The Worm Ouroboros: XXVII. The Second Expedition to Impland

*The Worm Ouroboros* (1922) is a high fantasy epic novel by E. R. Eddison, written in an ornate, deliberately archaic prose that self-consciously imitates Elizabethan and Jacobean style. This chapter depicts a war council in the kingdom of Demonland, where Lord Juss assembles a massive armada — thousands of soldiers and dozens of warships — for a campaign to rescue his brother Goldry Bluszco, magically imprisoned on a mountain peak by their enemies in Witchland. The central dramatic tension is a strategic argument: Lord Brandoch Daha urges striking Witchland's stronghold Carcë first to secure their flanks, while Juss is bound by a sacred oath not to deviate from his quest to free Goldry. Allied kings Gaslark and Prince La Fireez arrive and pledge their forces, with La Fireez notably refusing to march on Carcë because his own sister married a Witchland lord — a personal loyalty that cuts across the war. The chapter is as much a showcase of character as strategy: Brandoch Daha's languid, needle-sharp wit, Juss's immovable honor, and the elaborate court rituals of greeting and feasting establish these as heroic archetypes rendered in heightened, almost theatrical language. Readers drawn to pre-Tolkien secondary-world fantasy with rich prose, chivalric codes, and elaborate invented geography will find this a representative and demanding sample of the book's pleasures.

The Worm Ouroboros: XXVII. The Second Expedition to Impland

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