This is the very definition of epic, and not just because I read it over two periods separated by years! To be accurate, the second time was a complete restart, but let's not quibble. 'The Work Ouroboros' is a classical exercise in writing a one volume, self-contained, stand-alone fantasy. It was also apparently based on the childhood stories invented by Eric Rucker Eddison, an author now mostly buried in obscurity. In fact, my purchase was motivated almost entirely by a mention of this novel in relation to David Eddings, one of my early favourite fantasy authors, and not from any popular repute. 'Ouroboros' is more epic than most other fantasy or science fiction novels I've ever read, but at the cost of being horribly hard to get into due to a necessary acclimatization to the prose style. You're going to need some true reading skills and patience at the outset of this one, before it all snaps into place! (This was even harder in my case due to the awful optical character recognition and typesetting used in my copy. Diabolically bad. Must get a different edition.)
It's a marathon novel, covering the epic conflict over many years between the peoples known as the Witches and the Demons of the world Mercury. They aren't actually witches or demons, nor are the other people really ghouls, goblins or pixies. They're all just arbitrary names, as is Mercury, which bears no importance to the narrative. Yes, the demons are mentioned to have horns once, but it's quickly forgotten, as is the entire gimmick of the opening, where a man called Blessington is transported in spirit to a birthday celebration for the rulers of the Witches, our heroes, as part of an astral jaunt. One chapter for Blessington, and then gone. Perhaps he imagined the horns?
The conflict truly is a long and majestic one, with many twists and turns, and is mainly between the triumvirate (technically a tetrarchy, but one is missing for most of the novel) of Demon Lords, and the reincarnating dark king Gorice of the Witches. There be dark mystical arts at play, a grand quest, desperate contests between generals, a time-lost queen banished to the edge of the world, court intrigues and one of the most ambiguous and twisty protagonists in the world of adventures in the form of Lord Gro, the goblin of shifting loyalties. Gro is possibly the most interesting of everyone in the work, as his changes are extremely well motivated. He's just a thwarted romantic, really! We never really address the waste of lives inherent to all the battles and conflicts, but this is not that kind of novel to begin with, and our modern judgement of military conflict is not in tune with any other era's in any way.
This was extremely enjoyable, after the settling in period. The only aspects that I really dislike in retrospect are the prologue and the epilogue. The prologue establishes the previously mentioned novelty which is swiftly thrown away, while the epilogue effectively undoes the main thrust of the whole narrative in a bid to have the novel literally become repeating, instead of just having the evil King be the representation of recursion in fiction. However, these are small things to worry about in reality. 'Ouroboros' was a grand exercise, and it would be nice to go on to the Eddison trilogy that awaits in the future.
Wow. Completely out of the blue, a classic.
O.
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