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The Complete Zimiamvia
The classic epic trilogy of parallel worlds, admired by Tolkien and the great prototype for The Lord of the Rings and modern fantasy fiction. Also includes The Worm Ouroboros.
When Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was published, reviewers saw that there was only one author with whom he could legitimately be compared: Eric Rucker Eddison (1882-1945). He met both Tolkien and Lewis, and was cited by both as the game-changer in fantastic literature and a key influence on them. His two principal works – the sprawling and opulent fantasy trilogy Zimiamvia (which has been favourably compared to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast) and the earlier hedonistic The Worm Ouroboros (a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany) – put Eddison up among the masters of his craft. Admirers including Ursula Le Guin, Robert Silverberg and Clive Barker have all lined up to praise his books.
This complete eBook edition includes the three books of the Zimiamvia Trilogy - Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate, together with the epic prelude novel The Worm Ouroboros.
When Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was published, reviewers saw that there was only one author with whom he could legitimately be compared: Eric Rucker Eddison (1882-1945). He met both Tolkien and Lewis, and was cited by both as the game-changer in fantastic literature and a key influence on them. His two principal works – the sprawling and opulent fantasy trilogy Zimiamvia (which has been favourably compared to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast) and the earlier hedonistic The Worm Ouroboros (a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany) – put Eddison up among the masters of his craft. Admirers including Ursula Le Guin, Robert Silverberg and Clive Barker have all lined up to praise his books.
This complete eBook edition includes the three books of the Zimiamvia Trilogy - Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate, together with the epic prelude novel The Worm Ouroboros.
- GenresFantasy
Kindle Edition
Published December 4, 2014
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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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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 3, 2019
Goodreads has, not unreasonably, but confusingly, jumbled together two collections of books by E.R. Eddison. I will try to keep the explanation of the differences simple: Eddison fans will see that I have skipped over various things that might well have been mentioned, like the original illustrations.
The hefty paperback "Zimiamvia: A Trilogy" (1992) contains THREE novels, "Mistress of Mistresses," "A Fish Dinner in Memison," and 'The Mezentian Gate," from the 1930s and 1940s. That is the publication (and writing) order. The internal chronological relationship is complex: "Mistress" is the last novel from that point of view, with "Mezentian Gate" first, but incorporating events detailed in "A Fish Dinner in Memison," and continuing somewhat past the end of that book. This is labelled a trilogy, but the author was planning a fourth volume in the series at the time of his death, while trying to finish "Mezentian Gate" in the face of failing health.
The texts in this edition include an expansion of the unfinished "Mezentian Gate" from the author's manuscripts, originally published posthumously in a more compact form in a small edition, later put into paperback, with the rest of the series, by Ballantine Books in the late 1960s. In the omnibus they are accompanied by numerous, and in almost all cases, useful and accurate notes (but there are some real howlers), supplied, along with an introduction by Paul Edmund Thomas, together with a Foreword by Douglas E. Winter.
It was published by Dell as a companion to a similarly introduced and annotated paperback of Eddisons's earlier, and some would say better, fantasy novel, "The Worm Ouroboros," also annotated, and with some of the same virtues and problems -- in fact some of the same peculiar notes were carried over. Unfortunately, dealers' listings make it hard to find a used copy of this one, amid a bunch of other editions, mainly Ballantine and Del Rey (the successor imprint) paperbacks, but also those published after the book fell out of copyright, and sometimes unreliable. (Dover Books did a very good version of the first edition, complete with illustrations and chapter decorations, also included by Ballantine/Del Rey. In the course of reprintings it picked up a couple of introductions by other hands, James Stephens and Orville Prescott.
"The Complete Zimiamvia" (HarperCollins, 2014) contains all FOUR books, the three Zimiamvia novels proper, with the earlier "The Worm Ouroboros" as the first in the set. They were also published as separate print volumes by HarperCollins at about the same time: the cover art of the Kindle edition uses the covers of those editions, which are very attractive.
The "Complete" title is sort of justified because the mysterious land, or world, of Zimiamvia, is mentioned in "The Worm," and the this-worldly Englishman Lessingham, who appears very briefly at the beginning of that book is a major character in the Earthly passages of "A Fish Dinner" and the opening of "Mistress of Mistresses." He has a Zimiamvian counterpart who, as Lord Lessignham, is a main character in the latter. It includes the Introduction by Paul Edmund Thomas to the Zimiamvia novels, and Douglas E. Winter's Foreword to "The Worm," but does not include the notes to the Dell editions, which is a pity. (Especially since they strained the practical size of the paperbacks, but wouldn't be a problem in a digital file..)
The hefty paperback "Zimiamvia: A Trilogy" (1992) contains THREE novels, "Mistress of Mistresses," "A Fish Dinner in Memison," and 'The Mezentian Gate," from the 1930s and 1940s. That is the publication (and writing) order. The internal chronological relationship is complex: "Mistress" is the last novel from that point of view, with "Mezentian Gate" first, but incorporating events detailed in "A Fish Dinner in Memison," and continuing somewhat past the end of that book. This is labelled a trilogy, but the author was planning a fourth volume in the series at the time of his death, while trying to finish "Mezentian Gate" in the face of failing health.
The texts in this edition include an expansion of the unfinished "Mezentian Gate" from the author's manuscripts, originally published posthumously in a more compact form in a small edition, later put into paperback, with the rest of the series, by Ballantine Books in the late 1960s. In the omnibus they are accompanied by numerous, and in almost all cases, useful and accurate notes (but there are some real howlers), supplied, along with an introduction by Paul Edmund Thomas, together with a Foreword by Douglas E. Winter.
It was published by Dell as a companion to a similarly introduced and annotated paperback of Eddisons's earlier, and some would say better, fantasy novel, "The Worm Ouroboros," also annotated, and with some of the same virtues and problems -- in fact some of the same peculiar notes were carried over. Unfortunately, dealers' listings make it hard to find a used copy of this one, amid a bunch of other editions, mainly Ballantine and Del Rey (the successor imprint) paperbacks, but also those published after the book fell out of copyright, and sometimes unreliable. (Dover Books did a very good version of the first edition, complete with illustrations and chapter decorations, also included by Ballantine/Del Rey. In the course of reprintings it picked up a couple of introductions by other hands, James Stephens and Orville Prescott.
"The Complete Zimiamvia" (HarperCollins, 2014) contains all FOUR books, the three Zimiamvia novels proper, with the earlier "The Worm Ouroboros" as the first in the set. They were also published as separate print volumes by HarperCollins at about the same time: the cover art of the Kindle edition uses the covers of those editions, which are very attractive.
The "Complete" title is sort of justified because the mysterious land, or world, of Zimiamvia, is mentioned in "The Worm," and the this-worldly Englishman Lessingham, who appears very briefly at the beginning of that book is a major character in the Earthly passages of "A Fish Dinner" and the opening of "Mistress of Mistresses." He has a Zimiamvian counterpart who, as Lord Lessignham, is a main character in the latter. It includes the Introduction by Paul Edmund Thomas to the Zimiamvia novels, and Douglas E. Winter's Foreword to "The Worm," but does not include the notes to the Dell editions, which is a pity. (Especially since they strained the practical size of the paperbacks, but wouldn't be a problem in a digital file..)
October 29, 2021
This thick volume collects four works of fiction by a British civil servant who spent his free time inventing and exploring worlds vastly different from that of his day job. He was a passionate student of the ancient Scandinavian sagas and transposed their values, along with a strong admixture of Homer, Sappho, and a bit of potted Spinoza, to imagine worlds where gods take flesh. The results have led Eddison to be called one of the first writers of fantasy literature. One of his early fans, the American aficionado of lost, aristocratic worlds, James Branch Cabell, used the term “romance,” however, to distinguish these books from what he called disparagingly “novels.”
I read this in the Kindle version, which was good enough, but it would have been better to have a print copy to make it easier to consult the maps or the charts of the intricate and confusing cast of characters.
The first book in the collection, The Worm Ouroboros, is set in a world the author calls Mercury. It is similar to our world but also different. The various lands are inhabited by beings motivated by recognizable human qualities but called Goblins, Ghouls, and Imps. The two leading nations are the Demons and the Witches. Despite their name, the Demons are the good guys. But while the Witches have many traits usually associated with the villains—they never make a treaty they don’t intend to break at the first opportunity—, Eddison is careful to impart to them a certain nobility. In fact, the greatest tragedy that could befall the Demons would be to not have an adversary as strong as the Witches. For then they “must turn shepherds and hunters, lest we become mere mountebanks and fops,” as their monarch, King Juss, laments. This is not the morality of the Biblical prophets; the thought of turning swords to plowshares is foreign to this world. A sword is nothing more than forged metal unless its glory is found in testing its mettle against another, wielded by a powerful foe.
Fittingly, there are many battles, and I enjoyed the way the author varied his descriptive technique. Some are told as straightforward narratives, another from the viewpoint of an observer watching from the ramparts, while others are recounted after the fact by surviving participants.
The other three books form a cycle set in a land only glimpsed from afar in Worm, Zimiamvia. They are printed here in the order they were published, although the first of them, Mistress of Mistresses, is the last narratively. I read them in the order they appear in this collection. This works because Mistress of Mistresses is the most fully realized. Eddison employs two plots in parallel, one in Zimiamvia, the other on our earth, with the action shifting back and forth. It soon becomes clear that the protagonist on earth, Lessingham, is (as is his wife) an incarnation of a figure who also lives in Zimiamvia, a more rarified plane of existence (this is also a feature of the subsequent book).
The remaining two books fill in the history of Zimiamvia and its rival dynasties. One, A Fish Dinner in Memison, has a high ratio of talk to action. Even more so than in Mistress, Eddison’s mix of intricate description and complex philosophy veers to incoherence. Overall, I found it the weakest of the four, although the dinner involves a marvelous conceit.
The final book, The Mezentian Gate, is the most ambitious in scope but was left unfinished at Eddison’s death. He left behind a plot outline, however. This, along with notes for some of the unwritten chapters, stitch together the finished chapters so that one gets the picture. Fortunately, the portion Eddison wrote includes the closing chapters. In particular, the lengthy final chapter is a fitting conclusion to the entire cycle.
It’s jarring, however, that the plot of Gate surrounds that of Fish Dinner, the events of which are crucial for the unfolding of the denouement in the final book. It seems as if Eddison did not start out with the entire trilogy in mind but added to it as new plot elements came to him.
Eddison’s style, like his values, is that of the Scandinavian sagas. It’s interesting that, on the one hand, he is an adept of philosophy, with its insistence on viewing life Sub specie aeternitatis, as the mephistophelean Vandermast is fond of saying, yet on the other, he (like the characters he creates) is in love with sensual world. Eddison spends pages describing a castle and its halls, for instance, as well as the fantastical landscapes in which it is set. Readers of modern fantasy might grow impatient, wondering when the action might begin. At first, I found the prose slow-going, but my enjoyment rose once I slowed down to savor the luxuriant, archaic prose.
Perhaps the key to this duality of philosophy and sensuality is the basic theme of these books. Eddison has the temperament of an aristocrat and is a devotee of the pantheon, whether in its Greek or Nordic guise. His heroes (all brave and manly) and his heroines (all beautiful—voluptuous, even) are, to one degree or another, incarnations of the divine two, one of whom, Zeus, creates worlds to delight the other (Aphrodite).
I read this in the Kindle version, which was good enough, but it would have been better to have a print copy to make it easier to consult the maps or the charts of the intricate and confusing cast of characters.
The first book in the collection, The Worm Ouroboros, is set in a world the author calls Mercury. It is similar to our world but also different. The various lands are inhabited by beings motivated by recognizable human qualities but called Goblins, Ghouls, and Imps. The two leading nations are the Demons and the Witches. Despite their name, the Demons are the good guys. But while the Witches have many traits usually associated with the villains—they never make a treaty they don’t intend to break at the first opportunity—, Eddison is careful to impart to them a certain nobility. In fact, the greatest tragedy that could befall the Demons would be to not have an adversary as strong as the Witches. For then they “must turn shepherds and hunters, lest we become mere mountebanks and fops,” as their monarch, King Juss, laments. This is not the morality of the Biblical prophets; the thought of turning swords to plowshares is foreign to this world. A sword is nothing more than forged metal unless its glory is found in testing its mettle against another, wielded by a powerful foe.
Fittingly, there are many battles, and I enjoyed the way the author varied his descriptive technique. Some are told as straightforward narratives, another from the viewpoint of an observer watching from the ramparts, while others are recounted after the fact by surviving participants.
The other three books form a cycle set in a land only glimpsed from afar in Worm, Zimiamvia. They are printed here in the order they were published, although the first of them, Mistress of Mistresses, is the last narratively. I read them in the order they appear in this collection. This works because Mistress of Mistresses is the most fully realized. Eddison employs two plots in parallel, one in Zimiamvia, the other on our earth, with the action shifting back and forth. It soon becomes clear that the protagonist on earth, Lessingham, is (as is his wife) an incarnation of a figure who also lives in Zimiamvia, a more rarified plane of existence (this is also a feature of the subsequent book).
The remaining two books fill in the history of Zimiamvia and its rival dynasties. One, A Fish Dinner in Memison, has a high ratio of talk to action. Even more so than in Mistress, Eddison’s mix of intricate description and complex philosophy veers to incoherence. Overall, I found it the weakest of the four, although the dinner involves a marvelous conceit.
The final book, The Mezentian Gate, is the most ambitious in scope but was left unfinished at Eddison’s death. He left behind a plot outline, however. This, along with notes for some of the unwritten chapters, stitch together the finished chapters so that one gets the picture. Fortunately, the portion Eddison wrote includes the closing chapters. In particular, the lengthy final chapter is a fitting conclusion to the entire cycle.
It’s jarring, however, that the plot of Gate surrounds that of Fish Dinner, the events of which are crucial for the unfolding of the denouement in the final book. It seems as if Eddison did not start out with the entire trilogy in mind but added to it as new plot elements came to him.
Eddison’s style, like his values, is that of the Scandinavian sagas. It’s interesting that, on the one hand, he is an adept of philosophy, with its insistence on viewing life Sub specie aeternitatis, as the mephistophelean Vandermast is fond of saying, yet on the other, he (like the characters he creates) is in love with sensual world. Eddison spends pages describing a castle and its halls, for instance, as well as the fantastical landscapes in which it is set. Readers of modern fantasy might grow impatient, wondering when the action might begin. At first, I found the prose slow-going, but my enjoyment rose once I slowed down to savor the luxuriant, archaic prose.
Perhaps the key to this duality of philosophy and sensuality is the basic theme of these books. Eddison has the temperament of an aristocrat and is a devotee of the pantheon, whether in its Greek or Nordic guise. His heroes (all brave and manly) and his heroines (all beautiful—voluptuous, even) are, to one degree or another, incarnations of the divine two, one of whom, Zeus, creates worlds to delight the other (Aphrodite).
October 18, 2024
Pinnacle of fantasy fiction, one should really take note how Eddison and Dunsany do their fantasy.
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July 19, 2021Jun 2021. Summer book. I adored WORM OUROBOROS five or more years ago. Hoping against hope (despite an esteemed friend's warning) that the subsequent trilogy will be better than DUNE. Finished OUROBOROS, and while not as good as I remembered, still wonderful. Not reading the trilogy after all, summer is too short.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews