First off, I want to caution you against making the mistake I did. This is not a book to be stuck in your purse and picked up now and then, when you're waiting for the dentist or for your tires to be rotated or for your friends to show up at the bar. The story is long and complex and the characters are numerous, varied, and some of them have very similar names, which can get confusing if you're only dipping into it now and again.

One of the blurbs on my copy said it was like Tolkien and it is not, really, even a little bit like Tolkien. It's much more Shakespearean or like the Iliad, with big ranging battles and intrigues and quiet small moments. The language is highfalutin but delightful in its ponderousness.

It's also definitely a product of its time (1922), so it's before much of the world got tired of war. It's also got some pretty glaring (racist) stereotypes, though it's not as bad as some, just keep an eye on it.

I will say that the element I was most delighted by was the first forty pages or so, where some traveler from Earth astral projects to Mercury to see what's going on there and IS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. I thought maybe he'd come back in the end, going home to bed and saying "Man, that sure was an awesome epic I just witnessed" but, nope, no dice.

The Worm Ouroboros seems to be one of those books that consensus reality has decreed to be Very Important To The History Of Fantasy, which might be true. That fact doesn't make it any easier to read nearly 500 pages of pseudo-Chaucerian language pitting ill-defined characters with zany names against one another. Crucial plot elements are hidden at the end of paragraphs, characters wander into the fog only to reappear hundreds of pages later, and a never-before-seen character recounts an epic battle to his also-never-before-seen father. The oddball narrative and structural choices have as much in common with outsider art narratives like Henry Darger's "Vivian Girls" stories as they do with mythical epics.

The book isn't entirely without charm, though. Its sheer weirdness means that every couple of chapters, something delightfully bizarre gets dropped out of nowhere. A heavily-foreshadowed episode with crocodiles was particularly memorable.

To sum up, this is probably a novel suited for fantasy completists-cum-historians rather than for a person looking for a ripping yarn.

Covered in depth on the Bad Books for Bad People podcast:
http://badbooksbadpeople.com/episode-...

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.

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.

An amazing and glorious work of fiction. Never before has a story been better told, though unfortunately the story itself was rather poor. Had Eddison a better plot, I think this book would rival most I've read. Unfortunately I was left wondering why characters acted in certain ways, annoyed when the main action was held off-stage, and wondering where main characters were for stretches of one hundred pages. Luckily, Eddison's prose makes up for any of the holes in the plot, and it's just simply a joy to read him. His mind seems to be of glorious battles, high-minded warriors, and epic landscapes, and his descriptions are like gazing through the eyes of one who has first seen such beauty. To read him is to be in awe. I just wish his story was up to par with his ability to write...

This book is brilliant, a literary feast that makes modern works seem wanting in their command of the English language. It is written in Jacobian english and is highly stylized, requiring modern readers to have a dictionary handy to be able to follow Eddison's wide-ranging and archaic vocabulary. But those who make the effort will uncover a story rich in heroism, epic characters, and events.

I did find the ending somewhat disappointing, but it is true to the kind of fatal heroic worldview of the characters. However, it is easily seen that this circular structure of fighting battles for the honor one will receive ultimately either diminishes the heroes of the book or shows that the honor and goodness which the heroes display throughout the story is incongruous with this claimed love of battle for its own sake. And the ending also rings hollow against the idyllic state of peace which the heroes seem content to enjoy at the beginning of the book. But, even though the final twist of the ending somewhat diminishes the character of the heroes, the book itself is a fantastic journey which is both rich and original.

A fantastic adventure in every way, written in quite convincing faux-Renaissance English prose and beautifully rendered into rollicking, appropriately-accented speech in this free Librivox audio recording.

Fantasy fiction frequently intends to take its readers into a different world, but frequently the values and assumptions of the people there turn out to be very similar to the values and assumptions of the modern-day author and reader. The Worm Ouroboros is a very different experience. Once we abandon the flimsy framing device of Lessingham and his trip to Mercury (completely forgotten after they accomplish their purpose of placing us in the great hall of Galing Castle!), we are wholly in the pre-modern world of ER Eddison's imagination, inspired by Homeric myth, pre-Christian medieval sagas, and the same kind of chivalric romances that inspired Don Quixote. It's a very different world from the one we know emotionally and ethically as well as physically. Some Goodreads reviewers have noted this and condemned the book for it, but if you allow yourself to be carried away by the rolling rhythm of its language, the gorgeous excess of its descriptions, and the grandiloquent phrases of its heroes' speech, you'll find it a wild and exciting ride. These Are Not Your Father's Demons (or Witches, or Imps, or Foliots -- whatever they are.) They're Big Damn Heroes of an over-the-top epic, a mythic tale utterly unburdened by such concepts as Christianity or democracy, and act like it. Even the villains are compelling and vividly portrayed and often, in their own way, honorable. The ending -- which I, for one, will not reveal -- is both startling, to the values system of our world, and wholly appropriate to the values of its own heroes.

I honestly think it's a shame Nietzsche never had a chance to read this book. I'm sure he'd have gotten a kick out of it.

A very strange fantasy novel written in (sometimes breathtakingly beautiful) Jacobean prose, peopled by a cast of utterly amoral aristocratic warriors throwing away the lives of countless thousands of their subjects so that they can fill the existential void of their own lives with glorious deeds of war. If there's a more engaging, sympathetic and stimulating presentation of 'Master Morality' in fiction then I've yet to find it.

For such an early work of fantasy (or perhaps because it is pre-Tolkien) it is amazing to see how many of the cheap and shallow clichés of later fantasy are pre-emptively subverted here. There is no battle between good and evil. White knights rescuing damsels are not entitled to sex. The brave and powerful protagonists are not tactical or military geniuses. And perhaps most thrillingly of all, the female characters are not denigrated. Their social roles (in accordance with the Chivalric/Nordic setting and culture) are restricted to domestic environments with a heavy emphasis on their sexuality and manipulation of men - yet where most actual Medieval romances use this to attack women for logically following out the principles of such an environment, Eddison treats their courtly intrigues, manipulativeness and weaponising of sexuality as being just as worthy of interest and admiration as the martial deeds of their male counterparts.

I would give it five stars if it weren't for the damned names. Keely's excellent review makes the astute point that though some of the characters may blend together, this is entirely appropriate as these characters are expected to act in accordance with their class and group. This connects with how the exciting character drama of the novel is manifested through the philosophies demonstrated by their actions, posturing and deeds, rather than internalised descriptions of psychological conflict (Lord Gro being the exception, a character so brilliant, complex, contradictory and vibrant he seems to vampirically suck out all internality from the characters around him). Accordingly we shouldn't hold the vague indeterminacy of personality against Eddison since he is drawing on literary cultures that conceived psychology in a more publicly-oriented and rhetorically-minded manner; a mindset which contemporary novels seldom attempt to replicate.

That does not, however, forgive the man for writing a long scene of political intrigue involving three competing characters called Corinius, Corund and Corsus - all of whom begin the story with nearly identical roles and personalities so that when, later on, their characters do begin to diverge, the reader is already used to glazing their eyes and treating them as an amorphous, interchangeable trio of capital C's. By the time any of these characters have enough actions under their belt to make them distinguishable from one another, it is perhaps too late to really consider them as individuals rather than multi-headed manifestations of their collective social position.

The book is out of copyright so free ebooks can be obtained online - though some physical editions (such as the Fantasy Masterworks one) contain interesting little illustrations done by Eddison himself. These are useful for revealing a strange detail of this book - though the characters come from 'Goblinland', 'Demonland', 'Impland' and so on, it is not therefore clear that they are actually different races as most post-Tolkien fantasy would rather problematically assume. These are all men, or something more than men (at least, if you take their own word for it!) who do not need green skin or dark lords to find sufficient reason for bashing each other's brains in with a smile on their faces. There are higher ideals at stake for them - not ones of tyranny or justice - but an ideal of struggle, violence and strength as the prerequisite for giving meaning to the hollow void of a dark and shallow existence. This is an aristocratic view of life which holds that so long as one can hold a sword in hand, every peasant and slave is merely more meat for the grinder of one's own glory.

It's a testament to Eddison's brilliance that he can make such a world seem appealing.

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.

I don't often abandon books that I am reading, but in the case of E. R. Eddison's THE WORM OUROBOROS, I think it is overdue. When you read 140-odd pages in a 500+ page book, you expect something to happen -- something besides unending gorgeosity of purple prose. It seems the plot was created by a random number generator, and all the characters are more or less stand-ins for one another. There is a point where poetic language shades into tripe, and I fear that Ourobouros has reached that point.

Therefore I banish it into the outer darkness where there is the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This was great all-around, one of the better fantasy books I've ever read. It's from 1922 but it is weirdly out of time, a crazy mixture of the Iliad and Shakespeare and Arthurian romance, but with a bit of modern sensibility and darkness.

I've been reading fantasy on and off since I was a little kid, but lately I am hardly ever impressed by it at all, after suffering through too many sub-par Tolkien knock-offs. I've particularly avoided "high fantasy" -- the kind that has epic quests and world-changing plots and warfare -- and mostly only been reading "low fantasy" and "sword and sorcery" stuff like R.E. Howard and Fritz Leiber.

So I was surprised to enjoy a high fantasy again. The Worm Ouroboros has this crazy archaic Elizabethan-style prose, particularly in the dialogue, that was totally fun to read and sent me scrambling to occasionally look up a word. It also had hints of linguistic humor, like when the characters would occasionally read or write a letter, and the text would be have era-appropriate orthography with non-standardized spelling that was difficult to decipher.

It was fun, while reading, to compare The Worm Ouroboros to The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien intended TLOTR and his Middle Earth to represent an invented mythological past of our own world, a great saga for the English to rival Scandinavian and Germanic sagas. But really, TLOTR doesn't feel much like part of our world; it feels pretty much like a remote (but interesting) fantasy world. (If you start getting into "advanced" Tolkien material about Valar and Maiar and whatnot, it really feels out there.) Maybe the hobbits are similar to plain ole' Englishmen, but Tolkien's elves and wizards seem like aliens, his evil powers strange and otherworldly... what is Sauron supposed to be? It's hard to even know, he's not part of the human world or traditional mythology or a Christian devil. It's fantasy.

The Worm Ouroboros, though, really feels like something that takes place in our own world (even though it's sort of set on Mercury). It draws on European myths and ancient Greek archetypes, and in that sense is easier to relate to than Tolkien's world. Its setting, full of lords and ladies and warfare and honor, is really reminiscent of Arthur's knights traipsing through dark forests, or Tristram sailing to Ireland to capture Isolde, while in the background there is unrelenting warfare to rival the Achaeans and the Trojans.

Anyways, great fun... I want to either read more Eddison soon or else pick up the Iliad which is conveniently sitting on my shelf...

The critics say that The Worm Ouroboros is up there with The Lord of the Rings as far as classic fantasy goes.

I'm inclined to agree.

It's slow going because of the book's old-timey idiom, but the language is very enjoyable so I don't mind a bit of digestion time.

With so many fantasy tales today sporting dark, cool anti-heroes it's very refreshing to go back to the old themes of idyllic champions, cooperation, and brotherly love.

(ideas that have not been forgotten by metal, thank you DragonForce. Really, if I can reasonably plug DragonForce in every review I write I'll be a happy man)

TO BE CONTINUED...?

(take that, punctuation!)

CONTINUED...

So this book is pretty great. There are a lot of battles in it (which can be a drag if they're poorly written), but these are handled very well. They are kept quite short and interesting, like watching a sports highlights reel.

The end of the book continues with the theme of over-the-top, old-school fantasy; the characters are crazy in ways that only fictional characters could be(?). Read this book.