of Eddison." In contrast to The Lord of the Rings, to which mythopoeia is central, Eddison makes few references either to actual mythology or to an invented mythology after the fashion of the Silmarillion. One example of this is Eddison's ad hoc names for people and places versus Tolkien's invention of entire languages. The tale's morality has also been described as uncommon in modern fantasy; in particular, it differs sharply from Tolkien's heroism of the common man in a fight against evil and C. S. Lewis's Christian allegory. The Demon lords hold to the Old Norse warrior ethic of loyalty and glory. The leaders of Witchland are regarded as noble and worthy opponents; in the final chapter, Goldry Bluszco compares them very favorably with the "uncivil races" of Impland. Influence and reception New York Times critic Edwin Clark praised the novel lavishly, saying "This romance has the gaudiness and flair of the Elizabethans. It has the exuberance of great appetites and vigorous living. It transcends all ordinary life. It burns with the wonder and awe of excess." But Clark also noted that Eddison "is stylistic in the grand and heroic manner that evokes beauty and vigorous life, but it seems to us that without injury to his verbal charm or loss of beauty in his passage of atmosphere saturated with glamour of nature, he could have removed much that would quicken the action of his narration to a more attractive pace." Reviewing a 1952 edition, Boucher and McComas described it as "one of the major imaginative novels of this century" and "the detailed creation of a vividly heroic alien history." They particularly commended "the resonant clangor of its prose, the tremendous impetus of its story-telling, [and] the magnificent audacity (and sternly convincing consistency) of its fantasy concepts." Donald Barr declared that Eddison wrote "in a heroic prose made of high ceremonial gestures and tropes from the great age of metaphor and described The Worm as being "quite unique among modern novels" as "a narrative of pure event" where, with a lone exception, "we are never given the interior of a character, only the actions". In 1963, Avram Davidson praised the novel's prose for "abound[ing] in beautiful, quotable language" and its story as one of "war, witchcraft, adventure, conspiracy, violence, bloodshed, intrigue." Davidson, though, faulted Eddison's conception, saying "Ouroboros is a classic, but it is not and cannot be a great