If you are interested in my extended thoughts on the book, here is a link to the review I wrote back in 2006
Book Review: THE WORM OUROBOROS, by E. R. Eddison
I read your review with great pleasure, because I really like this book.
Maybe I'm a little crazy, but I like books written by Tolkien's predecessors -- like Lord Dunsany or Eddison -- much better than Tolkien's own books.
This novel is written in a very complex and beautiful language. When you read it, you immediately think of all sorts of old writers. Here's a short list: Homer, Aeschylus, Tacitus, Virgil, Beowulf, Melory, Chaucer, Sidney, Webster, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Chaucer, the Scandinavian sagas and, to move to a time closer to our own, the Lake School (especially Keats and Southey). As for Shakespeare, there are a few Shakespearean words and phrases in every paragraph that would be too long to list here. Besides, Eddison capitalizes everything! Names of animals, dances, etc. But why did Eddison use such complex and bizarre language?
I don't think Eddison was trying to write fantasy (there was no such term then). He wanted to write a chivalrous medieval novel in an equally medieval language. And I'm sure Eddison, if he could, would have colored the first letters of each chapter in gold and vermilion to give the text a proper medieval flavor. He obviously loved the Middle Ages much more than his own time. And then he went too far and created a mystery novel, a novel with a double and triple bottom line, and such a novel requires a difficult language, understandable only to the very educated.
For me, the reader of The Worm Ouroboros should:
1) know some Shakespeare and Middle English.
2) Be familiar with many masterpieces of world literature.
3) Be well versed in Norse sagas and mythology.
4) Know English literature thoroughly and be able to guess any work from a few words.
5) Know ancient mythology.
6) Know ancient history.
7) Know a little Latin and even a little medieval alchemy.
Originally, there couldn't have been too many people like that, but there were a few who surely knew everything. The Inklings, of course, and especially Tolkien. And now? Well, there are still some, and a lot of them, judging by the constant reprinting of The Worm Ouroboros.
The wonderful oddity of this book has to do with the fact that Eddison was really trying to create a chivalric romance. You wrote, for example, that the characters of Worm Ouroboros don't care about their subjects and don't think about how to run their kingdoms. But the characters in Mallory's Death of Arthur don't think about that either, and I don't recall Shakespeare's Hamlet saying anything about prices and taxes in the Danish kingdom.
Some people have also criticised the Worm Ouroboros, mostly for no reason. For example, they say that all the characters except Gro have the same personality. Not at all. Everyone is different, and Corund is nothing like Corinius, and Juss is nothing like Brandoch Dah. Of course, they do have something in common, and it's probably the archetype of the medieval warrior, from which they all depart in very different directions.
A more serious accusation is that the characters are indifferent to their problems and troubles, maintaining an epic impassivity. No, that's quite wrong. It is the author who maintains epic impassivity, for him there is neither good nor bad, and in this Eddison certainly imitates Homer, who loves both Greeks and Trojans equally. The characters themselves, on the other hand, are very passionate and often impulsive.
I find this book beautiful and unique. The scene where King Gorice and Lord Gro conjure in the iron tower is really great, but I also like the episodes where Lord Gro and Lady Mevrian travel in the wilderness, and the pandas dance, and much more.