Customer Reviews

The Worm Ouroboros

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

As a youngster I devoured fantasy greedily, any fantasy (there was not a fantasy-genre industry in those days, and fantasy was hard to come by.) Much of what I liked then I can no longer read: too much bombast and adolescent wish-fulfilment But Eddison improves with each rereading.

His prose is beautiful, as everyone remarks. If you don't have the patience for sentences of more than two clauses, or if you have a prim horror of archaic language, you should skip this book. (Or maybe you should re-examine the rewards of patience: but that's another matter). But if you have the capacity to appreciate beautiful English prose, if you can read Sir Thomas Browne or the King James Bible with pleasure, then you have a treat in store. Read this book: there aren't many like it.

There's a serious philosophy in this book. Eddison believes in greatness. It's no accident that his literary antecedents are in classical Greece and Iceland: Alkibiades and Grettir would have understood his devotion to the heroic, to the ferocious, doomed attempt to set one's indelible mark on the stream of time. For Eddison the reckless, whole-hearted, passionate life is the only life worth living, and the only life worth writing about.

It's not a philosophy I agree with. It lives too close to fascism and machismo for me: it insists upon and glorifies a sense of Self that I think is ultimately nonsense. But it's a philosophy that produced much of the most beautiful literature of the last century: Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats often wrote from just this standpoint. It may be wrong, but it's not childish. It situates Beauty at the heart of the world: greatness, to Eddison, is beautiful action, and all beautiful things demand worship. And reward it. "What I have promised," says Eddison's Aphrodite, "I will perform."

Read this book. Read Mistress of Mistresses too. They're dazzling, magnificent books.

The Worm Ouroboros
by E.R.Eddison
Introduction and notes by Paul Edmund Thomas
Foreward by Douglas E. Winter
Dell Books / 1991

This is one of those classics which will never generate popular appeal because it is simply too difficult to read, and it has almost nothing in common with the majority of books in the fantasy genre it helped to spawn beyond the broadest of themes (good heroes battling evil villains in a fantastic world). It is also one of the most original books to be written in English in the 20th century, and has inspired and been admired by a pantheon of popular writers: this edition boasts superlative testaments from Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, H.Rider Haggard, Piers Anthony, and Ursula K. Le Guin, among others.

For readers with a serious interest in the origins and possibilities of the modern fantasy genre, this book is simply not to be missed.

E.R.Eddison (1882-1945) was an English civil servant, Icelandic scholar, and mountaineer. The Worm Ouroboros was his first novel, published shortly before his 40th birthday. It is a story of grand conflict on an imagined world, and is told in a language that is Eddison's own: a rich, heady prose that draws on written English over the last 500 years for its grammar, vocabulary, and expression, and most heavily on that of the Elizabethan dramatists for its dialogue and description. Eddison's prose, above his other powers of invention, is what makes this book (and those that followed in his Zimiamvia trilogy) so unique, and qualify it as a classic. Some of the speeches that come out of the mouths of Eddison's characters are beyond belief!

The book also boasts honorable and courageous heroes as well as the most dastardly villains, and the high adventure, outrageous exploits, battles, and sorcery that ensue from their interaction. Marked differences from contemporary novels are its lack of introspection (the narrator does not judge, and we see only the actions of the characters) and its lack of character development (the characters are archetypal, and so while human, they are also something more and something less than human).

The Dell edition has an introduction by Eddison scholar Paul Edmund Thomas, who cites Homer and the Icelandic sagas as Eddison's primary sources. Thomas has also annotated the text, which is very helpful as Eddison's prose is riddled with archaic vocabulary and literary references not familiar to this reader.

Highly recommended, but not for everyone!

I adore "The Worm Ouroboros." It has flaws, or at least peculiarities, including a fascination with aristocracy and lack of concern for the "lower classes" rarely expressed so clearly in modern English literature -- perhaps not since the Tudors began eliminating "over-mighty subjects," and the Puritans started comparing the godly poor man in his cottage to the ungodly noble in his mansion (or King in his palace!) without regard to the "natural" order of things. By the 1580s, even Sir Philip Sidney's class-conscious "Arcadia" paid lip-service to rustic virtues, as Malory, a century before, had not. But not Eddison, over three centuries later.

Some, understandably, find this offensive, but it shouldn't be considered political (regardless of the author's own views). E.R. Eddison's narrative and the Homeric or medieval ethos of the book's characters fit together perfectly; and you can consider their attitude the most realistic feature of the narrative.

And it is quite a story. One of the sub-plots includes riding an unridable beast as a stage in climbing an unclimbable mountain, all of which is part of a side-effort (a rescue) in a struggle to kill an undying enemy.

The book is of a piece; gorgeous language (too much for some tastes), mighty heroes (and their adversaries) in colorful and expensive costumes and decorated armor, spectacular landscapes, weird animals from bestiaries and heraldry, magic gems from lapidaries, and stories from "Mandeville's Travels," all fitted together with correspondingly archaic notions of the Good and the Just. Achilles or Lancelot would be at home. So would medieval Norway's eccentric King Magnus Bare-legs, of Scots garb and sayings like "Kings are made for glory, not for long life," whom I am almost surprised not to find among the minor characters -- despite the book's arbitrary setting on "Mercury" (more of an astrological zone than a planet; Mercury as patron of eloquence), which troubles some readers.

And there are the nations of Witches, Demons, Goblins, Imps, and Pixies; names not related to their characteristics -- save that the lords of Demonland seem to have small horns (not mentioned of anyone else), and the late, unlamented, Ghouls were cannibals. One has to get used to thinking in terms of places: people from "waterish Witchland" and "many-mountained Demonland." There is this difference between the main heroes, the Demons, and the main villains, the Witches; the Demons are seen waging wars in defense of themselves and others, the Witches are out for conquest. But they all enjoy a fight; and, again, some lords of Witchland are perfectly decent to other members of the upper class, while the Demonland nobility doesn't seem to notice much how many common soldiers and seamen perish.

Ordinary farming folk going about their tasks do appear, but briefly, and not without a dignifying classical allusion (the Demon song against Corinius is a version of a Greek drinking song against the tyrant Pittacus); this sequence from daily life also suggests a bit of influence from Eddison's beloved Icelandic sagas, which otherwise contribute omens, pithy sayings, and some artifacts.

Magic plays a role -- used mainly by the villains, not so much because it is morally evil, but because it is so dangerous to the user that a more sensible sort of hero might rather take his chances in battle. The protagonists (despite mocking the petty gods of lesser nations), appeal to their thoroughly pagan gods, instead of casting spells -- and sometimes get an answer, at much less risk.

If you are sure you can't get over such issues, or won't be able to abide its elevated, frequently archaic, often Shakespearean, or at least Elizabethan or Jacobean, language, you probably shouldn't bother with the book.

If you think that you might enjoy it, for its high adventure and extravagant imagination, there is the question of what edition to read. It used to be that they were all quite similar, and the best answer was "whichever is available." This is no longer true. Both contents and price differ.

Over the years since I first read it 1967, I've become familiar with a number of editions. These include: the 1922 Jonathan Cape edition, the 1952 E.P. Dutton second American edition, with Orville Prescott's Introduction added to that by James Stephens for the 1926 American edition, and the 1962 trade paperback reprint of this in Crown's Xanadu Library (all three identical except the added front-matter); the 1967 Ballantine mass-market paperback, reset from the Dutton edition, with Barbara Remington's cover art (and some of its nine later reprintings), plus a 1975 copy of the 1971 Pan/Ballantine British edition, and the 1977 and 1981 Del Rey/Ballantine tenth and twelfth printings, on which the older Ballantine cover was replaced with a less attractive one by Murray Tinkelman (originally in green, later in yellow); and, finally, the 1991 re-set edition from Dell, annotated by Paul Edmund Thomas, with a cover of characters and beasties interpreted by Tim Hildebrandt.

(The Hildebrandt cover is, typically, "realistic" -- posed-looking, including studio lighting. I much prefer the crowded, chaotic Remington cover, with its stylized mountains and sea, monsters, ships, and contending armies, and the titular tail-biting serpent, a symbol of eternity, as a frame which intrudes into the landscape. It is recognizably related to Remington's then-recent triptych of covers for Ballantine's "Lord of the Rings." although fortunately far more consistent with the spirit of Eddison's book than those were with Tolkien's. She did an equally good job, in a slightly different style, with the Ballantine 1967-1969 editions of Eddison's three "Zimiamvia" novels, "Mistress of Mistresses," "A Fish Dinner in Memison," and "The Mezentian Gate," catching their High Medieval/Renaissance flavor.)

Although I have some quibbles, and a few major objections, to Thomas's annotations, and to certain omissions, this last is a highly desirable edition, a delight to Eddison's fans, and a resource to those who might be, if they could catch his layered allusions (he often incorporated quotations -- some medieval and adapted, some *literally* sixteenth or seventeenth century English) and follow his frantically rich vocabulary. (Thomas also edited Dell's "Zimiamvia: A Trilogy" omnibus.)

If you are a first-timer, though, it should be remembered that a lot of very literate and intelligent people seem to find Eddison unreadable, even with assistance. You might be one of them. With this in mind, a library copy might be the best start, if available, or an inexpensive used copy of the much-reprinted Ballantine edition (or its rather scarcer Del Rey avatar). I will describe third and fourth options at the end.

The main down side of the Dell trade paperback edition (besides it being out of print, alas!) is that it was the first I know of not to contain the full set of illustrations and chapter decorations by Keith Henderson. Although these vary in quality (and Ballantine's less than intense printing of sharp blacks was not helpful), they were approved by the author, and form a part of his image of the book. (They also have a fascinating relationship to Henderson's roughly contemporary illustrations to a lavish edition of another story of exotic adventure, Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico;" a selection of these were reprinted in "The Fall of the Aztec Empire" in 1993.)

In what may have been a production oversight, rather than an editorial decision, it also lacks the ballad excerpt that should serve as an epigram (see under the Kessinger reprint, below).

Some of the later reprintings by other firms seem to have followed the same assumption that the illustrations could be partly or completely eliminated; a circumstance that makes the 1999 Replica Books edition (hardcover and trade paperback), based directly on the British first edition, particularly attractive. The (British) Millennium Fantasy Masterworks edition of 2002, although possibly reset, and also lacking the American multiple introductions, MAY have ALL the art, and, if available, should be less expensive. I also have yet to see the 2004 American edition from Wildside.

At the opposite extreme from the Replica edition in hardcover is the similarly-priced (!) Kessinger reprint (and its very inexpensive E-Book version, with the same pagination), which not only drops the illustrations -- and the layers of introductions to the American editions -- but in resetting the text also drops the opening epigram, and the appended material Eddison provided for the reader. A mood-setting selection from the ballad of "Thomas the Rhymer" should open the book; it is missing from the Kessinger text, as in the Dell edition, for no apparent reason. (Copyright infringement on Sir Walter Scott's version of the text is unlikely to be a problem!)

Eddison's main appendix, the "Argument with Dates" organizes the considerable amount of back-story offered in widely scattered places throughout the book, and incidentally demonstrates how Eddison had worked out travel times, relative ages of characters, and other details, all in a few pages. It too is gone, which is sure to give some readers the impression that Eddison's "art that conceals art" is actually just confusion.

The "Bibliographical Note on the Verses," which identifies most (not quite all) of Eddison's wide-ranging borrowings of English and Greek verse literature (and specifies the translation of the Icelandic saga read aloud in the "Induction," but not the many echoes of other prose) may not be missed by some, but being able to find some of the (mainly) sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry he incorporated into his created world is helpful, and it is likewise gone without a trace. Even worse, this may give some better-informed readers the impression that Eddison was trying to claim credit for literary borrowings he in fact carefully acknowledged. Indeed, Eddison was more than ordinarily scrupulous; he went so far as to specify the variant readings he used in one of the poems.

The Kessinger E-Book is also littered with new and original misprints, which sometimes make Eddison's classical allusions rather difficult to recognize; I assume that this was generated from the same digital version used for the publisher's hard copy edition, which should have the same flaws. However, the e-book is so inexpensive, and the digital form so convenient for searches, that, for now, I am as delighted with it as child with a new toy. *IF* you don't mind reading a computer screen for long stretches (I do), this may not be a bad place to start. (You will need Adobe Reader 6.x or above to view it; and, even aside from the length, forget about printing it; the file is locked.)

Finally, if you are (as is most likely) reading this on-line, you can check a hypertext version of the 1922 edition on the web -- see the Internet Sacred Text Archive, under Tolkien-related material. This is admirable, but, again, hundreds of pages on a monitor are a more than a bit hard to read (at least for me), and connection speed could be a problem. You can certainly use it as a sampler, to determine if you are interested. Also, the site offers a CD-ROM of a huge collection of material, including "Worm," and many texts relevant to it (particularly Norse and alchemical), at an extremely attractive price. (Its new 4.0 edition should eventually be available through Amazon.) The site itself includes helpful links.

I am classing the e-book and hypertext versions as third and fourth convenient ways to find out if you like this long book, which some find impossible to read, and others rewarding enough to read over and over.

I must state, before I commence with my critique, that the reviewers on this product-page eagerly betray the peculiar spell *The Worm Ouroboros* weaves upon the casual reader. It emerges in nearly every opinion: spurts of bubbly exuberance: pure _passion_, for life, for the art that contains it; passion mainlined directly from author unto participant. And I too felt this sublime ardor seep forth, from printed page to brain and body, as the adventures of Lord Juss and co. enraptured my senses and took me elsewhere, as only the grandest epics can do - to a place of wondrous lands and astonishing vistas, of stalwart heroes and beautiful damsels, of villains extraordinaire and fell monstrosities birthed in the deepest pits of Hell. For within this text is buried the very lodestone of fantasy fiction - an invented mythos of stunning achievement - one of the genre's seminal if oft-neglected origin-points. It's a corker.

Like several others on this review page, E.R. Eddison's *The Worm Ouroboros* came into my existence at an early age, quickly made an indelible imprint, and then departed from my possession in an untimely manner. The novel was handed down to me in the likewise manner of its nearest contemporary, *The Lord of the Rings,* as a gift from an uncle of generous nature. And thus, at the tender age of thirteen, I delved into the *Worm's* complexities and verbose hallucinatory prose, struggling yet captivated, journeying like ill-conceived Lessingham from fair Galing to the wrestling-ground upon Foliet Isles; laying frightful witness to the occult-like conjuring of Gorice XII.; finally reaching the point where Lord Juss and Brandoch Daha stormed the grim keep of Carce like re-invented avatars of Siegfried and Achilles, swords drawn to rive the strength and sinew of watery Witchland... and alas! the book was then lost to me, misplaced on the bus-ride home, if memory serves me correctly, and not to return into my possession for some fifteen years.

The reminiscing above should give testament to the power of *The Worm Ouroboros*. Picking up the text after so long an absence, I remembered fondly and accurately the grandiose action described, and hungered to continue upon the wild wake of Eddison's imagination - for this tale ~lingers~, it ~haunts~. I loathe to call it mere fantasy, and thus draw comparison to the gutter-rags of current popularity (Jordan, Brooks, the Badkind and other such ilk) - rather, this is an Epic, right at home on my bookshelf with the Illiad & Odyssey, the Aeneid, Volsungsaga, Nibelungenlied...and LotR.

A devoted scholar of Norse and Icelandic epics, Eddison shaped his own personal mythos in the early 1920's, a full decade before the arrival of Professor Tolkien's fantastical exegesis/extension; and the influence of his saga-study is obvious. Pure archetypes exist in the *Worm*: heroes of impeccable bearing and action; villains of the lowest activity and murderous rapacity; unclimbable mountains and impossible beasts; regions of vivid beauty and divine haunt, coupled with dark domains utterly "alien and sinister," to paraphrase fellow-Inkling C.S. Lewis. The prose is as extravagant as the settings. Much has been made of Eddison's Elizabethan word-forge, and understandably: by today's standards, the *Worm* glowers with prose so purple it often escapes that sphere of the color-wheel, becoming positively violet.

An example of a tamer passage:

"Midsummer night, ambrosial, starry-kirtled, walked on the sea, as the ship that brought the Demons home drew nigh to her journey's end...Smoothly they had passage through that charmed night, where winds were hushed asleep and nought was heard save the waves talking beneath the bows of the ship, the lilting changeless song of the steersmen, and the creak, dip, and swash of oars keeping time to this singing." (Chapter VIII)

And a more evocative:

"Suddenly a window opened in the clouds to a space of clean wan wind-swept sky high above the shaggy hills. Surely Juss caught his breath in that moment, to see those deathless ones where they shone pavilioned in the pellucid air, far, vast, and lonely, most like to the creatures of unascended heaven, of wind and fire all compact, too pure to have aught the gross elements of earth and water. It was as if the rose-red light of sundown had been frozen to crystal and these hewn from it to abide to everlasting, strong and unchangeable amid the welter of earthborn mists below and the tumultuous sky above them. (etc.)" (Chapter XII)

There are flaws. Eddison opened his epic with a clumsy `narrator's dream' device, the better to initiate readers into his tale. Amusingly, Lessingham the astral-wanderer disappears entirely from the text by chapter three. The various races draw an initial pause, as well: this is the first and probably only fantasy in existence in which the heroes are called Demons! Additionally, some of the names are really quite over the top. But these minor eccentricies, along with the heady, intoxicating prose, make *the Worm* all the more invaluable, and unique: these elements would never survive today's market atmosphere of bookseller-space focus, committee-editing and prefabricated hype.

And the ending...! Ye Gods! Not to spoil it for prospective initiates (though reviewers below do so; beware) - I found it entirely appropriate to the archetypical roles of the lead characters, and it works on more levels, I think, than Eddison intended. For not only are we given a conclusion fitting to the hardy mythos of Norse Valhalla, and a delightful post-modern twist therein; but a stern reminder that men of war and adventure are never quite satisfied with peace and contentment - an imperative insight in these tryingly chaotic times.

A feast of imagination - the Serpentine Saga - the Worm Ouroboros, its immortal coil wound through heaven and earth. This is an essential text for scholars of myth and the fantasy genre.

Highest Recommendation

The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison is a sweeping, important, thoroughly enjoyable book. This, however, is not the reason I am submitting this, as enough praise has been lavished upon this work by critics and fans alike for years (not least among them J.R.R. Tolkien.) What I am reviewing specifically is the abominable edition put out by Forgotten Books (of which, suspiciously, there is no publishers info beside a web address). The "Publisher's Preface" is credited as a quote from sacred-texts.com, the "About the Author" is likewise only credited with a URL, this time answers.com. This is all unconventional and seemingly amateurish but forgivable enough for a cheaper edition. Unfortunately, this bizarre inattention or blatant disregard to detail (and what else is a publisher for than paying the strictest possible attention to the minutia of a work?) runs rampant throughout. Spelling errors are rampant and unforgivable. For example, one of the books principal characters, Lord Juss, is called "Lord fuss" three times in as many pages (104, 105, 106). I consulted my 1999 edition of this book by Replica Books, London, and no such errors appear. The beautiful illustrations bu Keith Henderson are strangely washed (grayish) out in comparison to the Replica edition, and the type setting (I can only assume Forgotten Books uses a standard font for all it's publishing) is more suited to a technical journal than a fantasy novel. The laundry list of complaints could continue, but for the sake of brevity I won't go into them. Suffice it to say, Forgotten Books has shoddily pieced together and shipped out a wildly irresponsible printing of a classic book, and I can see no reason for this edition to be bought over any other. Oscar Wilde once said that "Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.",in this case, it's the cheap edition that's detestable.

Some books are optional. "The Worm Ouroboros", by E. R. Eddison, is not. It is more than just the birth of high fantasy writing as we know it. It is a tale that connects with imagination and wonder in a way that books today simply don't do. When you read "The Worm Ouroboros" you'll realize that modern writers produce stories, but they don't tell Stories.

Since the English language fails to provide me with adequate superlatives for this review, I'll just have to present samples of Eddison's writing:

"But a great wonder of this chamber, and a marvel to behold, was how the capital of every one of the four-and-twenty pillars was hewn from a single precious stone, carved by the hand of some sculptor of long ago into the living form of a monster: here was a harpy with a screaming mouth, so wonderously cut in ochre-tinted jade it was a marvel to hear no scream from her: here in wine-yellow topaz a flying fire-drake: there a cockatrice made of a single ruby: there a star sapphire the colour of moonlight, cut for a cyclops, so that the rays of the star trembled from his single eye: leviathans, all hewn from faultless gems, thrice the bulk of a big man's body, velvet-dark sapphires, crystolite, beryl, amethyst, and the yellow zircon that is like transparent gold." (7)

Everyone can write description, but only Eddison could write description like this. He makes the colors shine brighter and the shapes of the "monsters" stick out in your mind. And even though you may not know what a crystolite looks like, you agree that it fits perfectly into this paragraph. Eddison realized that you can't a world that mirrors the heroic past if you get stuck in the decidedly un-heroic language of modern times.

"Now had they for three days or four a devious journey through the foot-hills, and thereafter made their dwelling for forty days' space in the Zia valley, above the gorges. Here the valley widens to a flat-floored amphitheatre, and lean limestone crags tower heavenward on every side. High in the south , couched above great gray moraines, the Zia glacier, wrinkle-backed like some dragon survived out of the elder chaos, thrusts his snout into the valley. Here out of his caves of ice the young river thunders, casting up a spray where rainbows hover in bright weather. The air blows sharp from the glacier, and alpine flowers and shrubs feed on the sunlight." (153)

Perhaps it's because I'm a mountain-climber myself, but I found Juss and Brandoch Daha's assault on Koshtra Pivrarcha to be the most memorable chapter in a book built out of unforgettable chapters. In real life no two mountain ranges are alike, yet most fantasy authors write only staid standard-issue descriptions when they make mountains. Eddison understood that for us to see the glaciers, feel the biting cold winds, and experience the exhilaration of reaching the summit with the heroes, he needs to give his mountains some real personality. These samples, of course, only scratch the surface of Eddison's brilliant mix of visceral detail and towering metaphor; he maintains this level, never flagging, for all two hundred thousand words.

But of course "The Worm Ouroboros" could hardly have claimed such a lofty space in the pantheon of imaginative fiction without a plot and character worthy of this lavish writing. On one side King Gorice XII of Witchland sends his warriors out to crush all opposition and subjugate the entire world to his will. Opposing him are the adventure-loving lords of Demonland, lead by the magnificent Lord Juss and his family. The ensuing conflict will rage on land and sea, across continents and mountain ranges. And without any doubt Eddison crafts his dialogue with the same mastery he displays in his narration:


"La Fireez," said Juss, "we weigh not so lightly our obligation unto thee. Yet must I hold my course; having sworn a strong oath that I would turn aside neither to the right nor to the left until I had delivered my dear brother goldry out of bondage. So sware I or ever went that ill journey to Carce and was closed in prison fast and by thee delivered. Nor shall blame of friends nor wrongful misprison nor any power that is shake me in this determination. But when that is done, no rest remaineth unto us till we win back for thee thy rightful realm of Pixyland, and many good things besides to be a token of our love."
Said the Prince, "Thou doest right. If thou didst other thou'dst have my blame."
"And mine thereto," said Gaslark. "Do not I grieve, think'st thou, to see the Princess Armelline, my sweet young cousin, grow every day more wan o' the cheek and pale? And all for sorrow and teen for her own true love, the Lord Goldry Bluszco. And she so carefully brought up by her mother as nothing was too dear or hard to be bought to pass for her desire, thinking that a creature so noble and perfect could not be trained up too delicately. I deem to-day better than to-morrow, and to-morrow better than his morrow, to set sail for wide-fronted Impland." (315)

One of the most commonly used review terms is larger than life. "The Worm Ouroboros" is larger than larger than life. Indeed, after finishing you may wonder whether it would be more appropriate to refer to real life as "smaller than Eddison".

E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros is a different sort of book, one that I wouldn't recommend to someone unfamiliar with the fantasy genre. Neither would I recommend this to anyone unprepared to spend some time working out increadibly rich, complex prose. The point is, anyone wishing to read The Worm Ouroboros must be prepared to put some effort into it. For those of you who "skimread," stay away. You'll get lost. In order to enjoy this book, you need to get into it. Enjoy the words and phrases so artfully crafted, a 100 word sentence just flows by, captured indelibly in your imagination. In an age full of hack fiction written for a few lousy bucks from the publishers, The Worm Ouroboros stands as a monument to a time when writing meant something, because the author believed in his (or her) story

If you like highly literary prose in archaic language with pages of visual description, then this book is for you. This book is a masterpiece of beauty in the world of fantasy.

Eddison, in the first major fantasy novel of the 20th-century, creates a world with a complete background of history, geography, and ancient grudges that build up to a stunning climax. If you are a new writer that wants to break into fantasy or science fiction, then this book is a must read--not that you should write like Edisson, but that you should learn from his descriptive language and storytelling.

If, however, you like lots of action with little narrative prose, then skip this book--it will put you to sleep very quickly.

I reviewed this book some years back right here on amazon.com, though amazon seems to have washed that effort away long ago. In fact I read the book many years earlier still and so I'm a little tentative about returning here to review this book again. Can I do it justice after such a long remove? Will I even remember enough to talk about it? Still, since it's one of the great ones in the much-maligned (often deservedly so) fantasy genre, I feel I must. Readers here will certainly have heard of J. R. R. Tolkien, the father, if you will, of modern fantasy. And, presumably, those finding this page will also know something of E. R. Eddison, the author of this wonderful book. Suffice it to say that, in this book at least, Eddison outshines the estimable Professor Tolkien, despite this book's clumsy opening. Although he lacked Tolkien's comprehensive and detailed mind and was certainly not the scholar, or perhaps even the craftsman, Tolkien was, Eddison's WORM has a magnificent poetic sweep that even Tolkien's great trilogy of magic and adventure and ancient worlds decidedly lacked. Here is a tale of magical beings and high adventure set, oddly enough, on a mystical version (vision?) of the planet Mercury to which we are spirited in the form of an astral projection of one Lessingham, an adventurer and dreamer, who is taken one night on a journey by a spiritual guide in the form of a little bird. All very strange and distracting and, ultimately, unimportant. For Lessingham soon fades into the background of the narrative as the vision he sees on this strange world swells and surrounds and overpowers him and the reader both. We are soon caught up in the sweep of a tale that is a veritable medieval tapestry, never mind the awkward and almost childish nomenclature which Eddison relies on. This is the story of a Demon kingdom besieged by its enemies in Witchland and their evil ruler, King Gorice XII, who conspire to overthrow and consume the heroic Demons under the rule of heroic brothers and kinsmen. There is treachery and mighty deeds to redeem the fallen and great battles and an ending which is as surprising and strange as it is oddly satisfying. If Tolkien's trilogy is an epic fairy tale writ large, this one is a veritable medieval saga of heroic proportions. That it is ultimately magical and fantastic places it squarely in the fantasy tradition which Tolkien gave credibility and new life to. But Eddison came first (he wrote this tale in the mid-1920's I believe), though he is still little heard of today. He deserves better as does this book. (He's also the author of a straight historical novel which deserves to be read, STRYBIORN THE STRONG, based on the old Icelandic saga tradition which, to some degree, also influenced THE WORM. More, he did a translation of one of the original sagas, EGIL'S SAGA, which is one of the best of that literary tradition and among the best-known of the sagas -- though this translation is also hard to come by. For those here who are interested in the saga as novel, I've also done one of my own, though I doubt it is up to Eddison's STYRBIORN, though, of course, I certainly took my best shot! It's called THE KING OF VINLAND'S SAGA and can be found right here on amazon.com by searching its title.) -- SWM

I read this book when I was a freshman in high school and found it to be slow reading but amazing as a story. I put it back in the library and then promptly forgot the title as I then went on to read thousands (literally) of other fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and non-fiction books over the ensuing years. But every so often I would remember the scenes, events, and language of the book and want to read it over again. But, alas, I had moved on and I didn't remember the title anymore! I knew the storyline well enough to describe it to numerous bookstore clerks and owners but no one seemed to know anything about this work of art. Every time I went into any used book store I would go through all of the books looking for this lost treasure. This went on for years. Then one day I was visiting my sister who lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota. When we went to rent a video at the little local market there was a small shelf of used paperbacks. Out of habit I looked through all of the titles and "Eureka!" there it was: "The Worm Ouroboros" by Eddison! Amazing.

Why do I write so much before actually reviewing the book? Because I wanted to illustrate how much the prose and storytelling of Eddison affected me and kept me searching for this book for well over 15 years! Now, to review:

As others have stated, the prose in this work is old fashioned and a bit stilted. In a way it is a little like reading Shakespeare for the first time. A little slow to start but once you really get into the story you forget all about the language and become immersed in the story. But don't be put off by any comparison to the language of Shakespeare! It is much easier to read than Romeo and Juliet! The flowery language just adds depth and character to the classic fantasy story of good vs. evil and a war between the good and the just against the evil elements of Eddisons world. To avoid being too confused, don't read the first chapter which awkwardly sets up the story as a dream of the narrator. This device was only used because the whole idea of a fantasy story as we know it did not exist and the author needed a way to "fool" the reader into accepting the unreality of the setting. Once you have read it one time you will be able to read the preface chapter with amusement. And believe me, if you like this book even a little, you will love it and it will become one of your all time Favorites.

A brief idea of the storyline is: The world is populated by many races of humanoid (and not so humanoid) beings. The Witches and Demons are the primary antagonists with the Demons the good guys and the Witches the bad guys. There are Goblins, Chimera and other assorted beings with familiar names but just take them as you find them instead of applying traditional descriptions. Eddison describes a whole new world which has, I believe, never truly been equaled. The whole story revolves around the adventures of the Demon brothers as they war against the Witch king for domination of the world (from the Witch perspective, the Demons only want to be left alone). There is no way to really describe this book in any way other than a simple outline for fear of misguiding a potential reader. Just read it!!! If you get past the first (really the second) chapter I think that you will be hooked until the end. Then you will be hooked forever as the story never really ends! LOL ~Good Luck!