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abattleofmice's review
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
katekoda's review against another edition
3.0
Странная книжка, но довольно любопытная в своем роде. Героическое фэнтези, написанное английским языком 16 века, в духе классического рыцарского романа и немножко скандинавских героических саг.
Книга начинается с того, что герой по имени Лессингэм ложится спать в некоей комнате, где очевидно открыта дверь между мирами, и попадает на Меркурий, где волшебная птичка проводит его на бал и представляет ему местных лордов Демонленда, страны демонов. После второй главы, впрочем, мы о нем ничего больше не услышим. Кроме демонов, в этом мире живут гоблины, ведьмаки, феи (pixies) и разные другие расы, которые впрочем все человекообразны и никак не соответствуют мифологическим, фольклорным или библейским представлениям о демонах, ведьмах и проч. Демоны, правда, рогаты, но кроме одного описательного упоминания, рога эти нигде больше не встречаются.
Между этими народами начинается война, потому что король ведьмаков решил забрать себе исконные земли демонов, о чем сообщил им в издевательском посольстве. Демоны согласились подчиниться, при условии что король одолеет в борьбе силача лорда Goldry Bluszco. Король погибает, но его преемник (на самом деле не преемник, а инкарнация) с помощью черной магии похищает соперника и заточает его в зачарованной тюрьме на вершине волшебной горы.
Дальше демоны отправляются выручать своего братца Голдри в довольно затяжной квест, в ходе которого одному из них чуть не съела мозг мантикора; начинается война, махач, рубилово, предательства, волшебные вещи и в целом оно такое живенькое, довольно-таки пыщ-пыщ такое. На дворе у них плюс-минус юный феодализм из артурианы, поэтому воюют они соответственно: за честь и ради фана. Все куда-то всё время едут, идут или карабкаются. Сражаются на суше и на море, произносят пафосные речи, заклинания и стихи.
Когда одна из сторон наконец побеждает, им становится грустно, что теперь больше не с кем воевать, а так неинтересно и где ж в мирной жизни честь и слава?! Но тут волшебным образом мир откатывается назад, и заканчивается книжка опять тем самым посольством, с которого всё началось.
Живенько, я ж говорю.
Самое поразительное в этой книжке язык: с одной стороны, вполне архаичный со староанглийским правописанием и оборотами, с другой — ясный и прямой, очень затягивающий. Собственно автор занимался медиевистикой, саги и артуриану читал, любил и хорошо знал, он это всё специально.
Героев и часть сюжета Эдисон, впрочем, придумал еще десятилетним мальчиком. Поэтому у них такие странные, бессистемные с потолка взятые имена: Lord Juss, Brandoch Dacha, Prince La Fireez (читается, как автор сам указывает в предисловии как fire + ease), Lord Gro, King Gorice, etc. Как придумал в 10 лет, скучая в школе, так и оставил. За эту непродуманную номенклатуру Эдисона за глаза критиковал Толкин (который целые вполне функциональные языки изобретал, только чтоб героя или место назвать определенным образом).
Толкин с Эдисоном кстати был лично знаком, переписывался и книгу его в прессе похвалил, хотя позднее в личной переписке называл ее пафос (дохристианское, старо-скандинавское по сути воспевание воинской славы) неумным и недобрым. В "Змее Уроборосе" нет борьбы со злом, нет толкиновского героизма маленького человека перед лицом катастрофы. А есть славное сражение с благородным и сильным противником — клево помахались, пацаны, завтра опять пойдем!
Кроме героики и практически непрерывного экшена, описанных дивным языком и высоким стилем, там почти ничего и нет. Нет драмы, почти нет характеров, нет какой-то глубины, мифологии, изнанки мира. Почему Меркурий, есть ли у демонов хвосты, зачем они стерли с лица земли народ упырей (ghouls), зеленое ли у них там солнце, мы так и не узнаем, и если честно, кто там победит, мне при чтении было не очень важно.
Но язык, одновременно музыкальный, потому что фразы звенят и переливаются, и живописный, потому что ясный, живой и очень описательно-точный, — завораживающий совершенно.
Книга начинается с того, что герой по имени Лессингэм ложится спать в некоей комнате, где очевидно открыта дверь между мирами, и попадает на Меркурий, где волшебная птичка проводит его на бал и представляет ему местных лордов Демонленда, страны демонов. После второй главы, впрочем, мы о нем ничего больше не услышим. Кроме демонов, в этом мире живут гоблины, ведьмаки, феи (pixies) и разные другие расы, которые впрочем все человекообразны и никак не соответствуют мифологическим, фольклорным или библейским представлениям о демонах, ведьмах и проч. Демоны, правда, рогаты, но кроме одного описательного упоминания, рога эти нигде больше не встречаются.
Между этими народами начинается война, потому что король ведьмаков решил забрать себе исконные земли демонов, о чем сообщил им в издевательском посольстве. Демоны согласились подчиниться, при условии что король одолеет в борьбе силача лорда Goldry Bluszco. Король погибает, но его преемник (на самом деле не преемник, а инкарнация) с помощью черной магии похищает соперника и заточает его в зачарованной тюрьме на вершине волшебной горы.
Дальше демоны отправляются выручать своего братца Голдри в довольно затяжной квест, в ходе которого одному из них чуть не съела мозг мантикора; начинается война, махач, рубилово, предательства, волшебные вещи и в целом оно такое живенькое, довольно-таки пыщ-пыщ такое. На дворе у них плюс-минус юный феодализм из артурианы, поэтому воюют они соответственно: за честь и ради фана. Все куда-то всё время едут, идут или карабкаются. Сражаются на суше и на море, произносят пафосные речи, заклинания и стихи.
Когда одна из сторон наконец побеждает, им становится грустно, что теперь больше не с кем воевать, а так неинтересно и где ж в мирной жизни честь и слава?! Но тут волшебным образом мир откатывается назад, и заканчивается книжка опять тем самым посольством, с которого всё началось.
Живенько, я ж говорю.
Самое поразительное в этой книжке язык: с одной стороны, вполне архаичный со староанглийским правописанием и оборотами, с другой — ясный и прямой, очень затягивающий. Собственно автор занимался медиевистикой, саги и артуриану читал, любил и хорошо знал, он это всё специально.
Героев и часть сюжета Эдисон, впрочем, придумал еще десятилетним мальчиком. Поэтому у них такие странные, бессистемные с потолка взятые имена: Lord Juss, Brandoch Dacha, Prince La Fireez (читается, как автор сам указывает в предисловии как fire + ease), Lord Gro, King Gorice, etc. Как придумал в 10 лет, скучая в школе, так и оставил. За эту непродуманную номенклатуру Эдисона за глаза критиковал Толкин (который целые вполне функциональные языки изобретал, только чтоб героя или место назвать определенным образом).
Толкин с Эдисоном кстати был лично знаком, переписывался и книгу его в прессе похвалил, хотя позднее в личной переписке называл ее пафос (дохристианское, старо-скандинавское по сути воспевание воинской славы) неумным и недобрым. В "Змее Уроборосе" нет борьбы со злом, нет толкиновского героизма маленького человека перед лицом катастрофы. А есть славное сражение с благородным и сильным противником — клево помахались, пацаны, завтра опять пойдем!
Кроме героики и практически непрерывного экшена, описанных дивным языком и высоким стилем, там почти ничего и нет. Нет драмы, почти нет характеров, нет какой-то глубины, мифологии, изнанки мира. Почему Меркурий, есть ли у демонов хвосты, зачем они стерли с лица земли народ упырей (ghouls), зеленое ли у них там солнце, мы так и не узнаем, и если честно, кто там победит, мне при чтении было не очень важно.
Но язык, одновременно музыкальный, потому что фразы звенят и переливаются, и живописный, потому что ясный, живой и очень описательно-точный, — завораживающий совершенно.
bookwomble's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Well, it took me 15 months and a stack of dictionaries, but I've finally finished this epic! I feel as much a sense of accomplishment in the reading as Eddison might have felt in the writing of it!
I don't recall it having been so laborious from my first time of reading back in my teenage years, but I guess without internet reference rabbit-holes to fall down, it would be faster, though somewhat more archaic and obscure.
Anyway, the plot takes precedence over character, and there's barely any plot to speak of, so what you are left with is a framework over which Eddison drapes his sumptuous language, weaving moods and reveries, sometimes loud, brash and theatrical, at othertimes delicate fretworks of bejewelled, gilded traceries. It's definitely a love/hate book, and I've needed my own mood to be right to enter into Eddison's world, but I was happy to take my time and approach it as a feast of many courses, rather than a fast food binge.
I don't recall it having been so laborious from my first time of reading back in my teenage years, but I guess without internet reference rabbit-holes to fall down, it would be faster, though somewhat more archaic and obscure.
Anyway, the plot takes precedence over character, and there's barely any plot to speak of, so what you are left with is a framework over which Eddison drapes his sumptuous language, weaving moods and reveries, sometimes loud, brash and theatrical, at othertimes delicate fretworks of bejewelled, gilded traceries. It's definitely a love/hate book, and I've needed my own mood to be right to enter into Eddison's world, but I was happy to take my time and approach it as a feast of many courses, rather than a fast food binge.
_viscosity_'s review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
aejackson's review against another edition
5.0
Which authors come to mind when you consider fantasy? Certain names spring to mind without much effort - George R. R. Martin, J.K. Rowling, Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett, and Brandon Sanderson. Then there are the giants who cleared the forests and laid down a King’s High Road for all of us to follow - J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Raymond E. Feist, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Roger Zelazny.
As I study popular novelists, I dig through decades of literature and discover who inspired them to write. Just as you are moved by the words of your favorite author, their heart was filled with a burning fire for story by someone else.
Who wrote the story grand enough to capture the imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien? It so happens that there was such an author - Eric Rücker Eddison. Eddison was an English civil servant and author, born November 24, 1882. He wrote epic fantasy novels under the name E.R. Eddison. The most notable of his works, The Worm Ouroboros (1922), was acknowledged by Tolkien for its influence on his writing.
The Worm Ouroboros formed the landscape of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. Critics of The Lord of the Rings could turn to few other novels for comparison - but referenced this 1922 landmark epic.
The tales is influenced itself by traditions of Homeric epics, Norse sagas, and Arthurian myths. E. R. Eddison blends his compelling adventure, with the majestic narrative style of Shakespeare. Readers are swept away as Eddison recounts bloody battles between warriors and witches, fog-shrouded mountain peaks, and the deepest oceans. There are full story arcs of romance, intrigue, and treachery. If you ever wanted to be swallowed whole by a timeless world, then join generations of fans who have gotten lost in the pages of The Worm Ouroboros.
Through my study of Freud’s Uncanny essay, I've taken a closer look at The Worm Ouroboros. This grand saga illustrates well the cyclical narrative found in literature. The technique returns the main hero back to the starting point with nothing or very little changed. The ending of the story is the very setup of a whole new cycle. Once again, from the beginning.
This was done well in The Worm Ouroboros, The Matrix, and Dark Tower Series to name a few. Going deeper into Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces one finds that the technique has to do with Eastern philosophy and ancient man's storytelling methods. In fact, the whole of creation is set up around birth-death-rebirth - with endless struggle between phases.
When I picked up the tome to begin my journey, it was done with the help of LibriVox narrator Jason Mills. The text of the manuscript can be quite difficult to approach. The style is old by comparison to contemporary fantasy fiction. Even by 1920’s standards, Eddison took great pains to make the phrasing sound even older and more majestic. This hurdle shouldn’t dissuade readers from attempting the feat of finishing the novel. There is a great treasure awaiting the patient reader who sees this one through to the end!
Eric Rücker Eddison (1882 - 1945) was born in England, and worked as a civil servant and author. He wrote epic fantasy novels under the penname E.R. Eddison. Along with The Worm Ouroboros (1922), another of his famous works is the Zimiamvian Trilogy (1935-1958). All of E.R. Eddison's books were written with a meticulous use of the Jacobean prose style. In fact, throughout his pieces one can find fragments of his favorite authors - Homer, Sappho, Shakespeare, and Webster. He was also influenced by Norse sagas and French medieval lyric poems.
Read more from E.R. Eddison at https://www.ereddison.com
You won’t find him on social media - but there are lots of fans out there eager to discuss his work.
As I study popular novelists, I dig through decades of literature and discover who inspired them to write. Just as you are moved by the words of your favorite author, their heart was filled with a burning fire for story by someone else.
Who wrote the story grand enough to capture the imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien? It so happens that there was such an author - Eric Rücker Eddison. Eddison was an English civil servant and author, born November 24, 1882. He wrote epic fantasy novels under the name E.R. Eddison. The most notable of his works, The Worm Ouroboros (1922), was acknowledged by Tolkien for its influence on his writing.
The Worm Ouroboros formed the landscape of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. Critics of The Lord of the Rings could turn to few other novels for comparison - but referenced this 1922 landmark epic.
The tales is influenced itself by traditions of Homeric epics, Norse sagas, and Arthurian myths. E. R. Eddison blends his compelling adventure, with the majestic narrative style of Shakespeare. Readers are swept away as Eddison recounts bloody battles between warriors and witches, fog-shrouded mountain peaks, and the deepest oceans. There are full story arcs of romance, intrigue, and treachery. If you ever wanted to be swallowed whole by a timeless world, then join generations of fans who have gotten lost in the pages of The Worm Ouroboros.
Through my study of Freud’s Uncanny essay, I've taken a closer look at The Worm Ouroboros. This grand saga illustrates well the cyclical narrative found in literature. The technique returns the main hero back to the starting point with nothing or very little changed. The ending of the story is the very setup of a whole new cycle. Once again, from the beginning.
This was done well in The Worm Ouroboros, The Matrix, and Dark Tower Series to name a few. Going deeper into Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces one finds that the technique has to do with Eastern philosophy and ancient man's storytelling methods. In fact, the whole of creation is set up around birth-death-rebirth - with endless struggle between phases.
When I picked up the tome to begin my journey, it was done with the help of LibriVox narrator Jason Mills. The text of the manuscript can be quite difficult to approach. The style is old by comparison to contemporary fantasy fiction. Even by 1920’s standards, Eddison took great pains to make the phrasing sound even older and more majestic. This hurdle shouldn’t dissuade readers from attempting the feat of finishing the novel. There is a great treasure awaiting the patient reader who sees this one through to the end!
Eric Rücker Eddison (1882 - 1945) was born in England, and worked as a civil servant and author. He wrote epic fantasy novels under the penname E.R. Eddison. Along with The Worm Ouroboros (1922), another of his famous works is the Zimiamvian Trilogy (1935-1958). All of E.R. Eddison's books were written with a meticulous use of the Jacobean prose style. In fact, throughout his pieces one can find fragments of his favorite authors - Homer, Sappho, Shakespeare, and Webster. He was also influenced by Norse sagas and French medieval lyric poems.
Read more from E.R. Eddison at https://www.ereddison.com
You won’t find him on social media - but there are lots of fans out there eager to discuss his work.
llauren23's review against another edition
Le style d'écriture n'est vraiment pas celui que j'aime, c'est complexe à lire, peu fluide.
monica_r_jae's review against another edition
4.0
Rightly referred to as a predecessor of Tolkein's creation, the writing is florid and archaic but the world Eddison creates is, I believe, more convincing because of it.
fatkat's review against another edition
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
rosekk's review
2.0
There were moments while reading this when I really liked the book, but they were fleeting. Occasionally the elements in this book would fall into place properly and I'd think 'Ok, I get it, I'm enjoying this', and then the moment would pass, and I'd return to being bored and unimpressed.
The deliberately archaic style, for instance, would occasionally serve to cast events into a legendary light. It suited some of the scenes well. Unfortunately, the whole of the book used the same stiff style, and most of the time it just made it really hard to get absorbed, because it was so artificial. Also, reading the sections that were written as letters between characters as nigh on impossible, because in order to differentiate the letters from the rest of the text, almost every word was (mis)spelled in a sort of mock-Chaucerian way (an offence which would be forgivable if the letters were restricted to a few lines, but most of them took up a good page of text, and were the only way we heard some events).
Similarly, the characters were 90% stock to 10% unique personalities . That's not necessarily a bad thing; having stock-type characters with a small quirk to keep things interesting kind of worked, since the book's plainly trying to mimic myths/legends in its style. The problem was with the sheer number of characters all of a very similar type, and all serving a similar purpose in terms of the plot.
The thing that finally put me off was how confused the magic is in the story. We're told at the beginning that the 'bad guy' (a fairly typical Evil King type) can conjure all this amazing dark magic, and a big point is made of the fact that he's one of the most proficient magic users ever. He uses a whole load of magic early on just to test one of his allies, and then to spirit away one of his enemies. This latter event makes no sense - the king's intention is apparently to wreck a ship carrying the leaders of an enemy nation. They have charms to protect them so they survive - except one of them wasn't wearing the charm and he ends up getting spirited away to some far off land instead of being killed. It's never explained why he wasn't killed, or why he ended up where he ended up, and when he's rescued and returned the King doesn't seem surprised or even especially concerned. The King hardly uses magic for the rest of the book, and never on the scale we see at the beginning, even though it's supposed to be the thing that makes him a threat. We're never told why he doesn't use magic; no limit to his abilities is ever given. We're just told he can do almost anything from creating illusions to controlling monsters of immense power, and then he doesn't do any of that in any of the later conflicts. He just sends his subordinates to fight ordinary magic-free battles, so after the first bout of magical kidnapping he essentially does very little to further his own ends. There are a couple of other magic-related events, but none of them seem to obey any of the same rules (or, arguably, any rules at all), so there's no way of knowing what is and isn't possible with magic in the world, which in turn means that the few times magic does show up it seems arbitrary.
Also, it was very disorientating to be told that all of this is going on on Mercury, and being relayed to us be a visitor from earth who appears in the first 20 pages of the story and is never mentioned again. Similarly, figures and ideas from Ancient Greek mythology are used, but very little is explained about them so it's not clear if we're meant to think the Greek mythology applies to this world, or if this world just has a few gods that use Greek names. Also, it took me a good chunk of the book to confirm that the Demons from Demonland, the Witches from Witchland, the Pixies from Pixyland e.t.c. are all actually humans (the names just denote different nationalities, not separate magical races) - a confusion produced by the fact that in the first pages the Demons are described as having horns, which it turns out many pages later are actually on their helmets, not their heads.
To summarize, this book was such a strange mess it's ended up with one of the longest reviews I've ever written, just because I wanted to record for future reference everything I found wrong with the book (not that it was all bad; it was just all odd and rarely good).
The deliberately archaic style, for instance, would occasionally serve to cast events into a legendary light. It suited some of the scenes well. Unfortunately, the whole of the book used the same stiff style, and most of the time it just made it really hard to get absorbed, because it was so artificial. Also, reading the sections that were written as letters between characters as nigh on impossible, because in order to differentiate the letters from the rest of the text, almost every word was (mis)spelled in a sort of mock-Chaucerian way (an offence which would be forgivable if the letters were restricted to a few lines, but most of them took up a good page of text, and were the only way we heard some events).
Similarly, the characters were 90% stock to 10% unique personalities . That's not necessarily a bad thing; having stock-type characters with a small quirk to keep things interesting kind of worked, since the book's plainly trying to mimic myths/legends in its style. The problem was with the sheer number of characters all of a very similar type, and all serving a similar purpose in terms of the plot.
The thing that finally put me off was how confused the magic is in the story. We're told at the beginning that the 'bad guy' (a fairly typical Evil King type) can conjure all this amazing dark magic, and a big point is made of the fact that he's one of the most proficient magic users ever. He uses a whole load of magic early on just to test one of his allies, and then to spirit away one of his enemies. This latter event makes no sense - the king's intention is apparently to wreck a ship carrying the leaders of an enemy nation. They have charms to protect them so they survive - except one of them wasn't wearing the charm and he ends up getting spirited away to some far off land instead of being killed. It's never explained why he wasn't killed, or why he ended up where he ended up, and when he's rescued and returned the King doesn't seem surprised or even especially concerned. The King hardly uses magic for the rest of the book, and never on the scale we see at the beginning, even though it's supposed to be the thing that makes him a threat. We're never told why he doesn't use magic; no limit to his abilities is ever given. We're just told he can do almost anything from creating illusions to controlling monsters of immense power, and then he doesn't do any of that in any of the later conflicts. He just sends his subordinates to fight ordinary magic-free battles, so after the first bout of magical kidnapping he essentially does very little to further his own ends. There are a couple of other magic-related events, but none of them seem to obey any of the same rules (or, arguably, any rules at all), so there's no way of knowing what is and isn't possible with magic in the world, which in turn means that the few times magic does show up it seems arbitrary.
Also, it was very disorientating to be told that all of this is going on on Mercury, and being relayed to us be a visitor from earth who appears in the first 20 pages of the story and is never mentioned again. Similarly, figures and ideas from Ancient Greek mythology are used, but very little is explained about them so it's not clear if we're meant to think the Greek mythology applies to this world, or if this world just has a few gods that use Greek names. Also, it took me a good chunk of the book to confirm that the Demons from Demonland, the Witches from Witchland, the Pixies from Pixyland e.t.c. are all actually humans (the names just denote different nationalities, not separate magical races) - a confusion produced by the fact that in the first pages the Demons are described as having horns, which it turns out many pages later are actually on their helmets, not their heads.
To summarize, this book was such a strange mess it's ended up with one of the longest reviews I've ever written, just because I wanted to record for future reference everything I found wrong with the book (not that it was all bad; it was just all odd and rarely good).