Video review here!
Despite some flaws, The Worm Ouroboros is currently my favourite fantasy novel set in Middle Earth. ER Eddison, like JRR Tolkien 15 years later, pulled from the Scandinavian Eddas to inspire his own high-fantasy world, but each work stands quite on its own in spite of that! Eddison’s world avoids the good-vs-evil tropes of other fantasy novels. While heavily romanticized on the surface, full of characters who are all about bluster, bravado, and martial virtues, there’s a strong underscore of irony that’s surprisingly deconstructive for a medieval throwback fantasy written in the 1920s! I adored the moments when the female characters would openly criticize the vain endeavors of the men, or when Lord Gro would show his existentialist side in open contradiction of the vainly heroic narratives spun by everyone around him.

Speaking of the characters, I’d compare them to the simplistic heroes in ancient tales like Homer’s epic poems. They usually have a single character trait, and the conflicts that come about are caused or solved by that trait. Pride, ego, and a constant jostling for power behind the scenes are recurring themes, along with the idea that war is perpetual—an inexorable aspect of our nature that we can’t—or won’t—progress beyond. Grudge begets grudge, dominant powers rise, fall, and eclipse one another in an ongoing cycle that Eddison compares to the cycle of seasons, the waning and waxing of the moon, and the movement of stars. The struggle for power is a force of nature that we’re forever beholden to, repeating our mistakes as we try to learn from them. All this is encompassed in the sigil of the Worm Ouroboros—a serpent forever eating its own tail. The ending is a subversive culmination of this theme, which pokes fun at the whole fantasy genre up to the point it was written. In that way, The Worm Ouroboros is like a transition point between the fantasy that came before and the fantasy that came afterwards.

The few faults come from a few too many plot threads that went underdeveloped or ended with simplistic resolutions, when things seem to be building towards a more complex payoff. Much of the covert manipulation of events from the side characters was wrapped up a bit too cleanly. There were also some drawn-out sequences of travelling from point A to point B, where pedantic descriptions that were supposed to immerse me would instead make me all too aware that I was staring at words on a page (the mountain-climbing chapter being the main example).

Though the Elizabethan writing style is challenging, it was a really rewarding nut to crack. I’d been warned about the letters and other documents being almost unreadable, since they’re written in late Middle-English using archaic spellings and unfamiliar words, but a bit of patience and re-reading, and I was able to understand just about every line! This novel really expanded my diction and satisfied my appetite for challenging, unfamiliar prose styles. Once I got used to the antiquated way that Worm Ouroboros is written, I was taken aback by how beautiful many passages are. After reading this, I’m less intimidated about trying some earlier English writing, like the Green Knight, or the works of Milton and Shakespeare. If you wanna master old, flowery English for your D&D campaigns or renaissance fairs, this is the book for you!

In the current canon of fantasy, I think it’s a real shame that E.R. Eddison’s unique work, which inspired later writers such as Tolkien, Lewis and Moorcock, has fallen into relative obscurity. Because of that, and since it’s about to turn 100 years old, I think it deserves to be re-evaluated by the many fantasy readers that have come about in part because of this novel and its influence. Overall I'm wavering between 3 and 4 stars, so my rating might fluctuate!

An old classic - its style and a lot of its content are archaic and would probably not be published now. The writing style doesn't flow well at all to a modern reader, and the characters are not complex or well developed (as is also true of most of Tolkien's, but his world-building is much more deep and fascinating); it deals more with archetypes than with realistic personalities. Today the plot line would probably work better as a film than as a book, being equally simplistic.

I'd read this as a student of the history of fantasy writing, because Eddison exerted a powerful influence on the development of the field. It's not a light read, but it's interesting to go through it reflecting on how its elements have come down to the fantasy fiction of today.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On sleeping in:

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

The ambiguity of the fall of night:

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

Sunrise and the hope of morning:

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

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

170914: like nothing you have ever read. nowhere betrays it was written in the modern era, in elaborate language, in diction, in creating archetypal characters who are not remotely mundane. an acquired taste, perhaps you can only read him again and again. i may not like the names of the races he designs- too simple, too twee, but the action is superbly fantastic...

I read this solely because it was on a reading list that I had assigned to myself. I know, it is a classic, inspiring to J.R.R. Tolkien, etc. The archaic language and the rambling descriptions were barriers for me. I had to set myself a reward to be appreciated at the end of each chapter. There are many better ways to spend hours of your life.

wow! nothing like good old epic fantasy fun to keep you going on a backpacking trip. closest comparison is to the Odyssey, rather than lord of the rings, but the fellows in this book make Odysseus look like a hack. Highest quality feats of strength, political intrigue, dashing of skulls on rocks, bringing-forth of darkness, and all manner of derring-do. Totally sweet; although if you can't see yourself reading shakespeare for pleasure, it might be tough to get through due to olde english aspirations as far as spelling and grammar.

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.

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.

The witches of Witchland are the bad guys, but they're not your typical witches. They don't own cauldrons or black cats and they don't recruit women for their rituals or armies. These witches are hardened imperialists and fierce, treacherous foes who have conquered many lands already.
t
But unlike Tolkien's irredeemable orcs, the witchlanders are essentially human. They represent all manner of vice, with each of their commanders sporting a different weakness: alcohol, arrogance, greed, etc. But they have relative virtues too, and Eddison often portrays their downfalls as noble tragedies.
t
Scenes set at the Witchland court take on a Shakespearean feel, with soliloquies, complex motives, romance, and skullduggery. Plus, as in Hamlet, most of them die in a poison-packed climax!

n  n
The Witchlander emblem is this nasty crab!

So who are the good guys in this fantastical war? The demons of Demonland. Yes, demons are the good guys and they're also basically humans (but with little horns.) They're also a stoic crew of nobles who travel the land, climb the tallest mountains, evade armies, encounter mysterious spirits, and battle legendary monsters; adventure yarns basically.
t
This is an epic fantasy that predated The Hobbit by fifteen years. The writing is dense and the plot features some shocking twists considering the simple story of good-versus-bad. The Worm Ouroboros is a significant literary influence, its manifold loops visible if you look closely.

Edited 8-21-2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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