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The Zimiamvian Trilogy #1
Mistress of Mistresses: A Vision of Zimiamvia
This first book of the Zimiamvian Trilogy, MISTRESS OF MISTRESSES, mingles the fate of a man of our own world with that of his Zimiamvian counterpart as one of the most arrant villains ever created foments a dynastic war for control of the Three Kingdoms.
405 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1935
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About the author
E.R. Eddison
34 books190 followersEric Rücker Eddison was an English civil servant and author, writing under the name "E.R. Eddison."
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March 23, 2025
2025 re-read: 5 stars
I’ve enjoyed this trip to Ziniamvia more than any other I’ve made. If I may quote Varvatos Vex, “it was glorious!” So much so that I think I must bump it up from my previously measly allotment of four stars to a full five. Truly a classic of the genre, if an obscure and admittedly strange one.
Touted as a difficult work by a difficult writer (one arguably out of step with his own era’s culture, let alone ours) I found my passage through the land of Zimiamvia this time to be smooth as silk. Perhaps I’ve simply read it often enough, but somehow none of the ‘difficulty’ of Eddison’s text (whether it was obscure vocabulary, archaic speech patterns, or abstruse philosophy) was an obstacle to me or my enjoyment this time around and I was simply able to immerse myself in the world he created, wandering amongst the multifarious gardens of Eddison’s lush prose. To whit who else could describe the play of firelight upon a sleeping form like this:
You either love that kind of thing or you hate it. I took it as a much needed and heady draught of the best vintage.
More than simply a wish fulfillment adventure (though it is that), the Zimiamvian books allowed Eddison to expound a philosophy that is, like the story, both tragic and hopeful. He seems to be attempting to square the circle of life’s mysteries primarily through an examination of the harmony of opposites. In attempting to answer (or at least explain) the riddle of human life, happiness, and suffering he finds an intriguing, if not exactly comforting (or perhaps even believable) answer. I can’t say I’d be truly comfortable in his world, or that I think all of his ideas are justified, but man are they gorgeous…and gorgeously conveyed. No action is small here, or perhaps better to say that even the smallest action has weight, worth, and meaning.
Original review:
Like The Worm Ouroboros _Mistress of Mistresses_ is a book that only E. R. Eddison could have written and is one that is likely to garner an even smaller following than the admittedly obscure Worm. For my part I think that this book, and its subsequent sequels that make up the Zimiamvian Trilogy, is perhaps Eddison’s best work. It may not be as approachable as the Worm (and boy is that saying something!), but I think its greater depth and scope make for what amounts to a truly impressive achievement.
The main character is Edward Lessingham, that enigmatic figure last seen in the prologue to the Worm whose dream sequence led us to Eddison’s Mercury and then, to most reader’s disdain and confusion, was promptly dropped. The only other obvious link between the works is in a short scene in the Worm with Lord Juss and Brandoch Daha after the two have climbed the mountain Koshtra Pivrarcha and look into the distance where they can see and ponder upon:
This scene, I think, is key to understanding the trilogy, and indeed Eddison’s worldview which permeates all of his work; more on that later.
As with the Worm we again have a prologue that moves from what seems to be our world to another and it may appear in some ways divorced from what follows, though this one is much more clearly linked to the fantasy world that makes up the rest of the book. In this prologue yet another character never to be seen again is introduced to us, a friend of Edward Lessingham’s who sits by the latter’s death-bed as the years catch up with him and reminisces about his meeting and subsequent adventures with the great man. A hidden portrait is revealed and an enigmatic poem is read and then the book proper begins as we are placed squarely next to a young Lessingham dreamily staring into a goblet of wine as his aide-de-camp Amaury berates him for a particularly impolitic deed. From here on in we will follow Lessignham in his adventures in the fabled land of Zimiamvia where an old and ruthless king has died and his somewhat less able son sits precariously upon the throne.
The basic outline of the story that follows is of the simplest: varying groups are vying for power as the long-established stranglehold of the dead King Mezentius is loosened and opportunity arises for the powerful and the clever. What elevates this story above a mere kingdom-squabbling fantasy, in my mind at least, are the characters. As the story unfolds we are introduced to a large cast of characters, each vying in different ways to be masters of their circumstances and all of whom are to play significant parts in the intrigues that follow. These characters are almost all equally fascinating (with the one glaring exception of Antiope who is something of a pill) and they live, die, love and breathe with such gusto and power that it is hard not to fall in love with them a little. In addition to the heroic and danger-loving Lessingham these characters include the Duke Barganax, an illegitimate son of the dead king whose martial prowess and valour are only superseded by his love of luxury and culture; Barganax’s lover Fiorinda, a mysterious and alluring femme fatale whose very being seems to harbour secrets about the nature of existence; Dr. Vandermast a strange old courtier of the Duke’s whose learning is almost as opaque to the characters of the novel as it is to the reader and whose role in the story is nearly as mysterious as that of Fiorinda; Princess Antiope, daughter of Mezentius and possible pawn to a host of would-be regents; and last, but best, of all Horius Parry, the Vicar of Rerek, cousin-german of Lessingham, and perhaps the most delightful (dare I say delicious?) villain I have ever encountered. Pug-faced and pugnacious, the Vicar is a man we love to hate (or maybe hate to love). Bull-necked, hot-blooded and quick-tempered, the Vicar can appear on the surface to be little more than a ham-handed thug, but beneath his bristly scalp is a clever mind able to take nearly any circumstance and turn it to his advantage. Almost as good are his sycophantic and sly major domo Gabriel Flores and his pack of man-eating hounds.
Lessingham, much to the chagrin of his noble friend and lieutenant Amaury, has thrown in with his cousin the Vicar and has set himself on a knife’s edge path of trying to both fulfil his obligations to his cousin while steering these plans towards ends that will allow his own noble conscience to be satisfied. It’s a fascinating relationship as each views the other as perhaps his only valid peer and seems to hold the other in an equal amount of loving admiration and disdainful hatred. The back and forth of their machinations as each tried to retain the assistance of the other while maintaining the upper hand is fascinating and were probably my favourite parts of the book. Next would be the scenes in Barganax’s court where many of the intrigues revolving around the throne of Mezentius are hatched and we watch as the man viewed by many as a pleasure-loving fop shows himself to be a dangerous man to cross whose role in the coming conflict will be pivotal.
Spread amongst these conspiracies and outright battles runs a strange vein of philosophical and cosmological musing based on Eddison’s own eccentric flavour of Spinozan philosophy and centring on the figures of Vandermast and Fiorinda wherein all of the events of the novel seem to be nothing more than the manifestations of the desires of the goddess Aphrodite and her lover. This is where things get weird and I imagine most readers are lost. Hints and innuendo are constantly dropped throughout the story that Lessingham, Antiope, Barganax, and Fiorinda are each manifestations of these celestial figures for whom the world of Zimiamvia was brought into existence by Vandermast as a playground wherein they might be free to experience their heart’s desires free from the ennui of godhood and immortality. Thus heroic struggle, undying but dangerous love, and the chance to both fail and succeed epically are central to everything these characters undertake. Much like the conclusion to the Worm, wherein paradise was the ability to love, hate, and fight against the greatest odds for eternity, here we have the same philosophy writ even larger and expounded upon in some detail. As I noted many readers will likely be turned off by this, either because (like Tolkien) they may find Eddison’s morality distasteful, or they simply find the long-winded and opaque meanderings of Vandermast boring. I can’t say that these are my favourite parts of the book, but upon multiple readings I have found them to be essential to the tale, and they certainly give to what might otherwise be seen as little more than an adventure power-fantasy an essence that elevates it into something a bit more substantial. The story proper of _Mistress of Mistresses_ ends in media res in a way that would be fully unexpected of anyone save Eddison, for here the worm ouroboros again rears his scaly head and the endless cycle of death and life, the movement from one pinnacle of great deeds to a paradise wherein they are re-enacted or even bettered, is again brought forth. It’s great, heady, and very weird stuff.
I’ve enjoyed this trip to Ziniamvia more than any other I’ve made. If I may quote Varvatos Vex, “it was glorious!” So much so that I think I must bump it up from my previously measly allotment of four stars to a full five. Truly a classic of the genre, if an obscure and admittedly strange one.
Touted as a difficult work by a difficult writer (one arguably out of step with his own era’s culture, let alone ours) I found my passage through the land of Zimiamvia this time to be smooth as silk. Perhaps I’ve simply read it often enough, but somehow none of the ‘difficulty’ of Eddison’s text (whether it was obscure vocabulary, archaic speech patterns, or abstruse philosophy) was an obstacle to me or my enjoyment this time around and I was simply able to immerse myself in the world he created, wandering amongst the multifarious gardens of Eddison’s lush prose. To whit who else could describe the play of firelight upon a sleeping form like this:
The firelight saw her as its own, spirit of its spirit, dream of its dream, that which itself would become, might it but be clothed upon with the divinity of flesh: a presence secure, protective, glad, warm, fancy-free; and so it made sure of her, touching with trembling sudden fingers now her breathing bosom, now a ringlet of brown hair that rested curled on her shoulder, now a ruby warm against her throat.
You either love that kind of thing or you hate it. I took it as a much needed and heady draught of the best vintage.
More than simply a wish fulfillment adventure (though it is that), the Zimiamvian books allowed Eddison to expound a philosophy that is, like the story, both tragic and hopeful. He seems to be attempting to square the circle of life’s mysteries primarily through an examination of the harmony of opposites. In attempting to answer (or at least explain) the riddle of human life, happiness, and suffering he finds an intriguing, if not exactly comforting (or perhaps even believable) answer. I can’t say I’d be truly comfortable in his world, or that I think all of his ideas are justified, but man are they gorgeous…and gorgeously conveyed. No action is small here, or perhaps better to say that even the smallest action has weight, worth, and meaning.
Original review:
Like The Worm Ouroboros _Mistress of Mistresses_ is a book that only E. R. Eddison could have written and is one that is likely to garner an even smaller following than the admittedly obscure Worm. For my part I think that this book, and its subsequent sequels that make up the Zimiamvian Trilogy, is perhaps Eddison’s best work. It may not be as approachable as the Worm (and boy is that saying something!), but I think its greater depth and scope make for what amounts to a truly impressive achievement.
The main character is Edward Lessingham, that enigmatic figure last seen in the prologue to the Worm whose dream sequence led us to Eddison’s Mercury and then, to most reader’s disdain and confusion, was promptly dropped. The only other obvious link between the works is in a short scene in the Worm with Lord Juss and Brandoch Daha after the two have climbed the mountain Koshtra Pivrarcha and look into the distance where they can see and ponder upon:
…the fabled land of Zimiamvia. Is it true, thinkest thou, which philosophers tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed, even they that were great upon earth and did great deeds when they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and glories thereof, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?
This scene, I think, is key to understanding the trilogy, and indeed Eddison’s worldview which permeates all of his work; more on that later.
As with the Worm we again have a prologue that moves from what seems to be our world to another and it may appear in some ways divorced from what follows, though this one is much more clearly linked to the fantasy world that makes up the rest of the book. In this prologue yet another character never to be seen again is introduced to us, a friend of Edward Lessingham’s who sits by the latter’s death-bed as the years catch up with him and reminisces about his meeting and subsequent adventures with the great man. A hidden portrait is revealed and an enigmatic poem is read and then the book proper begins as we are placed squarely next to a young Lessingham dreamily staring into a goblet of wine as his aide-de-camp Amaury berates him for a particularly impolitic deed. From here on in we will follow Lessignham in his adventures in the fabled land of Zimiamvia where an old and ruthless king has died and his somewhat less able son sits precariously upon the throne.
The basic outline of the story that follows is of the simplest: varying groups are vying for power as the long-established stranglehold of the dead King Mezentius is loosened and opportunity arises for the powerful and the clever. What elevates this story above a mere kingdom-squabbling fantasy, in my mind at least, are the characters. As the story unfolds we are introduced to a large cast of characters, each vying in different ways to be masters of their circumstances and all of whom are to play significant parts in the intrigues that follow. These characters are almost all equally fascinating (with the one glaring exception of Antiope who is something of a pill) and they live, die, love and breathe with such gusto and power that it is hard not to fall in love with them a little. In addition to the heroic and danger-loving Lessingham these characters include the Duke Barganax, an illegitimate son of the dead king whose martial prowess and valour are only superseded by his love of luxury and culture; Barganax’s lover Fiorinda, a mysterious and alluring femme fatale whose very being seems to harbour secrets about the nature of existence; Dr. Vandermast a strange old courtier of the Duke’s whose learning is almost as opaque to the characters of the novel as it is to the reader and whose role in the story is nearly as mysterious as that of Fiorinda; Princess Antiope, daughter of Mezentius and possible pawn to a host of would-be regents; and last, but best, of all Horius Parry, the Vicar of Rerek, cousin-german of Lessingham, and perhaps the most delightful (dare I say delicious?) villain I have ever encountered. Pug-faced and pugnacious, the Vicar is a man we love to hate (or maybe hate to love). Bull-necked, hot-blooded and quick-tempered, the Vicar can appear on the surface to be little more than a ham-handed thug, but beneath his bristly scalp is a clever mind able to take nearly any circumstance and turn it to his advantage. Almost as good are his sycophantic and sly major domo Gabriel Flores and his pack of man-eating hounds.
Lessingham, much to the chagrin of his noble friend and lieutenant Amaury, has thrown in with his cousin the Vicar and has set himself on a knife’s edge path of trying to both fulfil his obligations to his cousin while steering these plans towards ends that will allow his own noble conscience to be satisfied. It’s a fascinating relationship as each views the other as perhaps his only valid peer and seems to hold the other in an equal amount of loving admiration and disdainful hatred. The back and forth of their machinations as each tried to retain the assistance of the other while maintaining the upper hand is fascinating and were probably my favourite parts of the book. Next would be the scenes in Barganax’s court where many of the intrigues revolving around the throne of Mezentius are hatched and we watch as the man viewed by many as a pleasure-loving fop shows himself to be a dangerous man to cross whose role in the coming conflict will be pivotal.
Spread amongst these conspiracies and outright battles runs a strange vein of philosophical and cosmological musing based on Eddison’s own eccentric flavour of Spinozan philosophy and centring on the figures of Vandermast and Fiorinda wherein all of the events of the novel seem to be nothing more than the manifestations of the desires of the goddess Aphrodite and her lover. This is where things get weird and I imagine most readers are lost. Hints and innuendo are constantly dropped throughout the story that Lessingham, Antiope, Barganax, and Fiorinda are each manifestations of these celestial figures for whom the world of Zimiamvia was brought into existence by Vandermast as a playground wherein they might be free to experience their heart’s desires free from the ennui of godhood and immortality. Thus heroic struggle, undying but dangerous love, and the chance to both fail and succeed epically are central to everything these characters undertake. Much like the conclusion to the Worm, wherein paradise was the ability to love, hate, and fight against the greatest odds for eternity, here we have the same philosophy writ even larger and expounded upon in some detail. As I noted many readers will likely be turned off by this, either because (like Tolkien) they may find Eddison’s morality distasteful, or they simply find the long-winded and opaque meanderings of Vandermast boring. I can’t say that these are my favourite parts of the book, but upon multiple readings I have found them to be essential to the tale, and they certainly give to what might otherwise be seen as little more than an adventure power-fantasy an essence that elevates it into something a bit more substantial. The story proper of _Mistress of Mistresses_ ends in media res in a way that would be fully unexpected of anyone save Eddison, for here the worm ouroboros again rears his scaly head and the endless cycle of death and life, the movement from one pinnacle of great deeds to a paradise wherein they are re-enacted or even bettered, is again brought forth. It’s great, heady, and very weird stuff.
June 28, 2022
Lessingham was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
Lessingham, you may recall, was the English gentleman whose dream(?) provided the wafer-thin framing story to The Worm Ouroboros. You may also recall that at one point in Worm, our heroes saw, from a mountain in the distance, the fabled land of Zimiamvia, and wondered if it was, in fact, the home of the souls of the blessed.
The answer is ... complicated.
As mentioned, the book begins in England around Lessingham's deathbed; he'd lived to a ripe old age and done great things. But then the scene shifts to Zimiamvia which is, perhaps, less paradisiacal than had been believed; it feels, in point of fact, much more like Renaissance Italy. The King, Mezentius, is dead. His heir, King Styllis, is also dead. Next in line of succession is Queen Antiope, although power is wielded on her behalf by the Vicar of Rerek, Horius Parry, aided most ably by his cousin Lessingham, a great captain of men. (The same Lessingham, at a much younger age? Difficult to say, at least at this remove ...) The Vicar is, well, not a nice man ('twas ever thus), and others, including Mezentius' bastard son Barganax, raise rebellion. Lessingham may in some ways sympathize with their cause, but he's honor-bound to uphold the Queen (and, by extension, the Vicar).
This is a less adventuresome book than Worm Ouroboros, but I might actually like it better. There are plots and reversals and sword-strokes aplenty, but the action is mostly carried forth in (magnificently spoke) dialogue. There's also magic, embodied in the form of Doctor Vandermast, but it's of a very subtle sort. And looming like a shadow over all else is Love (yes, with a capital "L") in its manifold splendours.
Lessingham, you may recall, was the English gentleman whose dream(?) provided the wafer-thin framing story to The Worm Ouroboros. You may also recall that at one point in Worm, our heroes saw, from a mountain in the distance, the fabled land of Zimiamvia, and wondered if it was, in fact, the home of the souls of the blessed.
The answer is ... complicated.
As mentioned, the book begins in England around Lessingham's deathbed; he'd lived to a ripe old age and done great things. But then the scene shifts to Zimiamvia which is, perhaps, less paradisiacal than had been believed; it feels, in point of fact, much more like Renaissance Italy. The King, Mezentius, is dead. His heir, King Styllis, is also dead. Next in line of succession is Queen Antiope, although power is wielded on her behalf by the Vicar of Rerek, Horius Parry, aided most ably by his cousin Lessingham, a great captain of men. (The same Lessingham, at a much younger age? Difficult to say, at least at this remove ...) The Vicar is, well, not a nice man ('twas ever thus), and others, including Mezentius' bastard son Barganax, raise rebellion. Lessingham may in some ways sympathize with their cause, but he's honor-bound to uphold the Queen (and, by extension, the Vicar).
This is a less adventuresome book than Worm Ouroboros, but I might actually like it better. There are plots and reversals and sword-strokes aplenty, but the action is mostly carried forth in (magnificently spoke) dialogue. There's also magic, embodied in the form of Doctor Vandermast, but it's of a very subtle sort. And looming like a shadow over all else is Love (yes, with a capital "L") in its manifold splendours.
January 19, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in April 2002.
To read Tolkien and Eddison in close succession is to realise just how much the latter is the better writer. This is his second fantasy novel, loosely connected to the first and best known, The Worm Ouroboros, and beginning a trilogy ending with the unfinished The Mezentian Gate. Although the earlier novel is better known, this is the better one and Eddison's talent clearly developed in the nine years since the publication of The Worm Ouroboros.
When strong king Mezentius of the Three Kingdoms dies, his heir Styllis is a weak young man, unable to handle two particularly powerful subjects, his illegitimate brother Barganax and the sinister Honorius Parry. Styllis soon dies, poisoned, leaving a will guaranteed to sow further discord in the vagueness of the terms by which Parry is appointed guardian of his sister Antiope, now queen. The other major character is Parry's cousin, Lessingham, whose honour makes him someone that Barganax can trust as long as he can keep Parry from breaking the agreements he makes.
This plot is closely modelled on the themes from real medieval history, one of which is the continual rivalry between monarchs and their most eminent subjects. A regency presented lots of opportunities to the unscrupulous, as so much of the state consisted in the person of the ruler, and could be guaranteed to disturb the balance between these groups. This could even happen in England, one of the most stable states in Western Europe, as when John of Gaunt was guardian to Richard II. Most fantasy is based on Tolkien's ideas, which in turn come from the literature of the medieval period in which quests undertaken by individuals or small groups with a spiritual dimension are common; in using real life as his source, Eddison prefigures modern authors with an interest in politics, such as George R.R. Martin, though Martin's brutal setting from his Songs of Ice and Fire series is replaced with something more gentle, a dreamlike medieval world as seen through a pre-Raphaelite lens.
People often admire the descriptions in Tolkien's novels, but to me Eddison is superior in this as in many other aspects of his work. What he describes is not so definite, perhaps, but it is infinitely more poetic and suggestive. To me, this invitation to use my imagination is much more satisfying than merely acquiescing in that of the author. Eddison natually also scores in areas where Tolkien is weak: his characters are much less stereotyped, and he can portray interesting women; he introduces a sexuality which is truly erotic; and even includes a hint of homoeroticism.
There is a spiritual side to the stories too, which is more of the things not being the way they seem variety than the overt magic more common in fantasy. The way that this is done is rather reminiscent of George MacDonald, even though it lacks the Christian allegory of, say, Lilith.
Mistress of Mistresses should be more widely recognised as a classic of the genre, but for some reason it remains little known.
To read Tolkien and Eddison in close succession is to realise just how much the latter is the better writer. This is his second fantasy novel, loosely connected to the first and best known, The Worm Ouroboros, and beginning a trilogy ending with the unfinished The Mezentian Gate. Although the earlier novel is better known, this is the better one and Eddison's talent clearly developed in the nine years since the publication of The Worm Ouroboros.
When strong king Mezentius of the Three Kingdoms dies, his heir Styllis is a weak young man, unable to handle two particularly powerful subjects, his illegitimate brother Barganax and the sinister Honorius Parry. Styllis soon dies, poisoned, leaving a will guaranteed to sow further discord in the vagueness of the terms by which Parry is appointed guardian of his sister Antiope, now queen. The other major character is Parry's cousin, Lessingham, whose honour makes him someone that Barganax can trust as long as he can keep Parry from breaking the agreements he makes.
This plot is closely modelled on the themes from real medieval history, one of which is the continual rivalry between monarchs and their most eminent subjects. A regency presented lots of opportunities to the unscrupulous, as so much of the state consisted in the person of the ruler, and could be guaranteed to disturb the balance between these groups. This could even happen in England, one of the most stable states in Western Europe, as when John of Gaunt was guardian to Richard II. Most fantasy is based on Tolkien's ideas, which in turn come from the literature of the medieval period in which quests undertaken by individuals or small groups with a spiritual dimension are common; in using real life as his source, Eddison prefigures modern authors with an interest in politics, such as George R.R. Martin, though Martin's brutal setting from his Songs of Ice and Fire series is replaced with something more gentle, a dreamlike medieval world as seen through a pre-Raphaelite lens.
People often admire the descriptions in Tolkien's novels, but to me Eddison is superior in this as in many other aspects of his work. What he describes is not so definite, perhaps, but it is infinitely more poetic and suggestive. To me, this invitation to use my imagination is much more satisfying than merely acquiescing in that of the author. Eddison natually also scores in areas where Tolkien is weak: his characters are much less stereotyped, and he can portray interesting women; he introduces a sexuality which is truly erotic; and even includes a hint of homoeroticism.
There is a spiritual side to the stories too, which is more of the things not being the way they seem variety than the overt magic more common in fantasy. The way that this is done is rather reminiscent of George MacDonald, even though it lacks the Christian allegory of, say, Lilith.
Mistress of Mistresses should be more widely recognised as a classic of the genre, but for some reason it remains little known.
October 11, 2023
It is the tradition of the fantasy genre that it draws on the heroic mythologies and legends of the Dark Ages. Tolkien, and those who followed him, found their sources in the pre-Christian poetry of northern Europe, drawing particularly on Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythologies. But Tolkien and Lewis were Christians. Their worldview was alien to the cultures which produced the tales they drew from. Really this is true of most of us, even those who do not identify as Christians. It is why the rich, daring Lannisters are the villains in Martin’s books, while the humble and unfashionable Starks are the heroes.
This is not so with Eddison, and is what is perhaps most strange about his books. His morality is that of the Heroic Age, when great deeds and physical daring were prized more dearly than charity, and riches were unambiguously superior to poverty. Both this book and The Worm Ouroboros are books of great men doing valiant things. I think the better known Worm is less strange and more enjoyable: it is more recognisable as an important antecedent to Tolkien. A fantastical quest plot, peopled with medieval characters, narrated as though it were a normal book. My own experience has been that almost all pre-Tolkien fantasy reads much more like fairytale, with events not being recounted as though they are happening in reality, but rather recalled as some bygone legend. (Here I am thinking above all of Lord Dunsany). Eddison and Tolkien do not write like that. Presumably there are important historical factors which allowed for this shift. Before them I imagine it simply would not have occurred to an author to write ‘seriously’ of imagined worlds, just as in the pre-modern period it did not occur to people to write of everyday life or people, except in the comic mode.
The differences between Eddison and Tolkien are not just in worldview. Eddison knew and had translated Icelandic sagas, but he was also drawing on historical material from the later medieval period, as well as on the courtly literary tradition of France which Tolkien repudiated. This, incidentally, is what marks the greatest difference between Martin and Tolkien: the former draws on history, and as such writes of his characters as real, historical persons. Tolkien, though he is not writing fairytales, stays within the realms of Romance. It is impossible to conceive of a Tolkien character dying on a toilet like Tywin Lannister: such events form part of a lower register which Tolkien does not touch on, except perhaps where the Hobbits are concerned.
Mistress of Mistresses departs from the quest plot. Its ‘story’ is mostly conveyed as condensed reportage, or like historical chronicle. Battles occur, but we are not invited to experience them along with the characters, nor to worry about the fate of those involved. The great men will triumph, or die with honour. Regions are listed off and the reader cannot be expected to remember where any of them lay in relation to any other. Eddison has none of Tolkien's philological interest in producing a linguistically plausible world. There is an almost aristocratic indifference in giving out such silly names as Demonland, Impland, etc.
The real scenes of interest are conversations held in secluded gardens, touching on Eddison’s philosophical interests. These are enjoyable and very strange, and Eddison has succeeded above anyone else in creating a convincing reproduction of the language of that period. (Of course there are many anachronisms: for example his use of skerry, a 17th century Orkney word which the courtly heroes would certainly not have known). But the purple prose does begin to tire. There is nothing as arresting as the mountaineering sections of the Worm, and this reads more as a work of experimental Modernism that it does of fantasy. And there does occasionally creep in a sense of hero-worship. Eddison admires the men he writes of, and the reader must constantly hear of their daring to go and do what men of lesser rank would never venture. This is not a far-cry from the clichés of modern day fantasy. Tolkien, of course, was also experimental. No one had attempted anything like what he was doing. Yet his bore fruit, while Eddison's pointed to a way few have been inclined to follow.
This is not so with Eddison, and is what is perhaps most strange about his books. His morality is that of the Heroic Age, when great deeds and physical daring were prized more dearly than charity, and riches were unambiguously superior to poverty. Both this book and The Worm Ouroboros are books of great men doing valiant things. I think the better known Worm is less strange and more enjoyable: it is more recognisable as an important antecedent to Tolkien. A fantastical quest plot, peopled with medieval characters, narrated as though it were a normal book. My own experience has been that almost all pre-Tolkien fantasy reads much more like fairytale, with events not being recounted as though they are happening in reality, but rather recalled as some bygone legend. (Here I am thinking above all of Lord Dunsany). Eddison and Tolkien do not write like that. Presumably there are important historical factors which allowed for this shift. Before them I imagine it simply would not have occurred to an author to write ‘seriously’ of imagined worlds, just as in the pre-modern period it did not occur to people to write of everyday life or people, except in the comic mode.
The differences between Eddison and Tolkien are not just in worldview. Eddison knew and had translated Icelandic sagas, but he was also drawing on historical material from the later medieval period, as well as on the courtly literary tradition of France which Tolkien repudiated. This, incidentally, is what marks the greatest difference between Martin and Tolkien: the former draws on history, and as such writes of his characters as real, historical persons. Tolkien, though he is not writing fairytales, stays within the realms of Romance. It is impossible to conceive of a Tolkien character dying on a toilet like Tywin Lannister: such events form part of a lower register which Tolkien does not touch on, except perhaps where the Hobbits are concerned.
Mistress of Mistresses departs from the quest plot. Its ‘story’ is mostly conveyed as condensed reportage, or like historical chronicle. Battles occur, but we are not invited to experience them along with the characters, nor to worry about the fate of those involved. The great men will triumph, or die with honour. Regions are listed off and the reader cannot be expected to remember where any of them lay in relation to any other. Eddison has none of Tolkien's philological interest in producing a linguistically plausible world. There is an almost aristocratic indifference in giving out such silly names as Demonland, Impland, etc.
The real scenes of interest are conversations held in secluded gardens, touching on Eddison’s philosophical interests. These are enjoyable and very strange, and Eddison has succeeded above anyone else in creating a convincing reproduction of the language of that period. (Of course there are many anachronisms: for example his use of skerry, a 17th century Orkney word which the courtly heroes would certainly not have known). But the purple prose does begin to tire. There is nothing as arresting as the mountaineering sections of the Worm, and this reads more as a work of experimental Modernism that it does of fantasy. And there does occasionally creep in a sense of hero-worship. Eddison admires the men he writes of, and the reader must constantly hear of their daring to go and do what men of lesser rank would never venture. This is not a far-cry from the clichés of modern day fantasy. Tolkien, of course, was also experimental. No one had attempted anything like what he was doing. Yet his bore fruit, while Eddison's pointed to a way few have been inclined to follow.
June 5, 2015
Reading this book felt like being a fancy party filled with elegant and outlandish nobles who I knew only slightly and were far too dignified to explain themselves to me. I drifted through it, things overheard and only half-understood, as if in a dream that Eddison was dreaming for me, then waking up and not being able to quite put the pieces together. It's an extremely mystical book: like The Worm Ouroboros, it starts out with a heady and entrancing frame story involving Lessingham. But this time the frame is more involved in the story, and acts as a sort of parallel universe, a perpetually twilit world that sometimes shifts just enough to touch Zimiamvia. I believe it is significant that it is called an "Overture" rather than a "Prelude," as it doesn't merely set a mood for things to come but instead, in a way, gives a fleeting sampling of the entire novel. As such, much of the book is concerned with things half-remembered, feelings pushing through from a forgotten past.
The politics often made my head spin (and Eddison's bizarre nomenclature didn't help with that), but the impressions are rapturous. Also like The Worm, Eddison lavishes in highly sensual details of natural landscapes and opulent man-made halls. If you like reading pages upon pages of mountains, gardens, and mosaics, this is the book for you. However, Mistress of Mistresses has a much more romantic bent, as hinted by the Baudelaire poem printed at the beginning, from which it draws its title. Throughout the book, there are very evocative images of women, existing simultaneously as both male and female, or as both human and animal. This also especially comes through in the character of the Duke, who (in overture with the Lessingham we are introduced to in the prelude) applies his obsessive nature to paintings of his lover, which he then destroys.
In addition, chapters like the overture, "A Spring Night In Mornagay," and "A Night-Piece on Ambremerine" are so exquisitely beautiful that they could very well function as separate tableaux. Just one example of the spectacular prose found therein:
Though the style is more florid and romantic than in The Worm, Mistress of Mistresses also displays Eddison's knack for odd and resonant vocabulary, especially verbs, drawn from archaic English and French.
It is an undoubtedly heavy and often confounding book, but for all its density it is irresistible.
The politics often made my head spin (and Eddison's bizarre nomenclature didn't help with that), but the impressions are rapturous. Also like The Worm, Eddison lavishes in highly sensual details of natural landscapes and opulent man-made halls. If you like reading pages upon pages of mountains, gardens, and mosaics, this is the book for you. However, Mistress of Mistresses has a much more romantic bent, as hinted by the Baudelaire poem printed at the beginning, from which it draws its title. Throughout the book, there are very evocative images of women, existing simultaneously as both male and female, or as both human and animal. This also especially comes through in the character of the Duke, who (in overture with the Lessingham we are introduced to in the prelude) applies his obsessive nature to paintings of his lover, which he then destroys.
In addition, chapters like the overture, "A Spring Night In Mornagay," and "A Night-Piece on Ambremerine" are so exquisitely beautiful that they could very well function as separate tableaux. Just one example of the spectacular prose found therein:
Pale cliffs superimpended in the mist and the darkness, and fires burned there, with the semblance as of corpse-fires. And above those cliffs was the semblance of icy mountains, and the streams that rolled burning down them of lava, making a sizzling in the water that was heard high above the voice of the waves; and Lessingham beheld walking shrouded upon the cliffs faceless figures, beyond the stature of human kind, that seemed to despair and lament, lifting up skinny hands to the earless heaven. And while he beheld these things, there was torn a ragged rift in the clouds, and there fled there a bearded star, baleful in the abyss of night. And now there was thunder, and the noise as of a desolate sea roaring upon the coasts of death. Then, as a thought steps over the threshold of oblivion, all was gone; the cloudless summer night held its breath in the presence of its own inward blessedness; the waters purred in their sleep under the touch of Anthea's idly trailing finger.
Though the style is more florid and romantic than in The Worm, Mistress of Mistresses also displays Eddison's knack for odd and resonant vocabulary, especially verbs, drawn from archaic English and French.
It is an undoubtedly heavy and often confounding book, but for all its density it is irresistible.
May 31, 2022
I wasn’t expecting that…
[RANT MODE ACTIVATED]
[RANT MODE DISENGAGED]
Nevertheless, in this case and in a rather different context (that of the first page): I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting, like The Worm Ouroboros, a Morrisesque opening phrase. After all, The Worm starts like this:
“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.”
Which is pure fairytale. What I got was:
“Let me gather my thoughts a little, sitting here alone with you for the last time, in this high western window of your castle that you built so many years ago, to overhang like a sea eagle’s eyrie the grey-walled waters of your Raftsund.”
Which is dreamlike and meditative and, what is more, first person. Both first sentences, though, have a length and hypnotic rhythm to them that flows and ebbs like the ebb and flow of a strange, dark sea that laps and lulls with the music of its tides the shores of a high island rising, crag on gannet-haunted crag, splashed with white and tufts of pinks to a plateau where the puffins burrow midst the grassy tussocks; rising higher, higher still to the cool, clear sky and the drifts of pale cloud in the pale dawn and so peace.
(Which I’d feel horribly self-conscious about producing if Eddison weren’t the master of the massively imbalanced simile.)
Then, too, I was expecting a Worm-like agglomeration of different ideas – different types of ideas – set in a huge adventure story that had accreted over a long period. What I got was a Janus-headed narrative, part tale of civil strife and squabbling princelings, part allegorical-philosophical and whatnot. I like both; I like being baffled.
I was expecting dialogue with lots of thee-ing and thou-ing, and there I wasn’t disappointed, though it’s important to note that, though it’s denser here than in The Worm, Eddison can carry it off in a way most authors can’t.
“ ‘Well’, said Lessingham, ‘I have listened most obediently. You have it fully: there’s not a word to which I take exceptions. Nay I admire it all, for indeed I told you every word of it myself last night.’
‘Then would to heaven you’d be advised by’t,’ said Amaury. ‘Too much light, I think, hath made you moon-eyed’”
I was expecting some mildly obscure vocabulary, and again he delivers, though not to the same extent as in The Worm. There’s something rather flattering about the way both he and Mervyn Peake, if a word has the shape and meaning needed for a sentence, don’t hesitate to use it. It shows a measure of trust in the reader’s intelligence.
[RANT MODE ACTIVATED]
[RANT MODE DISENGAGED]
So there are, for example, a couple of settlegangs , a skerry , some smaragds , and that is absolutely fine because they’re the words he needs to use. They belong in that context.
I was expecting ornamental but perhaps somewhat one-dimensional characters , and I got people with actual depth and inner conflict, like the Vicar of Rerek. True, the goodies are all good-looking and the baddies ugly, but oh they’re fine characters none the less. Even the women (and this is an early-to-mid-20th-century fantasy novel) are people as well as symbols.
(Vicar, incidentally, doesn’t mean Anglican clergyman here, but something closer to Governor.)
And I was expecting a lot of fancy gemstones scattered around the place, because he wouldn’t be Eddison if he didn’t raid his wife’s jewellery box. Indeed he does describe a lot of costumes and interiors, though I think it better done here: you get more of a sense there are bodies in the bodices.
So, quite aside from being a bit shorter than The Worm Ouroboros, I think it a much better book. If The Worm is mildly amazing, this is utterly fantastic. Which you might hope for in a fantasy. I don’t just want to read it again; I need to.
And now I need to read something ghastly to cleanse my palate.
[RANT MODE ACTIVATED]
[RANT MODE DISENGAGED]
Nevertheless, in this case and in a rather different context (that of the first page): I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting, like The Worm Ouroboros, a Morrisesque opening phrase. After all, The Worm starts like this:
“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.”
Which is pure fairytale. What I got was:
“Let me gather my thoughts a little, sitting here alone with you for the last time, in this high western window of your castle that you built so many years ago, to overhang like a sea eagle’s eyrie the grey-walled waters of your Raftsund.”
Which is dreamlike and meditative and, what is more, first person. Both first sentences, though, have a length and hypnotic rhythm to them that flows and ebbs like the ebb and flow of a strange, dark sea that laps and lulls with the music of its tides the shores of a high island rising, crag on gannet-haunted crag, splashed with white and tufts of pinks to a plateau where the puffins burrow midst the grassy tussocks; rising higher, higher still to the cool, clear sky and the drifts of pale cloud in the pale dawn and so peace.
(Which I’d feel horribly self-conscious about producing if Eddison weren’t the master of the massively imbalanced simile.)
Then, too, I was expecting a Worm-like agglomeration of different ideas – different types of ideas – set in a huge adventure story that had accreted over a long period. What I got was a Janus-headed narrative, part tale of civil strife and squabbling princelings, part allegorical-philosophical and whatnot. I like both; I like being baffled.
I was expecting dialogue with lots of thee-ing and thou-ing, and there I wasn’t disappointed, though it’s important to note that, though it’s denser here than in The Worm, Eddison can carry it off in a way most authors can’t.
“ ‘Well’, said Lessingham, ‘I have listened most obediently. You have it fully: there’s not a word to which I take exceptions. Nay I admire it all, for indeed I told you every word of it myself last night.’
‘Then would to heaven you’d be advised by’t,’ said Amaury. ‘Too much light, I think, hath made you moon-eyed’”
I was expecting some mildly obscure vocabulary, and again he delivers, though not to the same extent as in The Worm. There’s something rather flattering about the way both he and Mervyn Peake, if a word has the shape and meaning needed for a sentence, don’t hesitate to use it. It shows a measure of trust in the reader’s intelligence.
[RANT MODE ACTIVATED]
[RANT MODE DISENGAGED]
So there are, for example, a couple of settlegangs , a skerry , some smaragds , and that is absolutely fine because they’re the words he needs to use. They belong in that context.
I was expecting ornamental but perhaps somewhat one-dimensional characters , and I got people with actual depth and inner conflict, like the Vicar of Rerek. True, the goodies are all good-looking and the baddies ugly, but oh they’re fine characters none the less. Even the women (and this is an early-to-mid-20th-century fantasy novel) are people as well as symbols.
(Vicar, incidentally, doesn’t mean Anglican clergyman here, but something closer to Governor.)
And I was expecting a lot of fancy gemstones scattered around the place, because he wouldn’t be Eddison if he didn’t raid his wife’s jewellery box. Indeed he does describe a lot of costumes and interiors, though I think it better done here: you get more of a sense there are bodies in the bodices.
So, quite aside from being a bit shorter than The Worm Ouroboros, I think it a much better book. If The Worm is mildly amazing, this is utterly fantastic. Which you might hope for in a fantasy. I don’t just want to read it again; I need to.
And now I need to read something ghastly to cleanse my palate.
October 30, 2022
I wanted so badly to like this fantasy written by a contemporary of Tolkien who was said to be just as good but I can't quite see it. I do see the man's talent and at times his superb imagery and imagination truly inspires but at other times his endless descriptive adjectives slow the storyline down to such a crawl one loses track of what was going on to begin with.
Where the storyline does bleed through it is a good one centering mostly around an anti-hero named Lessingham whose devotion to his truly evil cousin (and the story's villian) known as the Vicar borders on madness. One can't help but root for Lessingham to find the light for he seems like a decent man working for a bad boss.
The book when it works is a collage of beauty, culture, legend, love and violence and Eddison (like George RR Martin) isn't afraid to kill off popular characters to move his story forward.
The fantasy setting for this story seems like an alternate Earth where magical creatures exist but are not prominent.
This book is the first of a trilogy. The title character, a perfect Latin beauty of Iberia and concubine of one of the leading Lords has great influence and looks to figure prominently in the volumes ahead. However after slogging through this first part of the trilogy, I just don't feel motivated enough to continue; at least for now.
Where the storyline does bleed through it is a good one centering mostly around an anti-hero named Lessingham whose devotion to his truly evil cousin (and the story's villian) known as the Vicar borders on madness. One can't help but root for Lessingham to find the light for he seems like a decent man working for a bad boss.
The book when it works is a collage of beauty, culture, legend, love and violence and Eddison (like George RR Martin) isn't afraid to kill off popular characters to move his story forward.
The fantasy setting for this story seems like an alternate Earth where magical creatures exist but are not prominent.
This book is the first of a trilogy. The title character, a perfect Latin beauty of Iberia and concubine of one of the leading Lords has great influence and looks to figure prominently in the volumes ahead. However after slogging through this first part of the trilogy, I just don't feel motivated enough to continue; at least for now.
February 2, 2022
I’ve read E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros several times of the last fifty or so years. Back in the early 1970s, those of us who read Tolkien and wanted other epic fantasy novels only had a few novels from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line to look to, and the Worm was the top of the list. But I never got around to Eddison’s other works. I thumbed through them and read bits of them, but they were clearly something very different from the Worm and not what I was looking for at the time. But after all these years, I’ve returned to Eddison, with the first of his Zimiamvia trilogy.
This is a strange book and a hard one to assess. Much of it is a very good tale of political intrigue and war within an imagined secondary world. After a short prologue, set seemingly in our world, the main story starts. King Mezentius has died, leaving the throne to a young heir, who in turn is killed. He has left the throne to Queen Antiope, with Horius Parry, the Vicar of Rerek, as regent. Parry is a great villain: hot tempered, dishonorable, willing to do whatever is necessary to secure power. He’s aided by his far more honorable cousin. Edward Lessingham, who as a war captain fights for Parry, but also tries to broker an honorable peace between the warring factions: a peace that keeps failing as Parry never honors the terms agreed to. And in the midst of this, there are important romances, including one between Lessingham and Queen Antiope.
If this is all the novel was, it would be easy to judge. But it’s not. Throughout the novel there are interludes with the philosopher Doctor Vandermast, and at times characters seem to, in reality or dream state (it’s not always clear) interact with each other and Vandermast. There are indications (and maybe that’s too strong a word) that the characters may all be aspects of either one another or the Goddess Aprhodite and other supernatural figures. It’s all very strange and murky, and in at least one place in the novel things drag to a halt for a long chapter as in some way characters from different threads meet at Vandermast’s. I read through the section twice, but I’m still not quite sure what was going on there.
In the end, I’m not sure whether these strange fantasy elements are essential, and that I need to reread this to see how it all works, or if the book would have been better had it left those out. This is another one that I need to think more about.
This is a strange book and a hard one to assess. Much of it is a very good tale of political intrigue and war within an imagined secondary world. After a short prologue, set seemingly in our world, the main story starts. King Mezentius has died, leaving the throne to a young heir, who in turn is killed. He has left the throne to Queen Antiope, with Horius Parry, the Vicar of Rerek, as regent. Parry is a great villain: hot tempered, dishonorable, willing to do whatever is necessary to secure power. He’s aided by his far more honorable cousin. Edward Lessingham, who as a war captain fights for Parry, but also tries to broker an honorable peace between the warring factions: a peace that keeps failing as Parry never honors the terms agreed to. And in the midst of this, there are important romances, including one between Lessingham and Queen Antiope.
If this is all the novel was, it would be easy to judge. But it’s not. Throughout the novel there are interludes with the philosopher Doctor Vandermast, and at times characters seem to, in reality or dream state (it’s not always clear) interact with each other and Vandermast. There are indications (and maybe that’s too strong a word) that the characters may all be aspects of either one another or the Goddess Aprhodite and other supernatural figures. It’s all very strange and murky, and in at least one place in the novel things drag to a halt for a long chapter as in some way characters from different threads meet at Vandermast’s. I read through the section twice, but I’m still not quite sure what was going on there.
In the end, I’m not sure whether these strange fantasy elements are essential, and that I need to reread this to see how it all works, or if the book would have been better had it left those out. This is another one that I need to think more about.
August 27, 2023
‘When I kiss you, it is as if a lioness sucked my tongue’
OR
A Renaissance Game of Thrones Featuring Four Eternal Lovers and a Bestial Machiavel
After an odd “Overture” in which the narrator attends the funeral in our world of his great friend Lessingham, E. R. Eddison’s Mistress of Mistresses (1935) shifts to the Renaissance fantasy world Zimiamvia, where Lessingham is alive and twenty-five and the cousin/troubleshooter of Horius Parry, the Vicar. The Vicar is a noble but brutish Machiavel who wants to rule the land as Regent for the new eighteen-year-old Queen Antiope, the King her brother having recently been assassinated (the hand behind the poisoning rumored to have been the Vicar’s). Because the dead king’s bastard half-brother Duke Barganax (whose hobby is painting his gorgeous goddess of a lover Fiorinda and then destroying his paintings for failing to capture her essence) and his allies chafe at being ruled by the duplicitous Vicar, war breaks out, both sides claiming to support the Queen. Against the odds, Lessingham wins a big battle and then attempts to force a peace on the stubborn Duke and the enraged Vicar, after which he heads north to the court of the young Queen in Rialmar to shore up her defenses against the perennial enemy of the realm Akkama, ruled by the loathsome King Derxis.
Will the Vicar accept the peace? If he starts scheming again, what will the Duke and Lessingham do? And what will happen when the consummate courtier and captain Lessingham meets the beautiful and clever Queen Antiope? And won’t Derxis, who’s been egregiously wooing Antiope, do something dastardly? And why does the old “logical doctor” Vandermast, a philosophical wizard, tell Lessingham he’ll be dead within a year or two? “What is fame to the deaf dust that shall then be your delicate ear, my lord?”
The basic plot is like a compact Game of Thrones with far fewer players, far more metaphysics and romance, and no dragons or undead.
But the plot is not where lie this novel’s charms and fascinations! These largely derive from Eddison’s splendid and ornate style, painterly descriptions, epic similes, dry humor, and pleasure in nature, architecture, music, poetry, beauty, love, etc. Characters occasionally lace their speech with Greek or Latin quotations—which fortunately they often translate. (How Sappho and Shakespeare made it into Zimiamvia, I don’t know…)
Eddison’s “Elizabethan” prose is savory, e.g., “The horror and ugsomeness of death is worse than death itself,” and--
‘Philosophic disputations,’ said Fiorinda, ‘do still use to awake strange longings in me.’
‘Longings?’ said the Duke. ‘You are mistress of our revels tonight. Breathe but the whisper of a half-shapen wish; lightning shall be slow to our suddenness to perform it.’
‘For the present need,’ said that lady, ‘a little fruit would serve.’
‘Framboises?’ said the Duke, offering them in a golden dish.
‘No,’ she said, looking upon them daintily: ‘they have too many twiddles in them: like my Lord Lessingham’s distich.’
He writes great similes, like “Only there sat in his eyes a private sunbeamed look, as if he smiled in himself to see, like a sculptor, the thing shape itself as he had meant and imagined,” and--
“Again her eyes crossed with Lessingham’s: a look sudden and gone like a kingfisher’s flight between gliding water and overshadowing trees.”
And evocative descriptions, like “The falcon was perched still on the crag, alone and unmerry,” and--
“So they had passage over those waters that were full of drowned stars and secret unsounded deeps of darkness.”
The battles and duels here have neither magic nor the supernatural but are man against man with armor, weapons, numbers, and tactics. The novel does introduce, however, fantastic things: immortal shape-changing Hamadryads, a time-free garden and cottage, a leaf to open any locked door, and most provocatively the two pairs of lovers, sensual Barganax-Fiorinda and spiritual Lessingham-Antiope, vibrant, distinct individuals who at times merge into each other. Lessingham and Barganax gaze into different mirrors and see each other’s reflections, Lessingham’s voice and manner recall Fiorinda’s, and Lessingham looks at Barganax and sees Antiope. As the Duke muses to his lover in a letter, “My thoughts growe busy that some way there bee IV of us but some way II only.” All of this suggests interesting things about gender and love and identity. Although the real-politic world of intrigue, assassination, and war drives the plot, Eddison often seems more interested in the two-couple romance he’s writing.
The main characters are larger than life—archetypes—Eternal Lovers prefiguring Michael Moorcock’s later Eternal Champion. Lessingham dies in our world and yet vibrantly lives in Zimiamvia; he says to Antiope, "I love you … beyond time and circumstance" and calls her “Mary,” the name of his wife in our world; and the novel closes with Fiorinda, Mistress of Mistresses, looking at her nude reflection in a mirror and musing on all her female identities, from Aphrodite to Zenobia.
All that said, Eddison isn’t only writing metaphysical romance. The novel features heroic violent action: a few battles, a bath time brawl between the Vicar and his dogs, Lessingham’s horse ride down a two-thousand foot cliff, and so on. And it features plenty of life wisdom like, “There was often more good matter in one grain of folly than in a peck of wisdom,” and “That which can be done, ’twas never worth the doing. Attempt is all.” Just keep in mind that it's not The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Eddison’s more famous epic fantasy, which has much more action and much less romance.
Mistress of Mistresses has a lot of conversation and description, and the ending feels rushed and incomplete, but I relished reading it for moments like this:
“As a man awakening would turn back into his dream, yet with that very striving awakes; or as eyes search for a star, picked up out but now, but vanished again in the suffusing of the sky with light of approaching day; so Lessingham seized at, yet in the twinkling lost, the occasion of those lines, the thin seeming memory blown with them as if from some former forgotten life.”
And this:
“And now his bee-winged kiss, hovering below her ear, under the earring’s smouldering of garnet, passed thence to where neck and shoulder join, and so to the warm throat, and so by the chin to that mocking spirit’s place of slumber and provocation; until, like the bee into the honeyed oblivion of some deep flower incarnadine, it was entertained at last into the consuming heaven of that lady’s lips.”
Eddison was an English civil servant?!
OR
A Renaissance Game of Thrones Featuring Four Eternal Lovers and a Bestial Machiavel
After an odd “Overture” in which the narrator attends the funeral in our world of his great friend Lessingham, E. R. Eddison’s Mistress of Mistresses (1935) shifts to the Renaissance fantasy world Zimiamvia, where Lessingham is alive and twenty-five and the cousin/troubleshooter of Horius Parry, the Vicar. The Vicar is a noble but brutish Machiavel who wants to rule the land as Regent for the new eighteen-year-old Queen Antiope, the King her brother having recently been assassinated (the hand behind the poisoning rumored to have been the Vicar’s). Because the dead king’s bastard half-brother Duke Barganax (whose hobby is painting his gorgeous goddess of a lover Fiorinda and then destroying his paintings for failing to capture her essence) and his allies chafe at being ruled by the duplicitous Vicar, war breaks out, both sides claiming to support the Queen. Against the odds, Lessingham wins a big battle and then attempts to force a peace on the stubborn Duke and the enraged Vicar, after which he heads north to the court of the young Queen in Rialmar to shore up her defenses against the perennial enemy of the realm Akkama, ruled by the loathsome King Derxis.
Will the Vicar accept the peace? If he starts scheming again, what will the Duke and Lessingham do? And what will happen when the consummate courtier and captain Lessingham meets the beautiful and clever Queen Antiope? And won’t Derxis, who’s been egregiously wooing Antiope, do something dastardly? And why does the old “logical doctor” Vandermast, a philosophical wizard, tell Lessingham he’ll be dead within a year or two? “What is fame to the deaf dust that shall then be your delicate ear, my lord?”
The basic plot is like a compact Game of Thrones with far fewer players, far more metaphysics and romance, and no dragons or undead.
But the plot is not where lie this novel’s charms and fascinations! These largely derive from Eddison’s splendid and ornate style, painterly descriptions, epic similes, dry humor, and pleasure in nature, architecture, music, poetry, beauty, love, etc. Characters occasionally lace their speech with Greek or Latin quotations—which fortunately they often translate. (How Sappho and Shakespeare made it into Zimiamvia, I don’t know…)
Eddison’s “Elizabethan” prose is savory, e.g., “The horror and ugsomeness of death is worse than death itself,” and--
‘Philosophic disputations,’ said Fiorinda, ‘do still use to awake strange longings in me.’
‘Longings?’ said the Duke. ‘You are mistress of our revels tonight. Breathe but the whisper of a half-shapen wish; lightning shall be slow to our suddenness to perform it.’
‘For the present need,’ said that lady, ‘a little fruit would serve.’
‘Framboises?’ said the Duke, offering them in a golden dish.
‘No,’ she said, looking upon them daintily: ‘they have too many twiddles in them: like my Lord Lessingham’s distich.’
He writes great similes, like “Only there sat in his eyes a private sunbeamed look, as if he smiled in himself to see, like a sculptor, the thing shape itself as he had meant and imagined,” and--
“Again her eyes crossed with Lessingham’s: a look sudden and gone like a kingfisher’s flight between gliding water and overshadowing trees.”
And evocative descriptions, like “The falcon was perched still on the crag, alone and unmerry,” and--
“So they had passage over those waters that were full of drowned stars and secret unsounded deeps of darkness.”
The battles and duels here have neither magic nor the supernatural but are man against man with armor, weapons, numbers, and tactics. The novel does introduce, however, fantastic things: immortal shape-changing Hamadryads, a time-free garden and cottage, a leaf to open any locked door, and most provocatively the two pairs of lovers, sensual Barganax-Fiorinda and spiritual Lessingham-Antiope, vibrant, distinct individuals who at times merge into each other. Lessingham and Barganax gaze into different mirrors and see each other’s reflections, Lessingham’s voice and manner recall Fiorinda’s, and Lessingham looks at Barganax and sees Antiope. As the Duke muses to his lover in a letter, “My thoughts growe busy that some way there bee IV of us but some way II only.” All of this suggests interesting things about gender and love and identity. Although the real-politic world of intrigue, assassination, and war drives the plot, Eddison often seems more interested in the two-couple romance he’s writing.
The main characters are larger than life—archetypes—Eternal Lovers prefiguring Michael Moorcock’s later Eternal Champion. Lessingham dies in our world and yet vibrantly lives in Zimiamvia; he says to Antiope, "I love you … beyond time and circumstance" and calls her “Mary,” the name of his wife in our world; and the novel closes with Fiorinda, Mistress of Mistresses, looking at her nude reflection in a mirror and musing on all her female identities, from Aphrodite to Zenobia.
All that said, Eddison isn’t only writing metaphysical romance. The novel features heroic violent action: a few battles, a bath time brawl between the Vicar and his dogs, Lessingham’s horse ride down a two-thousand foot cliff, and so on. And it features plenty of life wisdom like, “There was often more good matter in one grain of folly than in a peck of wisdom,” and “That which can be done, ’twas never worth the doing. Attempt is all.” Just keep in mind that it's not The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Eddison’s more famous epic fantasy, which has much more action and much less romance.
Mistress of Mistresses has a lot of conversation and description, and the ending feels rushed and incomplete, but I relished reading it for moments like this:
“As a man awakening would turn back into his dream, yet with that very striving awakes; or as eyes search for a star, picked up out but now, but vanished again in the suffusing of the sky with light of approaching day; so Lessingham seized at, yet in the twinkling lost, the occasion of those lines, the thin seeming memory blown with them as if from some former forgotten life.”
And this:
“And now his bee-winged kiss, hovering below her ear, under the earring’s smouldering of garnet, passed thence to where neck and shoulder join, and so to the warm throat, and so by the chin to that mocking spirit’s place of slumber and provocation; until, like the bee into the honeyed oblivion of some deep flower incarnadine, it was entertained at last into the consuming heaven of that lady’s lips.”
Eddison was an English civil servant?!
June 21, 2021
How do I review this when I feel it might be two more reads before I truly can?
I will start with you probably shouldn’t read this. You see fantasy masterpiece and think, “Oh hey, this is probably a fun little quest tale.” Or you might expect the writing juvenile and simple (like modern fantasy). This is hard reading for the spoon-fed contemporary reader, harder for the contemporary fantasy reader. But it is so good.
At this stage, I will boast this a far greater work than Eddison’s earlier The Worm Ouroboros, though the latter is a better start and landmark of fantasy. Mistress of Mistresses is another beast entirely.
Part court intrigue, part knight romance, part Victorian, part Medieval, some Norse, some Greek, you get your Plato, you get your Icelandic sagas; Eddison’s work is wildly unique.
I will start with you probably shouldn’t read this. You see fantasy masterpiece and think, “Oh hey, this is probably a fun little quest tale.” Or you might expect the writing juvenile and simple (like modern fantasy). This is hard reading for the spoon-fed contemporary reader, harder for the contemporary fantasy reader. But it is so good.
At this stage, I will boast this a far greater work than Eddison’s earlier The Worm Ouroboros, though the latter is a better start and landmark of fantasy. Mistress of Mistresses is another beast entirely.
Part court intrigue, part knight romance, part Victorian, part Medieval, some Norse, some Greek, you get your Plato, you get your Icelandic sagas; Eddison’s work is wildly unique.
September 29, 2011
I feel like things didn't quite come together properly at the end ... but then, this is a trilogy, so maybe things are explained in book 2. This attempts a kind of mystery, mysticism, and lyrical style that most fantasy writers rarely succeed with. Modern readers may find this to be difficult, because the style is not typical. Worth reading as something which was an influence on later writers. (I also think some but not all fantasy readers will enjoy it for its own sake.)
September 19, 2011
Have tried reading this a couple of times because it's supposed to be a classic. But never got very far, it just doesn't work for me.
November 9, 2019
I first read this book in my twenties, after reading Eddison's masterpiece, The Worm Ouroboros. I never expected to read it again, as I found it quite difficult at the time. However, I recently got the urge to give it another go, and quickly realized that it cannot be read in the haphazard way one reads a normal novel, but must be read carefully, paying attention to every sentence, a lesson I first learned while reading Gene Wolf's The Book of the New Sun. In Eddison's case this has to do with his use of subtle dialogue, archaic language, and words borrowed from the Norse, Scotland, and other sources.
Though supposedly set in the Heaven of Mercury, the reader can ignore that and think of it as an alternate universe where the goddess Aphrodite inhabits the bodies of various women and directs the fates of the characters. It is a purely pagan land filled with noble, heroic characters involved in romanticized battle and political intrigue. Though a difficult read, the dialogue is superb, the plot is excellent, and the characters are intriguing. Best read in small sections, it is certainly worth the effort.
Though it is the first book in what is called "The Zimiamvia Trilogy," each book is a stand-alone, actually occurring at overlapping time frames. Harper Collins has a nicely priced Kindle edition containing all four of Eddison's novels. I compared it to my print edition, and save for a lack of the original illustrations, it's professionally done. (The maps are included, though.)
Though supposedly set in the Heaven of Mercury, the reader can ignore that and think of it as an alternate universe where the goddess Aphrodite inhabits the bodies of various women and directs the fates of the characters. It is a purely pagan land filled with noble, heroic characters involved in romanticized battle and political intrigue. Though a difficult read, the dialogue is superb, the plot is excellent, and the characters are intriguing. Best read in small sections, it is certainly worth the effort.
Though it is the first book in what is called "The Zimiamvia Trilogy," each book is a stand-alone, actually occurring at overlapping time frames. Harper Collins has a nicely priced Kindle edition containing all four of Eddison's novels. I compared it to my print edition, and save for a lack of the original illustrations, it's professionally done. (The maps are included, though.)
September 15, 2021
This was a tough read. Took me quite awhile to get through; and while the prose were beautiful at times, they were more often so dense and convoluted that I had to reread entire chapters. Ultimately, the only way I could get through it was to read it out loud, consciously slowing my pace. I must say that I have saved some very beautiful passages; truly masterful use of the language. I have to give credit where it is due. But at the same time, there are pages with only 2 - 3 sentences, 3 uses of colons in each sentence, made up words and completely ridiculous grammar. This is not a novel for the faint of heart.
Now that I have that off my chest, the plot was simple but good. Betrayal, a love triangle, and finally an epic battle. There is intrigue, though this does get bogged down by the language.
Eddison has been compared to Tolkien when it comes to creating language and a universe. I am not sure I would agree. However, there are a lot more resources about Tolkien's work than there are about E.R. Eddison; I struggled to find any sort of analysis, review, or summary of this work. I will admit that I have only read two novels by Eddison, which limits my own scope.
I do think this book is worth the time, however I would recommend a reading group or book club. Having other to talk to about what is happening and keep the reader accountable would have made my experience better.
Now that I have that off my chest, the plot was simple but good. Betrayal, a love triangle, and finally an epic battle. There is intrigue, though this does get bogged down by the language.
Eddison has been compared to Tolkien when it comes to creating language and a universe. I am not sure I would agree. However, there are a lot more resources about Tolkien's work than there are about E.R. Eddison; I struggled to find any sort of analysis, review, or summary of this work. I will admit that I have only read two novels by Eddison, which limits my own scope.
I do think this book is worth the time, however I would recommend a reading group or book club. Having other to talk to about what is happening and keep the reader accountable would have made my experience better.
Want to read
March 5, 2025Putting this again since a troll (with a private profile no less) commented on my original and I don’t want their dumb comments there. DeBodard may write better these days but her shoddy “appropriation” here is still shoddy. I still remember her from her live journal days and how she really is, and honestly it wouldn’t bother me this much if she wasn’t full of herself while getting the Aztec/Mexica culture here wrong. Not to mention, this books is still terrible written.
Also, I can't help but side-eye the people claiming that the names are "hard to pronounce" since I learned them in sixth grade, but hey, that's white people for you, making fun of our language but using it when it suits them to "spice" their mediocre books. I know the author is not white, I'm talking about some of the reviewers here, so this isn't really the author's fault, but it does make me think people only see the actual culture as something "exotic" (people are even calling it "nonwestern" which makes me laugh) instead of the real-life breathing people that were colonized by the Spaniards and lost their culture to them.
Read something actually written by Mexican people. Read an actual textbook and don’t take the stuff in this book seriously (couldn’t even get Aztec education right!). Thanks.
Also, I can't help but side-eye the people claiming that the names are "hard to pronounce" since I learned them in sixth grade, but hey, that's white people for you, making fun of our language but using it when it suits them to "spice" their mediocre books. I know the author is not white, I'm talking about some of the reviewers here, so this isn't really the author's fault, but it does make me think people only see the actual culture as something "exotic" (people are even calling it "nonwestern" which makes me laugh) instead of the real-life breathing people that were colonized by the Spaniards and lost their culture to them.
Read something actually written by Mexican people. Read an actual textbook and don’t take the stuff in this book seriously (couldn’t even get Aztec education right!). Thanks.
Read
October 23, 2025MISTRESS OF MISTRESSES was the first published novel in E.R. Eddison's celebrated Zimiamvian trilogy. Like Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Zimiamvia is a world which mirrors our own - but passions run stronger there, and life, love and treachery are epic in their intensity. And magic, of course, is a reality. Mezentius had ruled the Three Kingdoms with a firm hand, but his legitimate heir is a weakling, frightened of the power of his half-brother, Duke Barganax, and of that of the terrifying Horius Parry, Vicar of Rerek. As Parry and Barganax manoeuvre, intrigue and plot, it is clear that the new king isn't long for the world. The key to the control of the Three Kingdoms lies with Lessingham, Parry's cousin, the only man both sides can trust. But then Parry decides that Lessingham must die. As heroes and villains clash, an even darker game is being played - for the Lady Fiorinda is testing her own powers to decide the fates of men...MISTRESS OF MISTRESSES is as powerful, exciting and intriguing today as when it was first published.
November 4, 2025
This is a fantastic, highly esoteric book. You'll be OK so long as you don't expect another Worm Ouroboros. Eddison peaked early. Waddaya gonna do, right? I mean there was no way he could possibly top Brandoch Daha. Barganax was very promissing, but he never quite reached that level of Cool.
Still Eddison, being the genius that he was, can do no wrong. If nothing else, his ravishing poetic style elevates this work above most others.
Plotwise, think Game Of Thrones, with extra Machiavelli thrown on top, interspersed with dreamy philosofical meanderings. Quite dark and tragic, but strangely evocative.
Still Eddison, being the genius that he was, can do no wrong. If nothing else, his ravishing poetic style elevates this work above most others.
Plotwise, think Game Of Thrones, with extra Machiavelli thrown on top, interspersed with dreamy philosofical meanderings. Quite dark and tragic, but strangely evocative.
April 3, 2018
A good story, well-told and interesting. It would have got four stars, but for these flaws:
- The cod-Elizabethan language was often hard to follow
- Some of the descriptions went on for pages!
- The hero Lessingham allied himself, for no apparent reason, with the worst character in the story
Also, I couldn't really handle the way that some characters seemed to merge with others, but the final straw was the "it was only a dream" idea that he only spent one night in Zimiamvia. OK, it's a fantasy, and a very early one too in this genre, but come on!
- The cod-Elizabethan language was often hard to follow
- Some of the descriptions went on for pages!
- The hero Lessingham allied himself, for no apparent reason, with the worst character in the story
Also, I couldn't really handle the way that some characters seemed to merge with others, but the final straw was the "it was only a dream" idea that he only spent one night in Zimiamvia. OK, it's a fantasy, and a very early one too in this genre, but come on!
June 30, 2021
I loved The Worm Ourobouros but couldn’t engage with this one. It seems to be a meditation on Aphrodite but it’s too misty to get hold of. The women all seem to be shape-shifters. One star for an interesting protagonist though we never really get inside his skin to know what he’s thinking or whose side he is on. Another star for the gorgeous prose, best read slowly, don’t even try to skim this book.
May 11, 2018
The prose can be tough going, just like The Worm Ouroboros, but as with that one it’s worth it (if philosophic high fantasy is your thing). Epic battles, political scheming, surreal dream (?) sequences, references to Icelandic sagas and Greek myth... it’ll make your head spin, but you’ll like it. Maybe.
December 8, 2018
This is so complicated that you get easily lost and have to re-read some parts to try and understand correctly. But still, I have to admit I kind of enjoyed it, but not as much as the Worm Ouroboros though.
November 23, 2018
The character is really special.
May 30, 2019
Lord Lessinghame is a man among men. I suspect this is the kind of book Don Quixote would have loved. Me, less so.
November 4, 2019
That was a tough read. Nothing like the Worm other than it's complexity, it did not endear itself to me at all though as it's predecessor did.
November 23, 2019
Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind for dialogue straight out of a Jacobean drama, but I struggled through this.
April 27, 2021
A very dull book with but one or two good chapters.
April 17, 2025
Mistress of Mistresses. I find it hard to approach a review of this novel as there is a lot to discuss.
Well, I shall begin.
First, Eddison employs a beautiful prose that is both archaic and fantastical, admittedly his style was hard for me to digest initially, but overtime I have become more accustomed to his manner of writing. Scenes that range from fabulous courts, to dark and eldritch halls, to deathly haunts and to lonesome fog veiled valleys. Here is a line from the beginning of the tale. "Let me gather my thoughts a little, sitting here alone with you for the last time, in this high western window of your castle that you built so many years ago, to overhang like a sea eagle’s eyrie the grey-walled waters of your Raftsund. We are fortunate, that this should have come about in the season of high summer, rather than on some troll-ridden night in the Arctic winter. At least, I am fortunate. For there is peace in these Arctic July nights, where the long sunset scarcely stoops beneath the horizon to kiss awake the long dawn." Eddison establishes a deep relation to place: setting tone, philosophy and relation with brilliant dexterity in the first paragraph. Delivering wonder in each following sentence, an almost hazy yet concrete dream.
It begins with an unnamed narrator arriving at his friends, Lessingham, deathbed. It goes into detail about this history between the two and about Lessingham's own idiosyncrasies and introduces a mysterious woman. Then it transports us to the fantastical world of Zimmimvia. Its tyrant king has recently died and now his weak son reigns, here it introduces two characters Lessingham and Barganax, both of whom are similar and different from the Lessingham of the start. The plot quickly turns when Lessinghams cousin, the vile and entertaining Vicar of Rerek, murders the King, this leads to a power grab between what becomes the forces of Barganax and The Vicar. Eddison's female is also active, and engages frequently in these dynamics, Barganax's half sister the Queen of Finigiswold and Barganax's lover Fiorinda speak their mind, challenging many of the characters.
Within these events, there is an endless act that the characters engage in. From the get-go they engage in social customs that are of a higher class, whether by the language used or by the expectations the characters have upon one another. Loyalty is perceived as an honourable trait, but it is challenged as Lessingham is ultimately loyal to a treacherous power. Or how Barganax fills his court with many incompetent lords, his coalition involving many unworthy people.
It is a fun game Eddison plays here, peoples virtues when challenged become vices. Societies customs and expectations, allow for manipulations that result in an overall worsening by the justification of tradition. Eddison, to my understanding, was conservative. But his approach to fiction was not of the same cloth as many of his contemporaries in the Oxford group. For one, he is comfortable with his handling of morality. Evil has a face to Eddison, in the form of The Vicar, who operates with agency and is not some faraway unknown beyond the horizon. Lessingham frequently converses with The Vicar and he is treated horribly by him, yet the man remains loyal. Yet for all his horrible behaviours, he is capable of good outcomes.
Eddisons employs a metaphysics that is cross between Plato, Spinoza and Descartes. A character called Dr. Vandermaast frequently gives us nuggets of philosophy throughout the novel, he often speaks to both Lessingham and Barganax. It is by no mistake that they are are similar. There are dreamlike sequences which occur at night, here Eddison shows that the two characters are aspects of something else and that their lovers are too aspects of another entity, potentially Aphrodite.
This Metaphysical dualism, of the characters presented and what they truly are is an underlying aspect to the story. Barganax paints his lover, but often destroys the paintings as he sees them as bastardisations of her, never truly capturing her beauty. The idea that truth exists separate from the world is a philosophy in which both main characters act in their own society. They do not like backhanded dealings and care only for open engagements of truth and governance.
Yet even to Eddison, in his own world view, he is capable of understanding the flaws that would come along with the beliefs presented.
If you enjoy the plays, Hamlet and A Midsummer Nights Dream, than I would recommend this novel. If you have read the King Elfland's Daughter or the Broken Sword, then I too recommend this courtly epic.
Well, I shall begin.
First, Eddison employs a beautiful prose that is both archaic and fantastical, admittedly his style was hard for me to digest initially, but overtime I have become more accustomed to his manner of writing. Scenes that range from fabulous courts, to dark and eldritch halls, to deathly haunts and to lonesome fog veiled valleys. Here is a line from the beginning of the tale. "Let me gather my thoughts a little, sitting here alone with you for the last time, in this high western window of your castle that you built so many years ago, to overhang like a sea eagle’s eyrie the grey-walled waters of your Raftsund. We are fortunate, that this should have come about in the season of high summer, rather than on some troll-ridden night in the Arctic winter. At least, I am fortunate. For there is peace in these Arctic July nights, where the long sunset scarcely stoops beneath the horizon to kiss awake the long dawn." Eddison establishes a deep relation to place: setting tone, philosophy and relation with brilliant dexterity in the first paragraph. Delivering wonder in each following sentence, an almost hazy yet concrete dream.
It begins with an unnamed narrator arriving at his friends, Lessingham, deathbed. It goes into detail about this history between the two and about Lessingham's own idiosyncrasies and introduces a mysterious woman. Then it transports us to the fantastical world of Zimmimvia. Its tyrant king has recently died and now his weak son reigns, here it introduces two characters Lessingham and Barganax, both of whom are similar and different from the Lessingham of the start. The plot quickly turns when Lessinghams cousin, the vile and entertaining Vicar of Rerek, murders the King, this leads to a power grab between what becomes the forces of Barganax and The Vicar. Eddison's female is also active, and engages frequently in these dynamics, Barganax's half sister the Queen of Finigiswold and Barganax's lover Fiorinda speak their mind, challenging many of the characters.
Within these events, there is an endless act that the characters engage in. From the get-go they engage in social customs that are of a higher class, whether by the language used or by the expectations the characters have upon one another. Loyalty is perceived as an honourable trait, but it is challenged as Lessingham is ultimately loyal to a treacherous power. Or how Barganax fills his court with many incompetent lords, his coalition involving many unworthy people.
It is a fun game Eddison plays here, peoples virtues when challenged become vices. Societies customs and expectations, allow for manipulations that result in an overall worsening by the justification of tradition. Eddison, to my understanding, was conservative. But his approach to fiction was not of the same cloth as many of his contemporaries in the Oxford group. For one, he is comfortable with his handling of morality. Evil has a face to Eddison, in the form of The Vicar, who operates with agency and is not some faraway unknown beyond the horizon. Lessingham frequently converses with The Vicar and he is treated horribly by him, yet the man remains loyal. Yet for all his horrible behaviours, he is capable of good outcomes.
Eddisons employs a metaphysics that is cross between Plato, Spinoza and Descartes. A character called Dr. Vandermaast frequently gives us nuggets of philosophy throughout the novel, he often speaks to both Lessingham and Barganax. It is by no mistake that they are are similar. There are dreamlike sequences which occur at night, here Eddison shows that the two characters are aspects of something else and that their lovers are too aspects of another entity, potentially Aphrodite.
This Metaphysical dualism, of the characters presented and what they truly are is an underlying aspect to the story. Barganax paints his lover, but often destroys the paintings as he sees them as bastardisations of her, never truly capturing her beauty. The idea that truth exists separate from the world is a philosophy in which both main characters act in their own society. They do not like backhanded dealings and care only for open engagements of truth and governance.
Yet even to Eddison, in his own world view, he is capable of understanding the flaws that would come along with the beliefs presented.
If you enjoy the plays, Hamlet and A Midsummer Nights Dream, than I would recommend this novel. If you have read the King Elfland's Daughter or the Broken Sword, then I too recommend this courtly epic.
February 17, 2015
As a wren twinkles in and out in a hedge-row, the demurest soft shadow of laughter came and went in Lessingham’s swift grey eyes. “What, were you reading me good counsel? Forgive me, dear Amaury; I lost the thread on’t. You were talking of my cousin, and the great King, and might-a-beens; but I was fallen a-dreaming and marked you not.”
In The Worm Ouroboros Eddison used a half-framing device that many, including myself, found annoying and confusingly pointless. After reading Mistress of Mistresses I’m no longer so sure of that judgment. Here, a very similar half-frame is the philosophical foundation upon which the story is built. Where, in Ouroboros, the introductory narrator appears in the first few chapters and then seems to disappear completely, in Mistress the different worlds of narrator and story intertwine deeply beneath, within, and above the story.
There is a certain dream-like quality to the “real” world in Mistress. Even the real world is a world where an adventurer can create his own nation and define his own death. The dream world intrudes upon the real world, and the real upon the dream. These appear to be different levels of reality, dispersed not only in time and space but in some level of consciousness as well.
September 4, 2013
This is not in fact part of the "Worm Cycle". It stands largely apart from Worm as the first volume of the Zimiamvia (I had to pause to check that) trilogy along with A Fish Dinner in Memison and the Mezentian Gate. The trilogy nominally takes place in the universe of Worm but the only links are a distant sighting of Zimiamvia from a mountaintop and the presence of Lessingham as the main character, who appeared in about ten pages of Worm.
The prose in MoM (and presumably the other two) is much easier reading than that of Worm, emulating the writing of roughly a century after the latter's epic balladry. This still makes it a slog sometimes as the reader has to decode antique language but it is less of one, which is something right? And the language is still beautiful, especially when Eddison gets into describing starfields and still waters.
The plot is standard Eddison fare, mighty admirable men in political subterfuge in a basic fantasy world interspersed with mighty battles which are thankfully less frequent this time around because they let slip Eddison's questionable personal beliefs (he is basically Raskolnikov without the murder, at least not that I know of). The characters this time around have moderately more subtlety to them than the rather one note Juss and company, but there is no one to hold a candle to Gro.
August 23, 2010
I was fascinated last year when I read Eddison's The Worm Ourobouros, and started looking around for the rest of his work. I found a copy of Mistress of Mistresses, but found it a bit of a slog to get through compared to the quasi-masterpiece of Ourobouros.
A lot of this came down to the different language styles of the two books -- Ourobouros was written in an archaic early modern English reminiscent of Shakespeare and translations of Beowulf, while Mistress of Mistresses is in a more flowery, Romantic-era style. But also I think that Mistress of Mistresses was just a bit more boring? It didn't have the epic scope and grandeur of Ourobouros and seemed more like ordinary old fantasy lit, only harder to read.
Still, I liked it and will eventually read the rest of the weird Zimiamvian Trilogy. I feel like I might as well keep going, maybe someday I will have read all the pre-WWII fantasy literature that exists.
A lot of this came down to the different language styles of the two books -- Ourobouros was written in an archaic early modern English reminiscent of Shakespeare and translations of Beowulf, while Mistress of Mistresses is in a more flowery, Romantic-era style. But also I think that Mistress of Mistresses was just a bit more boring? It didn't have the epic scope and grandeur of Ourobouros and seemed more like ordinary old fantasy lit, only harder to read.
Still, I liked it and will eventually read the rest of the weird Zimiamvian Trilogy. I feel like I might as well keep going, maybe someday I will have read all the pre-WWII fantasy literature that exists.
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