I read this book thinking it would be one of those mystifying tones that puzzle and enthrall years after reading it, like The Man Who Was Thursday or That Hideous Strength or even The Once and Future King, something far greater than the pages upon which it is written to contain it. It is an intriguing read, set in and written like an old epic out of the classical period, but overall an excellent story and a good book. My greatest impression was that the chaos and capriciousness of the Greek gods was finally civilized and ordered into the medieval Christian ideal of true society and culture (which is not to say this is a Christian book but rather an epic saga written by a western man with a Christian education). The high ideals of chivalry, nobility, honor, good and evil imbuing the book are a stark contrast to classic mythology wherein the gods smite and ravish whom they will. What surprised me most was the ending, I had come to expect these men, nay demigods to make the obvious Christian choice, to rejoice in their hard won peace and glory rather than looking upon the horrors of the past with an unfathomable longing. I was expecting a little of Faramir’s ‘I love the bright sword only for what it defends’ rather than this high deeds and glory for its own sake, at least in this the book lives up to its pagan, or rather merely human, heritage, but then the very idea of the namesake worm is one of repetition and endless circles, when in reality it is a mere circling of the drain. The Christian answer to such things is a hard edged cross to smite that ancient dragon and his illusionary circles. War and personal glory are not an end of themselves rather they are only worthwhile wherein they are used to fight back that hideous worm and his destructive ideals. Good and right and true have always been and will ever be, unsullied, unchanged, undimmed, evil is a bending or marring of that eternal Good, the Good will exist and continue whether there be evil or not. These valiant and otherwise noble heroes at the last make the same mistake so many mere men now make in thinking Heaven must be dull since therein no evil dwells, not realizing that it is our broken souls that cannot understand such wonderful tales nor even conceive of them, for they are greater than we, no more can a toddler comprehend advanced physics but no affect does that have on gravity’s pull on himself. This is not a tale too big to fit in a book, save to those whose minds are still dimmed by the dizzying circles of our human life, to find such tales one must look to the very Author of the original tale ‘too big to fit in any written book!’ Job, Ecclesiastes, and most certainly the Gospel of John are just such tales, or rather little chapters of it. After these have been mastered, perhaps the fairy tales of later saints might then confound us. A rousing tale but not the end or greatest theteof!
