Book Review: The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

This is arguably the first book in the "high fantasy" genre, although fantasy fans may find it basically unrecognizable were it not for the similarity to The Lord of the Rings. And that seems to be the work that this book always gets compared to, so it bears emphasizing that The Worm Ouroboros predates The Lord of the Rings by decades and probably influenced it a great deal. It's also reminiscent of Icelandic sagas. Actually "The Lord of the Rings + Icelandic sagas" is, in one line, practically the best description I can think of. There are some baffling quirks that such a description doesn't cover. The setting is specifically stated to be the planet Mercury, even though Eddison completely ignores scientific knowledge about Mercury, which did exist even back in 1926. He introduces the world and some of the characters through a random man on Earth who is taken there in what would seem to be a dream except that his guide (a swift, although I had to look "martlet" up on the internet because no one calls swifts martlets anymore and I don't think I'd ever encountered the term before in my life) tells him that he is totally not dreaming. It's all very weird.

I know I'm against popular opinion on this one, but here are some rather obvious reasons that this book is better than The Lord of the Rings.

• In The Lord of the Rings, a midget with no claim to fame other than that his uncle is famous among midgets goes on a long journey to a fiery mountain in order to dispose of a piece of jewelry. His companion is his best friend who happens to be another midget. In The Worm Ouroboros, the king of the Demons goes on a long journey to a fiery mountain in order to rescue his brother, the greatest warrior in the world. His companion is his best friend who happens to be the second greatest warrior in the world.
• In The Lord of the Rings, the main villain is some being that never actually appears in the books themselves, but who is like, totally an evil tyrant or something. In order to even understand what he's about, you have to read a completely different book. In The Worm Ouroboros, the main villain is the king of the Witches. His hobbies include conjuring hellspawn to whisk his enemies off to fiery mountains, falconry, sex, and sending armies to conquer every place on the planet, even the really lame ones.
• The Lord of the Rings has a deranged monster that used to be a midget and is obsessed with a piece of jewelry. The Worm Ouroboros has a goblin philosopher/alchemist/explorer/lord who seems to have a case of chronic backstabbing disorder.
• E.R. Eddison is a better writer than J.R.R. Tolkien.
• The Lord of the Rings interrupts the story with a song or poem that some character recites and that Tolkien made up. The Worm Ouroboros interrupts the story with a song or poem that some character recites and that is from LITERATURE! Classy.
• Passage up some dangerous mountain is made even more dangerous in The Lord of the Rings by a spider. Passage up some dangerous mountain is made even more dangerous in The Worm Ouroboros by manticores.
• At the end of The Lord of the Rings a wizard villain who wasn't dealt with earlier prolongs the story with his boring takeover of one insignificant settlement that is thwarted anticlimactically. Possibly the worst part of the whole story. At the end of The Worm Ouroboros, the main characters, having killed all of their enemies and essentially conquered the world, decide that peace sucks and arrange for the gods to bring their enemies back so that they can do it all again. They got the idea because the gods seem to like them and the gods gave another character that they liked eternal youth and peace, so they figure eternal youth and war might be doable. I truly believe that this point alone is sufficient to make the case that The Worm Ouroboros is the superior book.