‘The greatest and most convincing writer of invented worlds that I have read.’ – J.R.R. Tolkien ‘A new literary species, a new rhetoric, a new climate of the imagination. Every episode, every speech, helps to incarnate what the author is imagining.’ – C.S. Lewis ‘An eccentric masterpiece. Eddison is unequalled in the vigour, the vividness, the passionate intensity of his imagining, the brooding sadness that underlies it, and the cockeyed magnificence of his language.’ – Ursula K. Le Guin ‘A fantasy epic written in a lush, thick, cod-Elizabethan style that started off irritating and then became part of the fun.’ – Neil Gaiman ‘The greatest high fantasy of them all.’ – Robert Silverberg ‘A grand fantasy adventure.’ – Piers Anthony ‘Authentic dream, fantastic far beyond invention and natural beyond all possibility of unbelief.’ – Arthur Ransome ‘A romance of a world that never was … its landscapes are magnificent. One lives in it.’ – Hilaire Belloc