The Worm Ouroboros

First published in 1922, this heroic fantasy imagines an entire world at war, told in a deliberately archaic English steeped in Norse saga and Jacobean drama. The lords of Demonland, chief among them Juss, Brandoch Daha, and Goldry Bluszco, are locked in a long struggle against the sorcerer-king Gorice of Witchland. Their quest carries them across storming seas and up the terrible peak of Koshtra Belorn, through betrayal, single combat, and dark magic. Eddison cared less for tidy morality than for splendor, and his heroes and villains alike are drawn on a grand, unrepentant scale. The book closes by curling back to its own beginning, like the serpent of its title. Long admired by Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, it is offered here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.