Importing some books from J.G Keely's suggested readings in fantasy.

From the above link:

Eddison was another inspirations for Tolkien and Lewis, one of the progenitors of the 'created world' story. Like them, he was a linguist and a translator, familiar with historical myths and epics, but unlike them, he was no sentimental romanticist. Though his adventure seems to be, on the surface, one of chivalry, nobility, and honor, there are wry threads of irony throughout. He approaches the story with the excitement and vivacity of a child, and his love of the wondrous and strange is apparent, yet his writing is a poetic recreation of the Jacobean form which gives the book a pervasive sense of strange archaism. Because his language is sometimes complex and unusual, I am hesitant to recommend this book to every reader. Yet, even if some of the words don't come across as more than beautiful poetry, the story itself is not oblique. The further one gets into the series, the more one comes to recognize the way the stories are structured around systems of rebirth, of unending, recurring cycles of moral, magical, amicable, and romantic relationships.