- Designated Villain: Before the book decided to ditch its framing device, the viewpoint character is guided around by a talking martlet, who identifies many of the main characters and pours a ton of adjectival condemnation on the villains. This is before they've done anything. Lessingham dryly concludes that "A fiery politician is my martlet", and resolves to make up his own mind on things. He and the martlet are never referred to again. As it turns out, the villains aren't much different from the heroes and certainly don't deserve titles like "the children of night everlasting". This is an odd example because the author seems to quite like them.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: The Demon Lords have lots of battles and perform heroic deeds to overcome the bad guys. Having done so, they're bored. So the gods recreate the bad guys so that the good guys can have fun beating them again. And so the world is condemned to an eternity of warfare because otherwise the Demons would get bored. This was because the book is specifically inspired by Nordic myth and legend, retaining the original source morality.
- Ho Yay:
- Possibly Lord Gro and King Gorice. The bath scene certainly comes across as this - it's written from Gro's point of view and describes the King's naked, manly and muscular body in some detail.
- Ditto for the wrastling earlier in the tale between Gorice and Goldry, where the two strip naked and grapple with one another, Greco-Roman style.
- Spiritual Successor: The Zimiamvian series is loosely related to The Worm Ouroboros and can be considered a sort of prequel.
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