The Worm Ouroboros is a heroic high fantasy novel by Eric Rucker Eddison, first published in 1922. The book describes the protracted war between the domineering King Gorice of Witchland and the Lords of Demonland in an imaginary world that appears mainly medieval and partly reminiscent of Norse sagas. This is the book that shaped the landscape of contemporary science fiction. J. R. R. Tolkien acclaimed its author as ""the greatest and most convincing writer of 'invented worlds' that I have read."" Written in the best traditions of Homeric epics, Norse sagas, and Arthurian myths, it recounts...

A lady strays from a garden path and enters a different realm. A king wages dynastic war for control of three kingdoms. As villains plot to take control of an alternate world inhabited by the souls of the dead, a mysterious, magical woman seeks her destiny, igniting a splendid pageantry of battles and quests, poisonous love and triumphant passion, doomed loyalties and unsurpassed courage. And while Edward Lessingham engages in an earthly romance in 20th-century England, seduction in Zimiamvia takes place over the most lavish of banquets.

E.R. Eddison was the author of three of the most remarkable fantasies in the English language: 'The Worm Ouroboros', 'Mistress of Mistresses' and 'A Fish Dinner in Memison'. Linked together as separate parts of one vast romantic epic, fans who clamoured for more were finally rewarded 13 years after Eddison's death with the publication of the uncompleted fourth novel, written during the dark years of the Second World War. This new edition of 'The Mezentian Gate' includes additional narrative fragments of the story missing from the original 1958 edition.