The clutch chapter of the Worm Ouroboros comes with the mystical diversion of Lord Gro, the conflicted advisor of Goblinland, the nerd of the story, bullied and scorned and tolerated for his insight.

Gro takes a journey through an elder world of Gaelic faerie and rides into wonder as he steps into his true self. One would not guess that, at the height of political intrigue and the moving of armies across a war-torn land, that a vision quest by a disaffected soul would bring the story into relentless focus in the mind’s eye of the reader, but it does, with a return to the wonder-filled diction of earlier chapters and with the rejection of evil in the mind of a man who benefits from its spreading stain.

“…the young day laughing in her strength, wild with her own beauty; fire and life and every scent and colour born anew to triumph over chaos and slow darkness and the kinless night.”

“I have followed this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and the morning and the evening star?”

At the conclusion of this transformative chapter I decided then and there, or as Eddison would have written, thence, to finish the book in one read. Narrative velocity had been achieved and I knew I was finishing and recommending the book. This is the place where my fiction reviews generally end. Then, as if to confirm my sentiment, in the subtitle of the very next chapter, the editor and proof reader both missed two typos, presumably caught up in the up-flow of the story as I was.

Eddison, on page 318 had attained a rare state of narrative grace.

Diction of note: mostly equestrian gear and Gaelic geographic terms…

Fetlocks

Crupper

Strath

Bog-myrtle

Tarn

Moss-hags

Conies

Moorcock

Beck

Capripeds

Oreads

Moraines