if it is just writing then it would be at least 9 points.

[Tom Meade · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strange book, frequently beautiful, ofttimes prolix, and with a thematic structure that left me scratching my head. I don't know enough about Eddison so as to say that he wholly endorsed the view put forward by the Demons - namely, that "fun", or "beauty" is the whole goal of life, and that, should access to this be disbarred, it may be necessary to engage the Gods themselves in assuring the perpetuation of an indefinite cycle of meaningless violence - but given the presence of characters like Lord Gro and Lady Mevrian (the relationship between Gro, Prezmyra, Corund and Mevrian being the crux of the book, no matter that the Lords Juss and Brandoch Daha are nominally the heroes), the evocation of the Ragnarok cycle implied in the conclusion, and the fact that this book is first of all a story to be read, and second an elegy for a lost way of life which most people find admirable in abstract (though they'd be rightly loathe to put it into practice) I doubt it really matters.

Either way, it's a page-turner; and wholly unique. And the archaic morality displayed in this book allows for a great deal of the truth about human nature to be put forward with little compromise, and an unexpected level of sympathy for blackguards of all stripes.

Lord Gro is, without a doubt, one of the best and most fascinating characters I've ever encountered.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I already commented on someone else's review of this book. Anyway, the best fantasy novel I've ever read (and the best read I've had this year). Not an easy read, but take it slow and let the beautiful language establish its own pace. Gorgeous prose that reads like poetry.

[Celise]

The books that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien? Sure I'll read them.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has a dreamworld or afterworld quality, with the circumstances of the story evolving as it progresses. Some elements--Lessingham's framing device, the planet Mercury--drop away. Some mutate: the story itself transforms from mythic heroic adventure to political intrigue to military chronicle as the needs dictate. It is completely in the moment, heedless of its inconsistencies or anachronisms. It is grand and sprawling and filled with base treachery and grand heroism.

I am rather glad for having had some weight training with William Morris before this.