So, I've decided to start writing reviews for the books i've read on here (only some as i am a busy, lazy man and i hate most of you goodreaders anyway). Also, i really dont care to put any effort in the crap i write on this site, so, pardon the shite grammar and structure.

This book... was fucking amazing!

The world is... well, the physical look of the world... it's just beautiful. Eddison takes great pleasure in describing this beautiful world and it's riches. I can just imagine it, full of bright exaggerated colors. Like, i bet this fuckin sky is blue as blue can possibly be. and the marble stone? so smooth and clean. The giant moon. all that good shit. Let's just say, this world of Mercury is a visual orgasm.

Now, the characters. I love em all, even if their names don't have any real world linguistic value. The Demons are the obligatory protagonist, but they are generally morally ambiguous. The witches are just some big old assholes.

I felt that Eddison did a great job of making this book 100% him. what i mean by that is, it reflect some much of how he views the perfect fantasy novel. It is barbaric and harsh in it's characters, yet feminine and awe inspiring in it's environment... if that makes any sense...

In the end, I prefer Eddison to Tolkien. I think he made his world much more tangible than Tolkien did. With tolkien i always feel like a little kid listening to a bedtime stories. With Eddison i feel like a bird watching the events unfold in person.


whelp, there it is. My review. kind of erratic, but hey so am I.

oh, and dont expect long as reviews like some of ya'll be doin all the time. That shit crazy...

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

The problem with taking a half star off for the 'flaws' of The Worm Ouroborous' is that one would have to regrade every book on Amazon.com down by about ten stars. The book is simply a masterpiece vaunted high above ordinary things. I read it a sixteen, given me by my friend's father when I was raving about 'Lord of The Rings'. Despite the archaic prose I finished it in an evening and it has lived in my imagination now for over thirty years. I still like 'Lord of the Rings'; it is a great book, although 'soft', to use Eddison's own word.

Rather than re-echo the many justified superlatives that occur when discussing eddison I'd like to address some particular issues:

The Worm has to be read in context with Eddison's other works. Only by doing so will one come to an understanding of the philosophy which produced it an some of the apparent errors. There are elements of Nietzsche, the will to power, master, slave morality and so but more tellingly there is a highly developed metaphysics. This is best seen though the character of Lessingham:

Firstly, the oft maligned first chapter where Lessingham disappears. This is simply an Elizabethan device often used in the drama of the time. There is no question of it being some oversight or mistake.

Understanding Lessingham's place is imperative. He represents the man of action ultimately doomed to failure because action will fail.

Eddison believes the universe operates on a kind of dual godhead - male and female in constant teasing opposition. God created the world, the female aspect constantly keeps him wanting to recreate it. The fantasy land is His creation for Her yet she shields this from him. Naturally, God creates the best of all possible worlds but there are also other lesser worlds (our own for example) In the best of all possible worlds God can have the best of all Earth like things - in Eddison's view this a mixed bag of Scandinavian saga, Ancient Greece and Elisabethian prose. These things are there because they are wonderful and the occupants of the world have all wonderful things at their fingertips. They are not anachronistic.

Every male individual is an aspect of the male God. Lessingham is the man of action, doomed to failure because he lives in a 'material' world. Other characters are simply greater or lesser aspects of Godhood, some more or less Godlike. Likewise the female characters.

The Worm Ouroborous was Eddison's first attempt. He used 'Goblins', 'Pixies' at the age of ten to describe his fantasies. I suspect he didn't go for some formulistic nomenclature because he still loved the childhood names. He loved writing The Worm Ouroborous and I love reading it [...].

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!

So, I will preface this here 5-star rating by saying that I do not think this book is for everyone, but neither is any book. It's only when a book is slightly less "for everyone" than the average book does criticism prompt this qualifier. I will detail why I think this book deserves a perfect rating despite its eccentricity and stylistic touches which many consider off-putting.

First off, I think that a lot of the commonly criticized elements of The Worm Ouroboros are actually strengths. Many people point to the "silly" names of the characters and places as out-of-place and hard to take seriously. Going in with the understanding that he made up most of these names when he was 10 years old, it felt like an authentic collaboration between a mature writer and his 10 year old self, something I think all but the most imaginative and skilled writers would be incapable of. It also came across as E.R. Eddison telling you that he is going to tell you this story on his terms, and nobody else's. He did not write this book to pander to anyone, especially in a time before fantasy was even solidified as a genre. Furthermore, I think the book is meant to be a bit silly. There is an undercurrent of humor, I would even say satire, to the entire thing. It takes itself so dramatically serious that it goes full circle (I swear the pun was not intended as I typed that) and becomes funny, which I think was entirely on purpose. I don't think a writer makes you read way-too-long lists of obscure gems and foods, making you look up useless archaic terms in complete seriousness.

Another thing that some might consider a fault is the language. I showed a passage to a friend of mine who's got an English degree and has done an independent study of Ulysses and he couldn't do it for long. Not because of complexity, so much as he couldn't stand the archaic English and found it taxing. It's not just one form of archaic English, this book uses many different forms of archaic English as influence for how the narrator and characters speak and write. Personally, I got used to it and came to enjoy it. It adds a touch of drama that wouldn't be there otherwise. The notes section of my copy were very extensive, checking them frequently annoyed me at first, but after a while I accepted it as part of the experience. I actually learned a good bit from them. Mostly useless stuff, but fun nonetheless. Admittedly, about half way through the book, I did put it down for a month or two and read some simpler stuff as a detox. I don't think that's a flaw of a book though, plenty of books would probably make me do the same thing.

I have read some criticism of the theme of exaggerated strongmen engaged in eternal battle for the sake of pleasure while the commoners are treated like ants, or ignored almost entirely, to be near-fascist. The argument could certainly be made, and I don't really expect an aristocratic English guy of his time like E.R. Eddison to have the most enlightened political views. However, I chose to interpret it as a bit of a satire of the bloodlust of powerful, warlike men that echoes the ancient Norse belief in Valhalla, an afterlife of eternal combat. There are far too many silly, cartoonish elements of the story for me to assume that almost any aspect of it so seriously. He wanted it to be a "Story to be told for its own sake." Tolkien had similar aims, but still let his political and religious beliefs slip through. I believe that E.R. Eddison succeeded where he failed. There are scenes where, in my view, some racial bias or stereotyping can be seen, but they're a couple lines, don't come off as particularly malicious, and are not central to the plot in any way. It is completely impossible to write a novel without ideology coming into play at all, since it is inherent in just about everything the human mind creates. Other than that, it's hard to discern a definitive political message here. I'm certainly the type of person that gets caught up examining the politics of a written work, but here I really didn't flinch once. It does a good job coming across as simply a piece of entertainment and not a grand statement on the human condition.

Next, I think I'd like to talk about style. I'm a huge fan of prose, and I don't really read fantasy if the prose is any lesser than Moorcock. Eddison more than passes this test. While, yes, it gets the slightest bit boring to read the archaic talk, especially the style Eddison chose for letters and such, he writes such lush and vivid description that it more than makes up for all of it. The description of the throne room in the first chapter is what got me hooked. There are some passages in this book that nearly made me cry. His vocabulary is truly insane. I really just can't praise his writing enough to do it justice.

Another thing that needs to be mentioned is the characters. He has some of the strongest fantasy characterization out there. The greatest example of which, for me certainly, is Lord Gro. I don't want to say why, I want this to be mostly spoiler free, but he's great. The women are written as very strong for the time this was written, and are about every bit as memorable as the men for me, and are not at all portrayed as babymakers. I like that.

So, something about this book is that it is early fantasy. As I've said, it wasn't even fantasy at this point, just a curious form of literature. Does that mean it's particularly dated? Hell no. In fact, the way that he chose to write it mostly in a blend of archaic forms of English ironically makes it feel less dated than it would if it was written in the English of its time, at least in my opinion. The way it is written makes it feel more like an epic poem. Whenever I tell a Tolkien fan the reason I don't like Tolkien is his weak prose, they always give the excuse that Tolkien was "early fantasy", but writers like E.R. Eddison make that argument not hold water for me. Books have been around a long time. We know what good writing is. Dunsany and Eddison definitely knew.

And lastly, the "ending"? Lol. Just check it out. Have fun.

I want to start off by saying that this book has some racist scenes. Also, although the female characters are well drawn, and one woman does in one case get to actually do some fighting, for the most part it is assumed that the job of the female is to provide wifely/sisterly support to the male characters. I struggled with how to rate the book, given those facts. I decided to remove a star from my rating.

But it is an interesting book. It opens on what appears to be contemporary Earth, following a man named Lessingham, who goes to sleep in a special room of his house which he expects will produce strange dreams. He offers his wife the chance to join him, but she declines - too weird for her. Which is fair! When he goes to sleep, he is transported to the planet Mercury by a bird, and is then witness to the rest of the story. Or at least, you have to assume he's there for all of it. Very quickly, Eddison disposes of Lessingham and this framing concept altogether, and in fact seems to forget that he set the story on Mercury, as the characters all refer to the planet as Earth or even Middle Earth. The characters also refer frequently to Earthly astrology and to the Ancient Greek/Roman pantheon, and even at one point recite a Shakespearean sonnet.

The heroes of the story are the demons of Demonland, and the villains are the witches of Witchland. Other nations of this world (whatever you want to call it) include Pixieland and Goblinland. Despite the names, the people of these lands don't appear to have any of the characteristics you'd expect of demons, witches, pixies or goblins; they're all just people. Early in the story, the demons are described as having horns, but then Eddison seems to forget about that and never mentions them again. Demonland could just as easily be called Heroland - although admittedly that would be a terrible name.

Although it's made clear that the king of Witchland is an evil sorcerer, and that the kings of Demonland are heroic knights, there are plenty of sympathetic characters in Witchland and among the other races. It's still mostly black and white morally, but there are a few interesting gray areas. Great admiration is given to some of the witches. A particular favorite of mine was Lord Gro, originally of Goblinland, whose loyalties change more than once during the story.

The language throughout is pretty archaic, and both that language and the themes of epic tragedy and high romance remind me of Shakespeare and Arthurian legend. Like much high fantasy that was to come after it, the book features plenty of magic, monsters, swords, castles, horses, lengthy quests across vast and dangerous lands, and massive battles.

One of the uncomfortable parts of the book comes when our heroes travel to a land called Impland and meet and befriend one of the natives, a character named Mivarsh Faz. Mivarsh is treated mostly as comic relief, almost like a foolish and beloved dog, a bit frightened of his masters, but also extremely loyal. That is, until his fear overwhelms him, he makes a tragic mistake, and his fated end comes. The heroes treat his foreign Gods and foreign rituals as funny and ridiculous, and although they briefly mourn his death, he's never mentioned after that again. He seems pretty clearly to be an embodiment of the stereotype of the loyal native guide - when I described him to my wife, she said he sounded like Jar Jar Binks, and that feels right.

The most racist moment comes when our hero Lord Juss arrives in a land full of evil visions meant to turn him from his quest, and the vision that moves him the most is of a beautiful pale woman being attacked by an awful savage "blackamoor." Yeah, Eddison actually uses that word! Ugh.

Now I'm going to talk about the end of the book, so beware spoilers!

At the end of the Lord of the Rings, although our heroes are saddened by what has been lost in the war, there is nothing but joy at the idea of their evil enemies being defeated and destroyed, and at the coming of peace to the land. But in Eddison's book, when their enemies are beaten, the heroes find themselves deeply depressed, contemplating their future lives that will be without war and without mighty foes to conquer. To them, peace and the end of battle is anathema. I remembered Tolkien's line, given to Faramir: "I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." Our demons, on the other hand, DO love the sword for its sharpness, and the warrior for his glory! In fact, they're so depressed about peace that the blessed immortal queen who's come to visit them petitions to the Gods for them, and brings all their evil enemies back to life!!! In keeping with the title of the book - the worm ouroboros, whose end is his beginning - as the story ends, the events that began it occur again.

On one level, this is rather insane and awful - endless war and blood and death and hardship! - but on another, I appreciate it as a kind of metaphor for the idea of a story that lives forever because it is retold forever. The neverending story, you might say.

The book has its flaws, for sure, but it also has fine writing, fascinating characters, and really memorable scenes. It's also an interesting artifact in the history of the fantasy genre.

One final note: the audiobook edition I listened to was unique among the many audiobooks I've listened to in that it was read, not by a human being, but by an artificial intelligence. I hope this is not something that is going to catch on in the publishing world! Although the voice itself, taken word by word, could pass easily for a real person's, the intonation of that voice across sentences and paragraphs is just wrong, and made it difficult for me to even grasp the meaning of certain passages. Worse, when the AI came across a word it didn't know how to pronounce, it either took a guess, sometimes getting it horribly wrong, or it didn't try at all and instead simply spelled the word out letter by letter! Listening to it was a very strange experience.

First off, I recommend against buying the Evinity Kindle edition. While it does have the original illustrations, it also has a number of errors, and breaks up the text with tags for the original pages—breaking up paragraphs and sentences willy-nilly. This is, I believe, straight from old Project Gutenberg files, though those do not have the pagination notes any more.

As for the book itself, it's a 1922 proto-fantasy, using some tropes of the sword and planet genre. Though that last is really just an intro or broken frame to introduce the action. Supposedly, this all happens on Mercury (which here just means "not on Earth at any time"), and the initial viewpoint character is transported there as a vision and introduced to some of the major characters (for the benefit of the reader). After the second chapter, this device is dropped, and never mentioned again, so it's not even a framing device. These days, there's no problems with the idea of a landscape with people and places that have no reference to Earth, but I imagine an introduction was considered necessary when written.

Complicating matters is that it is written in Elizabethan English, making it a bit rougher for most readers to get through. It's been praised for how consistently he keeps up what is effectively a foreign dialect, and doesn't miss the mark, spoiling the illusion. That is beyond my ability to judge. The really rough parts are when a letter or other writing appears in the novel, as none of the characters are great scribes, and the text is an appropriately phonetic approximation of words that quickly becomes very tedious to parse through.

On top of the rest of this, the story is basically a chivalric romance, set in prose. (In fact, I could see Pendragon, with its passion system, being an excellent RPG for this world.) So, we follow the struggle between the island power of Demonland and the continental Witchland (tell me there's not a parallel going on here...), as the hubris of Gorlice of Witchland has him demand fealty from the Demons, and war results. (And I will note that various fantasy staple terms are used here, demons, imps, pixies, etc., but they are more ethnicities than meaning to evoke actual fantastical powers.)

In the end, it's certainly an important book, and generally entertaining in the high heroic mode of great men doing great deeds and leading great armies. Personally, the pacing was all over the place, with all the elements you'd expect: sieges, battles, heroes in single combat, beautiful ladies, politics, beautiful ladies politicing.... And a too-long sequence of climbing a glacier. If you are willing to buckle down with the language, it will reward you, but you have to be mindful of that going in.

I'm not sure exactly how I missed reading this one. I know someone gave me a copy as a preteen but I never got to reading it, which shames me now - this work, by a fellow "Inkling" of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, E.R. Eddison, is fantasy modeled somewhat on the style of Norse sagas, but full of Classical diction (and gods), written in a semi-Elizebethan English, and with a unique set of protagonists (Demons, Goblins, Imps, and such). I have no basis for comparison; it stands alone. All i can say is that I recommend it to fans of early 20th century fantasy (Eddison is technically pre-Tolkien, and has somewhat in common with Lovecraft's fantasy - but his style of writing is wholly unique).

I find this one hard to assign a star rating. It has some surprising effective moments, but also feels like the product of a precocious and inspired ten year old--which it kind of is, though completed by that child's adult self. It's high fantasy about war between Demonland and Witchland, with supporting players from Impland, Pixyland, Goblinland (I think it was...), all of which seem to be populated by bigger than life humans, for the most part. Mostly they like to fight each other, posture and proclaim. It's told in faux archaic language, filled with entertaining eccentricities, and possibly some words that are flatly made up. Lots of description and endless lists of places and names. One of its most interesting stretches is a mystifying opening that turns into a framing device, which is subsequently dropped forever. Tolkien and James Stephens, among others, found it inspiring. I'm glad I read it, out of curiosity if nothing else.

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... )

A long and convoluted tale of time, imagination, and character, in a magical past that never was.

This seems to be the story of how a guy got drugged out of his mind or otherwise slipped away from the world, and decided never to come back. The frame story is never resolved, and the events of the book never come to an end. The main character from the frame story listerally escapes into his fantasy, not as a character (although maybe he does) but as an audience for the story.

Shades of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, Gene Wolfe's The Knight/The Wizard, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, and more, lots more. I'm so glad I read this. It feels like a pivot for fantastic fiction, changing the course of uncountable stories for generations.

But I can't give this a five. Maybe it's me, but I found myself skimming a fair amount: but it should be no surprise that a book about escaping reality should often feel like it can't get to the point.

A book that finds the middle ground between adulthood and childhood, full of the BEST characters, played much to advantage. But slow.

Recommended for fantasy fans.

I read this at the reccomendation of a teacher I worked with. I swear I've never had to force myself to keep reading a book quite like this one. I had to plow through each sentence and still came away utterly unsatisfied at the end. It was more a feeling of relief that it was finally over.