Zimiamvia
3 primary works • 4 total works
Book 1
The first volume in the classic epic trilogy of parallel worlds, admired by Tolkien and the great prototype for The Lord of the Rings and modern fantasy fiction.
According to legend, the Gates of Zimiamvia lead to a land ‘that no mortal foot may tread, but that souls of the dead that were great upon earth do inhabit.’ Here they forever live, love, do battle, and even die again.
Edward Lessingham – artist, poet, king of men and lover of women – is dead. But from Aphrodite herself, the Mistress of Mistresses, he has earned the promise to live again with the gods in Zimiamvia in return for her own perilous future favours.
This sequel to The Worm Ouroboros recounts the story of Lessingham’s first day in this strange Valhalla, where a lifetime is a day and where – among enemies, enchantments, guile and triumph – his destiny can be rewritten.
Book 2
The second volume in the classic epic trilogy of parallel worlds, admired by Tolkien and the great prototype for The Lord of the Rings and modern fantasy fiction.
A lady strays from a garden path and enters a different realm. A king wages dynastic war for control of three kingdoms. As villains plot to take control of an alternate world inhabited by the souls of the dead, a mysterious, magical woman seeks her destiny, igniting a splendid pageantry of battles and quests, poisonous love and triumphant passion, doomed loyalties and unsurpassed courage.
And while Edward Lessingham engages in an earthly romance in twentieth-century England, seduction in Zimiamvia takes place over the most lavish of banquets…
Book 3
The third volume in the classic epic trilogy of parallel worlds, admired by Tolkien and the great prototype for The Lord of the Rings and modern fantasy fiction.
E. R. Eddison was the author of three of the most remarkable fantasies in the English language: The Worm Ouroboros, Mistress of Mistresses and A Fish Dinner in Memison. Linked together as separate parts of one vast romantic epic, fans who clamoured for more were finally rewarded 13 years after Eddison’s death with the publication of the uncompleted fourth novel, written during the dark years of the Second World War.
This new edition of The Mezentian Gate includes additional narrative fragments of the story missing from the original 1958 edition. Together with an illuminating introduction by Eddison scholar Paul Edmund Thomas, this volume returns Edward Lessingham to the extravagant realm of Zimiamvia and concludes one of the most extraordinary and influential fantasy series ever written.
The classic epic trilogy of parallel worlds, admired by Tolkien and the great prototype for The Lord of the Rings and modern fantasy fiction. Also includes The Worm Ouroboros.
When Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was published, reviewers saw that there was only one author with whom he could legitimately be compared: Eric Rucker Eddison (1882-1945). He met both Tolkien and Lewis, and was cited by both as the game-changer in fantastic literature and a key influence on them. His two principal works – the sprawling and opulent fantasy trilogy Zimiamvia (which has been favourably compared to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast) and the earlier hedonistic The Worm Ouroboros (a cross between H.P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany) – put Eddison up among the masters of his craft. Admirers including Ursula Le Guin, Robert Silverberg and Clive Barker have all lined up to praise his books.
This complete eBook edition includes the three books of the Zimiamvia Trilogy - Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate, together with the epic prelude novel The Worm Ouroboros.