Tonight's SBA meeting was scheduled to be the delayed discussion of E.R. Eddison's classic fantasy novel The Worm Ouroboros. Not enough of us who've actually finished the novel were present to effectively discuss the book.Therefore, we're using The Worm Ouroboros to launch our Book Discussion blog.
If you're a Star Base Andromeda member who has finished this book and would like to offer up your opinion, please share your thoughts here with the rest of SBA and anyone else who drops in. As part of your comments, please give The Worm Ouroboros a score, from 1 to 10 (10 best).
If you're one of those visitors who just stumbled across us, you're welcome to share your opinion here, too.
Thank you for participating!
Posts
4 comments:
I enjoyed "The Worm Ouroboros" mightily but...is it sci fi?? Just because it's supposedly set on another planet is not enough to fit the definition for me. I would rate it 8 out of 10 with the caveat that I'm rating it as a book, not as a sci fi book.
Hmm, not much of a discussion going here so far. Hope I’m not too late.
First on Amy’s question on if this is Sci-Fi. I guess it depends on what your definition of Sci-Fi is. I tend to see this term as the umbrella term that covers a host of genre’s including Science Fiction and Fantasy. “Worm” definitely falls into the fantasy end of this rather than science fiction. Fortunately SBA is an eclectic group which reads all kinds of genre books including fantasy.
Now what did I think of this book: I didn’t enjoy “The Worm Ouroboros” at all. First the style, the odd language Eddison uses and the extreme descriptiveness of every scene, made it a difficult read for me. Just a lot of work to get through. I also was disappointed in the plot and characters. I think you can really tell its age and it’s not a story that has aged particularly well. It was interesting to read for historical purposes as an example of an early fantasy but not something I could recommend for enjoyment.
I rate it 2 out of 10.
Mark
SBA is not just Science Fiction.
I recommended the book so of course in my following comments I may be slanted.
Mark is not off about the language. I though have what I consider a really deep variation of different writing styles as they go through the long changes in fact what is current style will be out-dated in another 20 years.
So I go by the content rather than the language style.
My roots in SciFi and Fantasy go back to the late 50s when the first SciFi book I read was by Andre Norton.
Thanks, Louis (a.k.a. Vorpal Blade) for the comment! Do you have a 1-10 score that you'd give The Worm Ouroboros for our statistical records?
Scott
Post a Comment