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cartoonmicah's review against another edition
3.0
Lewis and Tolkien both mentioned The Well At The World’s End often when discussing their own reading, so it was added to my reading list long ago. It’s quite the saga and very difficult to find a copy of in my experience, so the only attempt I ever made in the past was cut short by the exhaustion of reading lengthy medieval literature on a computer screen. After a length of years, I came back to make a fresh start. I found a Librevox recording of all for books of the novel and though some of the recordings were lacking, the otherwise inaccessible novel was a great gift from those readers.
Well was a sort of revival of medieval style written around the Sherlock Holmes era. Morris employs a lot of arcane language and really gets the storytelling and all the elements just right to make this feel much older. Or at least to the extent that someone in my position can be deceived, his work does the trick. He goes into far deeper detail than most of the older works, but he develops his story and language in a convincing way.
Ralph is the youngest of four princes of Upmeads, a tiny kingdom of rolling green pastures and easy living. When he and his older brothers decide to go out to the four points of the compass and explore the world in search of adventures, he draws the short straw and is destined to stay home with his dotting parents. But that doesn’t stop our young fool-hearty hero. Before the dust from his brothers’ steeds can settle, Ralph steals away to the south in the only direction left to him. From here, he begins a journey of seemingly random encounters in lands which become stranger as he travels on toward the edge of the world.
Ralph Of Upmeads has two things going for him. He is incredibly lucky (everyone always says he has the look of luck about him) and incredibly handsome (every women looks longingly upon him). Luckily for Ralph, every venture he takes on is impossible unless you’re a man whom every woman falls in love with. So Ralph meets new people haphazardly and tries to understand their governments and to whom he should be friend and to whom foe. He experiences democracies and anarchy, bandits and slavery and all sorts of morally nebulous sorcery, sometimes having strong opinions and sometimes seemingly passive in what he is told and experiencing. While he comes in contact with all sorts of moral dilemmas, Ralph is no Galahad. He rarely shows a strong moral opinion that is not emotionally based. He says he is unfamiliar with thralldom (human trafficking and slavery) in his home lands, but only shows opinions about it when it involves himself or his friends. When it involves anyone he cares for, he always attempts to do the more chivalrous thing. He acquires a slave in battle and befriends the wild forest man to both of their advantages, eventually freeing him and assisting him on his way. Even so, his chivalry seems to be based solely on what effects himself, his friends, and his beloved.
Love and lust reign heavily in this story. Every woman is in love with Ralph and he falls for a few beauties, some enchanted with a beauty that makes all men war for lust over her. Ralph fights men who are killing their best friends over her jealously guarded glances. I had a hard time as a reader figuring out if she was going to be an evil character because all hell broke loose around her everywhere she went. The state of her admirers and those who fled from her reminded me of the effects of the one ring in LOTR. Even so, this elfin sorceress is apparently benign in her motives and of course, she falls head over heels in love with ol’ Ralph. The one eternally lusted after finally fell for the hot new boy. Even so, nothing comes out as planned.
Ralph goes away a lucky foolish beauty and comes home an enchanted future King with a magical bride at his side. In the middle, he falls in love, experiences loss, visits about 15 different kingdoms, travels to the edge of the world across barren lands, and comes back through all of it, helping here and there to clean things up a bit. As he nears home, he finds the kingdoms nearby in disarray and the fallout is upsetting things at Upmeads.
I was a bit surprised by the levels of sexual tension in this story. It really puts the modern romance novel into perspective when you read a classical romance like this one. It feels like a fertility myth where a youthful beauty finds he is destined to greatness because of his physical form. Finding the perfect match in feminine beauty, he reaches mythical status when he risks perils to gain the blessings of the well at the world’s end. Now he has hundreds of years of life ahead of him, a glowing countenance, and a dim foresight of future events. He and his bride have used their insane beauty to become all the more rich and powerful and love-lived and fertile.
The Well At The World’s End somehow manages to meld the worlds of Middleearth and Narnia with those of the soap opera and modern romance novels. And it does all of this in an epically long saga that feels haphazard and uneven, using language most people could not comprehend. I liked it well enough in most parts., but I doubt you would.
Well was a sort of revival of medieval style written around the Sherlock Holmes era. Morris employs a lot of arcane language and really gets the storytelling and all the elements just right to make this feel much older. Or at least to the extent that someone in my position can be deceived, his work does the trick. He goes into far deeper detail than most of the older works, but he develops his story and language in a convincing way.
Ralph is the youngest of four princes of Upmeads, a tiny kingdom of rolling green pastures and easy living. When he and his older brothers decide to go out to the four points of the compass and explore the world in search of adventures, he draws the short straw and is destined to stay home with his dotting parents. But that doesn’t stop our young fool-hearty hero. Before the dust from his brothers’ steeds can settle, Ralph steals away to the south in the only direction left to him. From here, he begins a journey of seemingly random encounters in lands which become stranger as he travels on toward the edge of the world.
Ralph Of Upmeads has two things going for him. He is incredibly lucky (everyone always says he has the look of luck about him) and incredibly handsome (every women looks longingly upon him). Luckily for Ralph, every venture he takes on is impossible unless you’re a man whom every woman falls in love with. So Ralph meets new people haphazardly and tries to understand their governments and to whom he should be friend and to whom foe. He experiences democracies and anarchy, bandits and slavery and all sorts of morally nebulous sorcery, sometimes having strong opinions and sometimes seemingly passive in what he is told and experiencing. While he comes in contact with all sorts of moral dilemmas, Ralph is no Galahad. He rarely shows a strong moral opinion that is not emotionally based. He says he is unfamiliar with thralldom (human trafficking and slavery) in his home lands, but only shows opinions about it when it involves himself or his friends. When it involves anyone he cares for, he always attempts to do the more chivalrous thing. He acquires a slave in battle and befriends the wild forest man to both of their advantages, eventually freeing him and assisting him on his way. Even so, his chivalry seems to be based solely on what effects himself, his friends, and his beloved.
Love and lust reign heavily in this story. Every woman is in love with Ralph and he falls for a few beauties, some enchanted with a beauty that makes all men war for lust over her. Ralph fights men who are killing their best friends over her jealously guarded glances. I had a hard time as a reader figuring out if she was going to be an evil character because all hell broke loose around her everywhere she went. The state of her admirers and those who fled from her reminded me of the effects of the one ring in LOTR. Even so, this elfin sorceress is apparently benign in her motives and of course, she falls head over heels in love with ol’ Ralph. The one eternally lusted after finally fell for the hot new boy. Even so, nothing comes out as planned.
Ralph goes away a lucky foolish beauty and comes home an enchanted future King with a magical bride at his side. In the middle, he falls in love, experiences loss, visits about 15 different kingdoms, travels to the edge of the world across barren lands, and comes back through all of it, helping here and there to clean things up a bit. As he nears home, he finds the kingdoms nearby in disarray and the fallout is upsetting things at Upmeads.
I was a bit surprised by the levels of sexual tension in this story. It really puts the modern romance novel into perspective when you read a classical romance like this one. It feels like a fertility myth where a youthful beauty finds he is destined to greatness because of his physical form. Finding the perfect match in feminine beauty, he reaches mythical status when he risks perils to gain the blessings of the well at the world’s end. Now he has hundreds of years of life ahead of him, a glowing countenance, and a dim foresight of future events. He and his bride have used their insane beauty to become all the more rich and powerful and love-lived and fertile.
The Well At The World’s End somehow manages to meld the worlds of Middleearth and Narnia with those of the soap opera and modern romance novels. And it does all of this in an epically long saga that feels haphazard and uneven, using language most people could not comprehend. I liked it well enough in most parts., but I doubt you would.
slsilver76's review against another edition
3.0
A fascinating book, if not always the easiest read. First published in the very late 19th century, it is considered the first book of high fantasy. It had tremendous influence on C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein, who both borrowed or slightly modified names (Gandolf, Silverfax/Shadowfax, King Peter). Plot and structural similarities with Tolkein and Lewis can also easily be seen. For all these reasons, and for an at least mildly compelling storyline, it is worth the read.
It is, however, intentionally written in a late Medieval style of language. This language may have been more accessible to its first readers, but does tend to obscure some of the details of plot, relationships, and character development. It can also bog down the reading as words need to be found in a dictionary (and not all were available in my Kindle dictionary), often looking for the archaic meaning rather than the current meaning. The general plot is easy enough to follow and one gets used to the language to an extent over time, but it can be slow going, especially initially.
This blog post considering the very progressive depictions of female characters is quite fascinating and adds (or reveals) a layer of depth to the story: https://fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk/william-morris-the-well-at-the-worlds-end/
All in all, for big fans of Tolkein and/or Lewis, or of the epic fantasy genre in general, this might be an important work to be familiar with. Other readers may find the language and slower-moving plot to be too much of a barrier.
It is, however, intentionally written in a late Medieval style of language. This language may have been more accessible to its first readers, but does tend to obscure some of the details of plot, relationships, and character development. It can also bog down the reading as words need to be found in a dictionary (and not all were available in my Kindle dictionary), often looking for the archaic meaning rather than the current meaning. The general plot is easy enough to follow and one gets used to the language to an extent over time, but it can be slow going, especially initially.
This blog post considering the very progressive depictions of female characters is quite fascinating and adds (or reveals) a layer of depth to the story: https://fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk/william-morris-the-well-at-the-worlds-end/
All in all, for big fans of Tolkein and/or Lewis, or of the epic fantasy genre in general, this might be an important work to be familiar with. Other readers may find the language and slower-moving plot to be too much of a barrier.
technopond_dweller's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic adventure with great characterization and best of all a female character with character. Yay! I can see why this book inspired so many subsequent fantasy novels.
briandemarco_97's review against another edition
4.0
Whether it's music, literature, or film, the beginnings of genres are always murky. It's never exactly easy to say who "started" the surreal movement in painting or jazz in music - so it is with the fantasy genre. Stories of heroes going on fantastic quests facing monsters and demons go back ages. Are we, then, to say that Homer invented Fantasy with the Iliad and the Odyssey? Or was it that elusive individual who first penned Beowulf? And what about the medieval legends of King Arthur and the Round Table? Is that not Fantasy? In truth, the answer is almost always that no one person invents the genre or movement. But there is almost always someone who takes all the pieces that exist and forms them into something new that spawns a thousand others.
For fantasy, that person is William Morris.
William Morris is given this dubious honor because his books were the first (that we can find, at least) to take place entirely in invented worlds that, according to Lin Carter, have entirely escaped the wear and tear of ever having actually existed. Before Morris's works, fantasy was dreamlands like in "Phantastes" or "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" or heroic works set in far away corners of the world that may not actually exist, but are still supposed to be part of Earth.
"The Well at the World's End" is William Morris's best known story, and it was the obvious choice for my second book in the Year of Fantasy. It is one that I enjoyed very much and have very little in the way of criticism (as evidenced by my four star review). There is one major criticism I have; the rest are simply minor nitpicks. But we'll get to that.
First, the good. The world is very richly imagined in this book. Unlike worldbuilders today, Morris doesn't give us a name of the world or a map or five appendices. He simply says "once upon a time in the kingdom of Upmeads" and we're off. The nice thing about this is that the world unfolds before us exactly as it does for Ralph, our main character. We are discovering it just the same as he is and it is always mysterious. There's plenty of danger and excitement along the way, and lots of tyrants and Kings and armies. It's also a pretty good story, with a classic knight going on a quest with fair maidens and a magical object at the center. Morris was very consciously hearkening back to the medieval heroic tale (which is evident in the style and language he uses, so be warned). The women in this story are also not entirely powerless like in lots of old fantasy. There's still a bit of old world attitude towards female temperament and mind in there (and somehow every single woman is exceedingly fair), but the two main female characters in the story actually do helpful things.
As I said, I have mostly only minor nitpicks. The book indulges in my absolute least favorite old convention, the story within a story, wherein we'll get a break from the main plot so that some other character can take 5 or ten pages (or several chapters, at its worst) to tell us something else from their POV we probably don't need to know. The main character, Ralph, is also a bit too perfect for much of the story, for he has the dubious distinction of making every female he comes into contact with fall in love with him, even when they only met him five seconds ago, and there's never really any doubt he's going to succeed and be alright. But that's also par for the course with medieval romances, and since that's what Morris was aiming for I can let it slide.
And now, for the only major criticism I have of this book: it drags. It's 562 pages long, and though that's bathroom magazine material by today's fantasy standards, it could be much shorter. Like I said, the story within the story thing gets a bit much, it doesn't happen super often. Where it really starts to drag is around the last 150 pages or so. The ending of this book is very long and drawn out, and most of it feels completely unnecessary.
So, "The Well of the World's End" is a very great book. If you read it with a firm knowledge of where fantasy went in the 20th century, you can really get a grasp of how this book laid the path for everyone else to follow. Morris created his own world, and in doing so paved the way for Lord Dunsany, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Tad Williams, Brandon Sanderson, and every child who's ever drawn a map of a place that doesn't exist - including me.
So thanks, Mr. Morris. You've done well. If only you could see where the fantasy genre has gone.
For fantasy, that person is William Morris.
William Morris is given this dubious honor because his books were the first (that we can find, at least) to take place entirely in invented worlds that, according to Lin Carter, have entirely escaped the wear and tear of ever having actually existed. Before Morris's works, fantasy was dreamlands like in "Phantastes" or "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" or heroic works set in far away corners of the world that may not actually exist, but are still supposed to be part of Earth.
"The Well at the World's End" is William Morris's best known story, and it was the obvious choice for my second book in the Year of Fantasy. It is one that I enjoyed very much and have very little in the way of criticism (as evidenced by my four star review). There is one major criticism I have; the rest are simply minor nitpicks. But we'll get to that.
First, the good. The world is very richly imagined in this book. Unlike worldbuilders today, Morris doesn't give us a name of the world or a map or five appendices. He simply says "once upon a time in the kingdom of Upmeads" and we're off. The nice thing about this is that the world unfolds before us exactly as it does for Ralph, our main character. We are discovering it just the same as he is and it is always mysterious. There's plenty of danger and excitement along the way, and lots of tyrants and Kings and armies. It's also a pretty good story, with a classic knight going on a quest with fair maidens and a magical object at the center. Morris was very consciously hearkening back to the medieval heroic tale (which is evident in the style and language he uses, so be warned). The women in this story are also not entirely powerless like in lots of old fantasy. There's still a bit of old world attitude towards female temperament and mind in there (and somehow every single woman is exceedingly fair), but the two main female characters in the story actually do helpful things.
As I said, I have mostly only minor nitpicks. The book indulges in my absolute least favorite old convention, the story within a story, wherein we'll get a break from the main plot so that some other character can take 5 or ten pages (or several chapters, at its worst) to tell us something else from their POV we probably don't need to know. The main character, Ralph, is also a bit too perfect for much of the story, for he has the dubious distinction of making every female he comes into contact with fall in love with him, even when they only met him five seconds ago, and there's never really any doubt he's going to succeed and be alright. But that's also par for the course with medieval romances, and since that's what Morris was aiming for I can let it slide.
And now, for the only major criticism I have of this book: it drags. It's 562 pages long, and though that's bathroom magazine material by today's fantasy standards, it could be much shorter. Like I said, the story within the story thing gets a bit much, it doesn't happen super often. Where it really starts to drag is around the last 150 pages or so. The ending of this book is very long and drawn out, and most of it feels completely unnecessary.
So, "The Well of the World's End" is a very great book. If you read it with a firm knowledge of where fantasy went in the 20th century, you can really get a grasp of how this book laid the path for everyone else to follow. Morris created his own world, and in doing so paved the way for Lord Dunsany, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Tad Williams, Brandon Sanderson, and every child who's ever drawn a map of a place that doesn't exist - including me.
So thanks, Mr. Morris. You've done well. If only you could see where the fantasy genre has gone.
tilikon's review against another edition
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
outcolder's review against another edition
4.0
Better than the first volume ... The ending would have been even more satisfying if instead of the interruption, it had just slowly built up in one volume. The roles of women are interesting here and there is some kind of servant-leadership thing happening.
outcolder's review against another edition
3.0
The strangeness and "sense of wonder" and all that stuff people say they like about fantasy is piled up pretty high in this weird book.
I have recently decided I need to know a lot more about William Morris and the door-stopper biography by E.P. Thompson [b:William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary|330067|William Morris Romantic to Revolutionary|E.P. Thompson|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1354399935s/330067.jpg|320643] is on my desk, mocking me with it's Stephen King "It" sized massiveness. I only knew that Morris was one of these utopians from before Marx crushed a lot of the imagination out of most socialists. I hadn't known that he'd written fantasy novels until I read Lin Carter's wonky history of the genre. Apparently William Morris was also a part of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which I have been interested in since reading [b:To Hell with Culture|1464395|To Hell with Culture|Herbert Read|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1349104553s/1464395.jpg|1455293] and so Morris is also known for his patterns and designs.
So with all that baggage, I had some expectations for this book. Some of those were met, for example, the whole thing feels like you stepped into a [a:John William Waterhouse|73145|John William Waterhouse|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] painting, or something from [b:The Pre-Raphaelites|94862|The Pre-Raphaelites|Christopher Wood|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1328849764s/94862.jpg|91450]. Lin Carter had plugged the hell out of Morris in his book, and the kind of manly, episodic quest, anglophile stuff Carter likes is boiling over in "The Well." This also means a lot of archaic language, not just "forsooth," "nigh," and "wherefore" but also "rede," "hight," and other words not in my spell-checker. It's not like you need an OED, but it does slow a reader down.
An obvious expectation is that somewhere there is going to be some kind of social message, or even a full-on utopia. The story covers a lot of ground in this fantasy world, and everywhere there is slavery and weird gender stuff. It is clear enough that the protagonist is all for a just peace and equality, but even when he seems to find pockets of that, there seems to be something amiss, or even sinister, about it.
There are probably hundreds of characters who fall into the "threshold guardian" category. Every where Ralph, our hero, goes, he runs into people who are either warning him about the dangers ahead or confirming the rewards beyond those dangers. Many of these cats are not to be trusted and the ones who are, aren't telling the whole story. This makes for a lot more puzzling and anticipation than the action-packed dungeon-crawl stories of Moorcock or Howard. There is action, too, don't get me wrong... but this book is more about, "Wait, is he fighting the right people, or should he be on the other side?" Also... tons of blushing. Because there are many characters who everyone can't help but fall in love with. Lots of love, but nothing too steamy.
Well, we're still not at the World's End, let alone the Well, because this was only Volume I. I kind of expect Volume II to be even better, but I get it why 1970s Ballantine divided it up into two slim paperbacks. Luckily for me, Villa Fantastica, the science fiction and fantasy library in Vienna has the second part, so I'll get to that sooner rather than later.
I have recently decided I need to know a lot more about William Morris and the door-stopper biography by E.P. Thompson [b:William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary|330067|William Morris Romantic to Revolutionary|E.P. Thompson|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1354399935s/330067.jpg|320643] is on my desk, mocking me with it's Stephen King "It" sized massiveness. I only knew that Morris was one of these utopians from before Marx crushed a lot of the imagination out of most socialists. I hadn't known that he'd written fantasy novels until I read Lin Carter's wonky history of the genre. Apparently William Morris was also a part of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which I have been interested in since reading [b:To Hell with Culture|1464395|To Hell with Culture|Herbert Read|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1349104553s/1464395.jpg|1455293] and so Morris is also known for his patterns and designs.
So with all that baggage, I had some expectations for this book. Some of those were met, for example, the whole thing feels like you stepped into a [a:John William Waterhouse|73145|John William Waterhouse|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] painting, or something from [b:The Pre-Raphaelites|94862|The Pre-Raphaelites|Christopher Wood|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1328849764s/94862.jpg|91450]. Lin Carter had plugged the hell out of Morris in his book, and the kind of manly, episodic quest, anglophile stuff Carter likes is boiling over in "The Well." This also means a lot of archaic language, not just "forsooth," "nigh," and "wherefore" but also "rede," "hight," and other words not in my spell-checker. It's not like you need an OED, but it does slow a reader down.
An obvious expectation is that somewhere there is going to be some kind of social message, or even a full-on utopia. The story covers a lot of ground in this fantasy world, and everywhere there is slavery and weird gender stuff. It is clear enough that the protagonist is all for a just peace and equality, but even when he seems to find pockets of that, there seems to be something amiss, or even sinister, about it.
There are probably hundreds of characters who fall into the "threshold guardian" category. Every where Ralph, our hero, goes, he runs into people who are either warning him about the dangers ahead or confirming the rewards beyond those dangers. Many of these cats are not to be trusted and the ones who are, aren't telling the whole story. This makes for a lot more puzzling and anticipation than the action-packed dungeon-crawl stories of Moorcock or Howard. There is action, too, don't get me wrong... but this book is more about, "Wait, is he fighting the right people, or should he be on the other side?" Also... tons of blushing. Because there are many characters who everyone can't help but fall in love with. Lots of love, but nothing too steamy.
Well, we're still not at the World's End, let alone the Well, because this was only Volume I. I kind of expect Volume II to be even better, but I get it why 1970s Ballantine divided it up into two slim paperbacks. Luckily for me, Villa Fantastica, the science fiction and fantasy library in Vienna has the second part, so I'll get to that sooner rather than later.