I spent the first 100 pages convinced I hated this book. It grew on me. Like mold, or a mushroom. It's just a really strange book, to be honest. It follows a war between two mythical kingdoms, Witchland and Demonland (honestly a map would have been really helpful because there is a lot of journeying between places, my edition unfortunately had none). The cover has a lot of stuff about this being a seminal work of fantasy and inspirational to Tolkien, and then there's Tolkien quotes and stuff. This is misleading in the sense that if you're expecting Tolkien, that is not what you get. What you get is more in line with medieval or ancient epic poetry, just in prose format. This is not the Hobbit, this is more like the Aeneid or the Nibelungenlied.

That said, there are five whole female characters with speaking roles. That's like three more than in the Lord of the Rings. One of them even gets an Eowyn moment where she puts on a suit of armour and fights. And she is not shunted off on some dude at the end. Instead everyone wants to rape her which is honestly not really better. There's also one actual rape that does actually happen, by modern standards (probably not Eddison's).

The characters are kind of amorphous. There's a ton of them, and the men from Witchland mostly have C-names. The most memorable are Brandoch Daha and Juss, who have distinct traits, even if they are things like "honorable" and "good at fighting". Distinct from medeival poetry though in that heroes are no longer morally neutral, although the same concept of "treachery equals evil" exists.

Most interesting is maybe Gro, who is not a warrior and in fact double-crosses everyone multiple times and is still a positively portrayed person. He's a philosopher? And all the ladies like him in a sexless way. And he has premonitions and is the smartest person around? Weird.