Entry 138: "The Worm Ouroboros" Pt. 2 End

Dear Internet,

                Well, I suspect that you most likely think I am dead or close to it by now.  I am not sorry to disappoint you.  I am well enough alive, as far as I can tell.  I have been busy with various things.  "What?" you ask?  None of your darn business is what.  Just know that even this entry does not mean that I can begin any sort of regular posting any time soon.  So, do not get any sort of ideas stuck in a loop.  All I am here to do is to finish up my review of "The Worm Ouroborous."

                The last thing that I talked about concerning the novel was the book's language.  The book can be broken down into three different types of English language that I am sure someone can define better than I can.  The most modern type of prose comes in the book's narration, which sounds the most of what we hear today.  The second is the spoken language that the characters use when communicating between themselves.  This is filled with "thee"s, "thou"s, and "thine"s.  The third type appears when the book's characters communicate through written word.  I would liken it to somewhere between Middle English and the second type I described above.  I mention all this because with each format, a modern reader would have some deal of difficulty in reading these segments.  The third format is especially difficult to get through due to the multitude of obsolete or archaic spellings of some words.  It is not impossible by any means, but it does slow down the novel, which is one of the hurdles that the book tries to overcome.

                "The Worm Ouroborous" is a thick book, but it is below that of what you could call a doorstopper.  It, however, does not move very quickly or smoothly.  There are times that the story progresses at a rather quick pace, such as the battles and the wrestling match, but at other times, it feels like the plot grinds to a halt.  These moments, usually when focusing specifically on the Witchlanders, move slow enough that I wanted to just skim over the text.  Of course, these segments are made to add exposition to the various characters.  The novel does this in strides, making sure that every character is given at least a wading pool level of depth.  The problem is that there are too many characters that just plain do not matter yet are brought up time and time again.  I think someone even got killed in their sleep at some point, but I could not even care because they were so unimportant.  Then there are a dozen or more military figures on both sides that show up at the end of the novel for the climactic battle but are either killed off or barely given any sort of information.  The point of them being there is just to make the world seem more alive.

                This is not a bad thing completely, but it causes the book to be read more like a history novel that is trying to make sure that future historians and genealogists can use it as a primary source of information rather than a piece of fiction that is trying to amuse and beguile away a number of hours.  I am reminded of T.H. White's "The Once and Future King" and how it remembered not to boggle the reader down.  During one of the last segments White's novel, he would barely go into detail about the various knights that were about to draw upon one another, citing "Le Morte d'Arthur" if the reader wanted to know everyone's names.  It was not that the names of the knights were unimportant.  It was that going into such a length of detail would have detracted from the scene, causing it to slowdown.  "The Worm Ouroborous" does what it does because it wants to world build more than anything.

                In this respect, the book delivers on all accounts.  The book goes to great lengths to ensure that all the "t"s are crossed and the "i"s are dotted when it comes to making a world that not only functions well but is also believable.  The world in the book is one that the reader can lose themselves in very easily if they wish to.  The landscape and the history within the world are fleshed out to the point that subsequent novels could have expanded upon small segments and still be folded within this novel.  Take the matter of the kings of Witchland.  We are told of at least four kings that all share the name Gorice.  That still leaves another eight or so that can be expounded upon.  These holes made evident do not detract from the plot that is progressing within the story.  Instead they show evidence of a much larger spectrum that is at play.  While the mechanics of the magic appearing in the book is usually glossed over to the point of requesting the reader to ignore plausibility, the book knows that it is not all that important, instead using that time to set up the scene.  Compare this to "Tale of the Abyss" which would constantly spend lengths of time ensuring that the mechanics of magic are so extensively detailed and plausible that it caused any scene that even mentions "fonons" to grind to a stop so it can be explained twice over.  It is alright that magic does not get explained as long as you do not contradict yourself later on.

                Then there is of course the ending of the novel that needs to be addressed.  You can just skip reading this if you do not want to spoil yourself.  At the very end, the demons wish that they could have someone to fight against since they are for all intents and purposes bored of peace time.  Their wishes are heard by the gods who turn back the world to the beginning of the novel so the war can begin all over.  This illustrates the bloodthirsty nature of the main characters who care not for their kingdom's well being but instead for their own amusements.  In the end, the only thing that separates the demons from the Witchlanders is a sense of aristocratic pride and elitist elegance.  Both of these are characteristics that you will be hard pressed to sympathize over by the end of the story.  The demon lords care not that hundreds, nay thousands, of men and women have died in the war just fought and will die again in the one coming soon.  They are a self interest lot that are more in tune with certain beheaded heads of state than the warrior kings that the book spent depicting.  I am not sure if Eddison, the writer, wanted to depict aristocracy as being so petty or if he wanted to make a criticism of the icon of the fighting hero.  In the end, it makes for an anti-resolution ending that failed to wind me back up again as it does for the characters it contains.

                In the end, "The Worm Ouroborous" is one of those books that I like when I am done with them.  It is not that I am happy because that it is over, as one could say about a kidney stone.  Instead, the novel is one that shines best as a whole rather than in parts.  The problem with me, at least, was just slogging through it.  I just wonder if the story could have been condensed a little to save on unneeded plot elements that fell a bit like padding.  Then there are the number of characters whose names all swirl around because they are similar in spelling. I could recommend the book, but make sure you bring a notebook to make a few family tree diagrams.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop