Welcome to Litsy!

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 a faster read, though somewhat more archaic and obscure.
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"Hungry dogs will eat dirty puddings."

I loved this insult used by Lord Corund of Witchland about those prepared to justify treacherous actions in the name of political expediency, and wondered if it was of Eddison's coining. The internet tracks it back to 1721, where it was recorded as an Old English Proverb by Nathan Bailey in a section of his Universal Etymological Dictionary, gloriously titled: ?⬇️

"Zigg and Astar, wrapped in their cloaks, lay on the gowany dewy banks that sloped down to the water‘s edge."

#WeirdWords
Although Eddison uses obscure words in practically every paragraph, I was smitten by the word "gowany", which means ? "covered in daisies" ?
Gowan is an archaic Scottish dialect word for daisy (and I apologise to any Scots Littens for whom this may be a commonly used modern word ????????).

"Surely, the great mountains of the world are a present remedy if men did but know it against our modern discontent and ambitions. In the hills is wisdom's fount. They are deep in time. They know the ways of the sun & the wind, the lightning's fiery feet, the frost that shattereth, the rain that shroudeth, the snow that putteth about their nakedness a softer coverlet than fine lawn: which if their large philosophy question not if it be a bridal ⬇️

"The prime huff-cap of all holdeth aback it seemeth."

Another glorious Eddison insult: "Huff-cap". Originally a strong ale, transitively a person whose blustering character resembles that of one drunk on strong ale. I love that in using this obsolete word, Eddison further chose the even more obsolete hyphenated spelling ?

"The guilt of their black deed planteth them day by day more firmlier in my deeper-settled hate. Art thou so deeply read in nature and her large philosophy, and I am yet to teach thee that deadliest hellebore or the vomit of a toad are qualified poison to the malice of a woman?"
- Queen Prezmyra of Witchland to Lord Gro of Goblinland regarding her undying hate of the Lord's Juss and Brandoch Daha of Demonland.
It's laid on with a trowel, but ?

"By then was the sun gone down. Under the wings of night uplifted from the east, the unfathomable heights of air turned a richer blue; and here and there, most dim and hard to see, throbbed a tiny point of light: the greater stars opening their eyelids to the gathering dark. Gloom crept upward, brimming the valleys far below like a rising tide of the sea. Frost and stillness waited on the eternal night to resume her reign."

"Truly I was seldom so uncivil as surprise Madam Aurora in her nightgown."
= I'm a drunken bastard who's rarely up before noon. Sounds better the Eddison way! ????

"Traitors were ever dastards. And who ever heard tell of a more hellish devilish damned traitor than he? With cunning colubrine and malice viperine and sleights serpentine... the fat chuff-cat"

I'm eating this dialogue up with a spoon! Three different adjectives for snake is good, but the next person to piss me off is getting called a chuff-cat ?

"Midsummer night, ambrosial, starry-kirtled, walked on the sea, as the ship that brought the Demons home drew nigh to her journey's end." ?

"I had rather a hundred people should read my books again and again than that a million read them once and be done with them."

Quote not directly taken from "The Worm Ouroboros", but encapsulates, I think, Eddison's aesthetic sense as being fairly devoid of obligation to an audience, and more concerned with his own artistic expression. ?

Imagine a play in the Shakespearean style with 50 on-stage characters, 49 of whom are played by Brian Blessed, the other one by Peter Lorre, and you've got some idea of this book. It's florid and Soooo over the top! Wondrous 😊

"There was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time."

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

"Chapter IV - Conjuring in the Iron Tower

Of the Hold of Carcë, and of the Midnight Practices of King Gorice XII. In the Ancient Chamber, preparing Dole and Doom for the Lords of Demonland."

I love the chapter subtitles, which are really evocative of the narrative, and which I can imagine some bard or minstrel declaiming to get the attention of distracted feasters in a Scandinavian mead hall or mediaeval palace.
Illustration: Gorice XII in Carcë

I love the end-chapter embellishments & chapter title fonts in these Ballantine editions. I don't know if other publishers used them but I do think they're in keeping with the florid style of Eddison's prose, which sometimes seems more like verse.
It's a glorious summer's day in West Lancashire, I'm sitting in the shade of a small oak tree with the scent of wild honeysuckle drifting on the breeze, listening to The Verve & feeling pretty chilled 😌

I really shouldn't be starting another book, especially one that's 520 pages long, but here I am! I read the edition on the left about 1980, and bought the one on the right more recently - 10 years ago? 🤔 Probably longer as I haven't recorded the acquisition date - anyway, I've been having the feels to reread it for several months, so...
I prefer the simplicity and directness of the cover on the left, the right having a certain cluttered charm 👇

New addition to Serial Reader (56 issues): On a remote world, the King of Witchland and Lords of Demonland strive for dominance amidst sorcerers, goblins, fantastic beats, and raging armies. A high fantasy novel that shaped modern sci-fi and fantasy, including Tolkien!

I just could not finish this book. I tried. It was an odd book, definitely a product of its time. Confusing and ornately plotted. Aside from the paucity of female characters, I also struggled with the prose. This book was written in a style much like Elizabethan English. Not easy to read and, in this case, not poetic. In other words, it's not like you can stay for the language if the plot doesn't work for you. Lots of wrestling too. :/

It's my Litsyversary! A year ago today, I was slogging my way through The Worm Ouroboros and longing for a place to snark about it. Then a friend mentioned Litsy, I signed up to see how I liked it, and the rest was history.

Most of the books I've read in the past year have been better than this one, although I haven't beat this view.

Thanks @HappyLitsyversary for the tag!

Such an epic fantasy that, according to some literary analysts, paved the way for J.R.R.Tolkein and his genius. It is rather old fashioned because of this and it took me a long time to finish this book but I'm so glad I made the effort. This first chapter is irrelevant and it could do with a map!
Love a good fantasy map.

Come to think of it, this book makes me think it is the game the author used to play with his toy soldiers when he was a kid. That would explain some of the character names (Fax Fay Faz?!), the way the narrative just skips over anything he doesn't find interesting at the moment, and most importantly, the ending.

The prose is positively ultraviolet, there are plot holes big enough to march an army through, the author has an exceedingly poor grasp on the concept that women are people, and occasionally a nasty racist stereotype hits you over the head. At a bare minimum it desperately needed another pass by a good editor. It had a certain propulsive energy that kept me reading to the end, but I don't recommend the experience.

Topics of conversation among women, according to this book:

1. I am very pretty. Isn't my husband fortunate?
2. Who is the best man in all the land? (I'll be mad if you don't say my husband, even though I know you don't like him.)
3. That other woman is a shameless hussy.

On page 464, less than 50 pages from the end, this book finally passes the Bechdel test. Partly with two women gossiping negatively about another woman, lest you give it too much credit.

Got a lot of reading done on a camping trip this weekend, away from the distractions of home. I took along a backup book in case I got too fed up with this one, but I ended up just powering through. I'm so close to finished I can almost taste it...

I am really mad at this book right now and contemplating bailing, except that I've been slogging through it for a month and a half and I'm over halfway through so the sunk costs are significant. I'm not going to be able to take much more of this misogynist section though. It's much better (“better“) when it's ignoring the existence of women.

The book is no better than it's ever been, but at least I got to read in a beautiful location for a while.

If the audio version of this book has a good narrator, I bet it would make an excellent sleep aid.

If not, someone is missing out on a real opportunity.

I would very much like some explanation of the naming convention that led to the brothers Juss, Goldry Bluszco, and Spitfire.

And a man might make a garment for the moon sooner than fit the o'er-leaping actions of great Jalcanaius, who now leaveth but his body to bedung that earth that was lately shaken at his terror.

Dismal and fearsome to view was this strong place of Carcë, most like to the embodied soul of dreadful night brooding on the waters of that sluggish river: by day a shadow in broad sunshine, the likeness of pitiless violence sitting in the place of power, darkening the desolation of the mournful fen; by night, a blackness more black than night herself.

“Mr. Eddison's...mind has more affinities with the Celtic imaginings and method, and his work is Celtic in that it is inspired by beauty and daring rather than by thoughts and moralities. He might be Scotch or Irish: scarcely the former, for, while Scotland loves full-mouthed verse, she, like England, is prose-shy.“

I translate this as “this introduction is due tomorrow and I forgot to ask the editor for some basic facts about the author.“

Very nearly half way through. It's such a wonderful old book and precursor to J. R. R. Tolkein that I desperately want to get through it. I'm away for work this week so I'm hoping some evening reading sessions will get me a fair way through it.