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The Worm Ouroboros Paperback – April 28, 2006

by E. R. Eddison (Author), Keith Henderson (Illustrator)

3.9 283 ratings

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"An eccentric masterpiece" — Ursula K. LeGuin
"A new climate of the imagination" — C. S. Lewis
"A masterpiece" — James Stephens
This is the book that shaped the landscape of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. When The Lord of the Rings first appeared, the critics inevitably compared it to this 1922 landmark work. Tolkien himself frankly acknowledged its influence, with warm praise for its imaginative appeal. The story of a remote planet's great war between two kingdoms, it ranks as the Iliad of heroic fantasy.
In the best traditions of Homeric epics, Norse sagas, and Arthurian myths, author E. R. Eddison weaves a compelling adventure, with a majestic, Shakespearean narrative style. His sweeping tale recounts battles between warriors and witches on fog-shrouded mountaintops and in the ocean's depths — along with romantic interludes, backroom intrigues, and episodes of direst treachery. Generations of readers have joyfully lost themselves in the timeless worlds of The Worm Ouroboros. This new edition, magnificently illustrated with the classic original images, continues the enchantment.

Print length

464 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Dover Publications
Publication date

April 28, 2006
Dimensions

5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0486447405
ISBN-13

978-0486447407
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dover Publications (April 28, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0486447405
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0486447407
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 1 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,724,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #40,093 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy (Books)

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3.9 283 ratings

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Unprecedented Heraldic Saga in a Fantastic World of Valor

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2014

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I have simply never encountered a work like this one. I bought it on the recommendation of someone with good taste in literature, and was blown away. If Milton had written a Viking saga with Arthurian sensibilities and that work had a child with 1001 Arabian Nights, it would come out something like this.

Note: There is a sort of tacked on, though beautifully written, proto-sci-fi introduction, which serves as our mysterious portal to this world, claiming it to be on another planet. I am not familiar enough with the literature of this period to know if this is a common literary device at that time -a perfunctory link with the real world which was thought necessary for high fantasy. (A couple decades later, Tolkien had originally been planning to do the same with his Middle Earth saga) Either way, our initial guide very quickly steps aside, any questions of inter-planetary traveling are long left behind never to be mentioned again, and we are flung into the midst of a world of high fantasy and heroic quests, and there the plot stays until the surprise end.

To quickly summarize without undue spoiling, the plot consists of the war between two kingdoms, Demonland and Witchland, in which other kingdoms and figures become involved. Not much is made of these dark name choices, beyond some vague physical associations. (The inhabitants of these kingdoms and others mentioned are heroic men of mythical valor and strength, but not fantasy creatures) The impression is that the names are chosen to be "fantastic," without any moral implications of goodness or badness, though it is quickly obvious who we are meant to be cheering for.

As with any good epic saga, however, the enemy is full of tricks and a dangerous foe right to the end, earning our respect even as we desire to know if and how they will be vanquished. With such a redoubtable adversary, it is in fact not at all clear how the conflict will be resolved, and the final resolution is a double surprise. In the course of the book there are strategic invasions, fierce battles, quests to recover lost companions which are spirited away by dark arts, crafty subterfuge, Shakespearian romance, and more.

I loved the Milton-esque writing style: the English language turned out and used to its full, gorgeous descriptive abilities.
As such this is an Important Work, and I believe it is unique among high fantasy written within the last 100 years. I give it 5 stars because it is not the sort of book about which my opinion matters in the slightest; it is a stunning and unique accomplishment.

10 people found this helpful

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LaserJock

A Medieval Marvel

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2014

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The Worm Ouroboros (TWO) is like no other book I've ever read. It's medieval, it's poetry, it's the Iliad/Odyssey/Aeneid retold as epic fantasy. It is high born men of great courage and valor fighting other high born men of great power and valor. It is a quest of great heroes performing impossible deeds in a hard land full of perils and beauty, and perilous beauty.

TWO was written in 1922 but in the style and language of the 16th century. This alone makes it wholly incomparable to any other book I’ve read; it is a book between times, of two times and of no time. The Medieval love of beauty, pageantry, nobility, valor and honor fill this work; and they fill it in a completely unapologetic way; they fill it without a shred of self-consciousness or guilt; without hint of reprobation. For those of us steeped in post-Dickens, post-enlightenment literature and a worldview that is tyrannically liberal, humanist and egalitarian, it is an exotic flavor.

The author's style is florid, overly florid; marvelously, intricately, masterfully florid with a wealth of tiny compelling details. Imagine the most intricately overlaid and decorated altar in the richest and most exquisite medieval cathedral you have ever seen. Was the ornamentation necessary? No. Distracting? Perhaps. Breathtaking, majestic, noble, glorious? Absolutely. It is the perfect style for the story Eddison wishes to tell so we forgive, and even applaud, in TWO what we despise in most other books.

The vocabulary is challenging. Word after word of archaic usage will echo dimly in your mind with a meaning almost, but never quite, within your grasp. I gave up looking up unknown words after a while, it didn't do any good as they aren't in any modern dictionary anyway, and it isn't really necessary. You just let them shine in their obscurity, their mystery enhancing their beauty, and their antiquity serving the necessary purpose--over and over again; a thousand times over those unknown words emphasize the description the author is trying to make, 'This is a story from another time about a different kind of people.' The archaic adjectives describe the setting, characters, and action perfectly if not precisely.

The book can be confusing to a first time reader (hence the 4 of 5 star rating); let me clarify three misconceptions that will greatly enhance your first read of this book. The book begins on a rose scented porch of a modern estate where a respectable modern English couple is enjoying an evening conversation. We quickly learn that a room of the house, the lotus room, is enchanted. The male half of the couple, Lessingham, falls asleep in it and is transported by a mystical guide to Mercury where he is shown the castle of the Demons and what transpires within. Never has any book begun with more deliberate obfuscation; even with this very brief description of the plot, you have formed three misconceptions of the story that will confuse and detract from your enjoyment of it unless I clarify them for you. TWO is not about a modern man from earth; not about Mercury; and it is emphatically not about demons. The modern man, although we initially believe him to be the protagonist (or at least a narrator after the fashion of Dante) fades from the story in the midst of Chapter 2 and we never hear from, or of, him again; not once. This makes the ending very hard to bear your first time through because, for hundreds of pages, you keep wondering what the wrap-up will be like, what closure there will be, what lesson the mystical guide was trying to convey to the Earth man. But the whole affair of planetary travel turns out to be a shallow artifice forgotten by the author by the time he reaches the end of the book; its only purpose was to bring us, the readers, in some “plausible” way to an artificial world. I cannot help wondering if the story of TWO, minus the mysterious interplanetary travel, wasn’t already a finished work at the time the SF classic "John Carter of Mars" (JCoM) by Edgar Rice Burroughs was published. If you’ve read that book you know that John Carter is, in a similarly mysterious way, transported from earth to Mars for his adventures. JCoM was published 5 years before TWO was published. Given how long it takes a book to get published, JCoM had probably just come out when Eddison was making his last edits to TWO. It seems likely that Eddison borrowed the idea of mysterious planetary travel from Eddison as a way to catapult us from our familiar into the mythical lands of Carcë and Demonland. It was a very regrettable decision.

As I said, the book does not occur on Mercury. The setting with regards to flora, fauna, terrestrial and celestial sights and even religion, mythology and swearing is wholly earthly. Eddison even uses “earth” frequently when referring to the region his characters inhabit, e.g., “… like no fowl’s face out of middle-earth but rather a gorgon’s out of hell,” “Then went a crash through earth and heaven …,” “ …as though all the poppies of all earth’s gardens breathed drowsiness about his head,” ”was aware of no thing else on earth save only the sense maddening caress of that lady’s hair,” and “…the which alone of all earth’s mountains looketh down upon Koshtra Belorn.” So why use the conceit of an interplanetary journey if you intend your story to occur on earth? I have a theory. When John Carter was brought to Mars he was immediately caught up in great wars and battles and found the planet engulfed continuously in such conflict. You will recall that Mars is the Roman God of war, thus Mars, The Red Planet, is the perfect symbolic location for a war themed book. What of Mercury? Since the author’s choice of Mercury has nothing to do with its geography, it must have to do with its mythology. Mercury was the messenger god. By telling us that the book occurs “on the messenger,” Eddison is effectively telling us that his book is a message. The author’s first chapter is not called the “Introduction” but the “Induction,” and it is in this chapter that Lessingham is brought to Mercury; i.e., brought to the messenger (Mercury) where he hears the message (the rest of the book).

The third confusion I wish to alleviate is concerning the nature of Eddison’s demons. This may sound strange to you but the "demons" are men. There is some initial pretext of describing them with horns but this is dropped after page four and never mentioned again. In some books an omission of repeated detail would not, perhaps, mean anything. But in TWO, where the author needs a paragraph of adjectives to describe a bowl of soup, this is extremely unusual. If the horns are indeed a necessary part of the characters Eddison would refer to them occasionally and with great attention. So what are the demons if not demons? We get a belated look into the author’s mind regarding the nature of his “demons” about 90 pages in when a character makes a casual remark describing a siege of a castle in which the demons are fortified. The remark shows what has been clear in the author’s mind the whole time but which he has never explained to us, “Were [the Demon Lords] devils and not men, the multitude of our armies … must daunt them.” So, here we have it clearly laid out for us: the “demons” are “men” not “devils.” We must resist the counter description of the demons made by their detractors who frequently refer to them pejoratively as “devils” or “devils transmarine.” These “devil” descriptions will confuse the first time reader but the author intends it as an “obviously” insulting lie of the enemy; the demons are men. I should add that it isn’t just the demons that are men; the Witches, the Pixies and the Goblins are men too. Only the subjects of the Red Folliot in the Folliot Isles are truly fae creatures. Think of an adult version of Narnia’s talking animals. So, why the name demon if they are men? I believe that it is part of Eddison’s medieval theme. The medievals had a very strict, well ordered, ubiquitously distributed and complete model of the universe. One interesting thing about their model of the universe was that every region of their universe was believed to be teaming with life forms appropriate to it. In the medieval model “air” extends to the aether which begins at the boundary of the moon’s orbit. The air is filled with beings called daemons which are greater than men (earth dwellers) but less than the gods (aether dwellers). I believe this is the usage that Eddison had in mind and the origin of his term demon. His demons are the noblest, bravest, strongest and best of men, even a bit better than men, perhaps. (For more on daemons and the Medieval model I recommend C. S. Lewis’s book “The Discarded Image,” particularly chapter 3 D.)

With those three points clarified I think that you will very much enjoy reading the rest of the book. Just be forewarned that the author lets the point of view (POV) from which the story is told float from character to character in an unpredictable way; this technique can be disorienting, especially when the POV shifts to a minor character we have never before encountered. Eddison also has a rare gift for telling the story through his characters recollections rather than showing the story to the reader directly. Though this is fatal to many books written by lesser authors, Eddison pulls it off. Well, almost. He occasionally uses letters to convey the story, but his warrior heroes have a low level of literacy so their letters are replete with spelling and grammatical errors. The archaic language combined with non-standard spelling and grammar make the letters very difficult to follow and distract from the story, but it’s a minor flaw as they are rare.

In the story you will hear the tale of how the valiant demon’s defeat the treacherous Witch King Gorice the X. And how, for vengeance, Gorice the XI ascends to his black tower of iron and, using the dark and dangerous arts of grammerie, summons the Worm Ouroboros to avenge Witchland. One of the Demon Lord’s greatest champions and brother to the King is stolen by the Worm and brought beyond the edge of the world to the soul prison of the dead. The Demon King fights through armies and faces countless terrors and challenges in his quest to rescue the lost champion. But, while he is away the Witches invade Demon Land. The King eventually frees his brother, saves his kingdom and defeats the Witch King in a great final battle. What happens next is wholly unexpected but allows us to feel quite clearly, if inarticulately, what the message of the book is (remember the messenger Mercury?). This surprise ending I will not spoil for you. It’s the kind of thing you have to experience for yourself. And I should also mention that TWO is much more than just a hack-and-slash adventure; mixed, almost in equal portion, with the heroic action is a subtle story of courtly intrigue, deception, betrayal, seduction, power brokering and treachery.

20 people found this helpful

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Baritone

This book deserves better

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2012

Verified Purchase

I fell in love with this book as a child, when I was admittedly a bit too young to be able to make sense of the gorgeous but frequently obscure language. Not many years ago, I reread it and my adult mind treasured it all the more (not to be confused with Impland the More).

My biggest objection is that the Kindle edition lacks even a table of contents. I don't know whether that's the norm, as all my other Kindle books are freebies and one can't expect too many frills at that price. But I did pay for this one and wonder why at the very least, a table of contents isn't standard for all Kindle editions. I looked at a N*** book this morning and sure enough, it had a ToC.

It would have been nice to have preserved the formatting, too. Despite what the sample shows, there is no difference of font between the main text and the Icelandic poem it quotes.

8 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Mark Griffin

Missing Essentials

Reviewed in Australia on November 3, 2023

Verified Purchase

I recently purchased this book to replace an old, much-read copy that is falling apart. I was floored to find that the forward and the entire induction which explains who Lessingham is and how he gets to Mercury is missing from this edition. The book is printed in a font that seems to discourage reading. All in all, extremely disappointed. How can you sell an incomplete text?

T Jesse White

Fantastic

Reviewed in Canada on August 26, 2013

Verified Purchase

If you are into Tolkien then this is a book you should take a look at. It can be a difficult read, but so can J.R.R.'s works at times.
This is a book I can see myself cycling back to again and again!

smiley494

A Fantasy without Equal

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2014

Verified Purchase

I first read an excerpt from this book some 50 years ago and by chance heard it mentioned as an aside on a TV programme recently. The memory of the original stayed with me so I sought out a copy. This book is of course pure fantasy and it would not be an exaggeration to say " they don't write them like that any more'. Fantasy writing is a genre I don't read any more but for nostalgic reasons I went for this book. What an absolute pleasure it was to read. Due to the style of writing(old style english) it will not be to everyone's taste but the grandeur of the prose and the majesty of the descriptive passages is breathtaking-rarely has there been such power in prose.I wonder why no one has tried to film this like LOTR but if they tried would probably ruin it.
Written in 1922 still not surpassed!

3 people found this helpful

Katzenkraft

A TIMELESS FANTASY CLASSIC FOR LOVERS OF "WORDS"

Reviewed in Germany on July 31, 2002

Verified Purchase

This book will not only appeal to lovers of well told old style fantasy (no, not the boring modern Dungeons&Dragons stuff where true wonder no longer resides), but also to lovers of poetry and, simply put, - language. Eddison was a giant, first among equals like J.B. Cabbel or William Morris, second only (maybe) to the unique Lord Dunsany. This book has been out of print for far too long, but it still stands out as a timeless epic after all these years, and it deserves to remain in print (just like the Aeneid or the Iliad (to name but two) are still in print after thousands of years!). This is no fantasy-junk-food to be quickly consumed, its enchantment has to be savoured like a rare vintage. But rest assured: the rewards you will get out of this book will definitely last for a lifetime!

8 people found this helpful