Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

Somewhere on the open seas Cap'n Ahab is laughing. Ha Ha, the joke's on me. The salty dog picked a real killer as my first novel of the year. I think he knew full well that it would take me the entire week to read, therefore setting me back in my goal of two books a week in the VERY FIRST WEEK. Yes, he is a clever one. But Ha Ha, the joke's on him, because I loved this book.

Why was it so difficult to read?, you ask. Eddison's style and language is the culprit, although it is exactly that which made the book so delightful. Imagine that the daughter of Shakespeare and Elric of Melibone had a child with the son of Tolkien and Homer. Imagine that King Arthur was the godfather and you've pretty much got a sense of what The Worm Ouroboros is like. The language is archaic, as one can see by a brief scan through the notes at the end. gaberlunzie, I'd liever, tassel-gentle, trisulk, disard, cere-cloth, towsed - you get the idea. Speech is fancy and none to swift to the point:

"Well I see the blood thou didst drink in Melikaphkhaz will not allay thy
thirst, and war is to thee thy pearl and thy paramour. Yet, if it be, turn back
from Carce. Thou standest now on the pinnacle of thine ambition; wilt leap
higher, thou fall'st in the abyss. Let the four corners of the earth be shaken
with our wars, but not this centre. For here shall no man gather fruit, but and
if it be death he gather; or if, then this fruit only, that Zoacum, that fruit
of bitterness, which when he shall have tasted of, all the bright lights of
heaven shall become as darkness and all earth's goodness as ashes in his mouth
all his life's days until he die."

I'm just sayin' it's tough reading.

The basic plot is very basic. Witchland and Demonland go to war. Witchland's King is a greedy bastard named Gorice XII who has great powers in the dark arts. We don't see a whole lot of him; most of our time in Witchland is spent among his generals Corund, Corsus and Corinius. Demonland is led by several great warriors, the brothers Juss, Goldry Bluszco and Spitfire and by their cousin Brandoch Daha. Here we see the kinsman all lined up and ready for war:

Other lands become involved in the struggle through their alliances, Goblinland, Pixyland and Impland foremost among them. There is also my favorite character Lord Gro. He is a Goblin by birth and a traitor by inclination. At some point in the past he has gone over to the Witches and is quite tight with King Gorice XII (as he was with Gorice XI as well). If Gro were alive today, he'd be a jet-setting, cocaine snorting, champagne bathing socialite, although one with brains.

There is a diversion from the battle by an expedition by Juss and Brandoch Daha in an attempt to rescue Goldry Bluszco, who has been swept away into enchanted mountains by the evil of Gorice XII. Here, in these mountains, our heroes encounter manticores, enchanted castles, a hippogriff and the immortal Queen Sophonisba. We are also introduced to the idea of the worm ouroboros and it's importance to the plot. Ouroboros, for those who may not know, is a serpent or dragon feeding on it's own tail. It represents eternity and, we are told, is the symbol of the Gorice reign. Apparently when Gorice dies his spirit finds a new physical host and the next Gorice comes to power. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Anyway, I don't want to ruin the plot for any brave soul that might take to reading this book. It's not perfect by any means (come on, Lord Spitfire?) but overall it is magic. I wish there were sequels and prequels but alas, being written in 1922 instead of 2002, there aren't. It has won a permanent place of my bookshelf (cough, cough, I mean Ahab's BookMOBYle) so I can reread it.