Eddings decided to do different things with the way magic and sorcery work in this world of his. Rather than magic spells or object imbued with magic power (there are such objects, although, consistent with how magic functions for people in these books, those things are alive, possessing both a will and a measure of intellect), magic—or sorcery, I should say, because Eddings makes a distinction between the two, and what most readers would recognize as “magic” is actually what Eddings calls sorcery—is accomplished when a person directs a sufficient amount of will at a task, and then utters a word, like a word of command. Then, poof, miraculous things happen. Only a handful of people can do these things; there seems to be a distinction in both degree and kind between the will of a sorcerer and the will of a regular person. Doing things through sorcery costs the sorcerer significantly in terms of the drain on both his or her body and mind. Eddings has said that this was done to prevent sorcerers from becoming unstoppable or godlike, and it’s very effective. It’s also an excellent, practical, and entertaining way to integrate “magic” into the story. The reader still has to contend with a certain amount of esoteric learning, but it’s grounded in how the mind works more than in obscure languages and strange artifacts. I found it easier to see that kind of power as a thing in the world rather than the strange and ancient ritual weirdness that seems outside of the world that magic seems to be in other works of epic fantasy.
Magic, in the world of Eddings, is not what I have described above (that is sorcery). Magic is instead a kind of shamanic ritualism, a set of prescribed actions, chants, pictograms and so on that combine in specific ways to call up demons and other spirits as slaves to enact the magician’s will. The presence of these two forms could be seen as a conflict between the so-called primitive and the so-called civilized, between superstition and intellect, between the visceral and the abstract. Throughout these books, sorcerers are almost universally long-lived and solitary scholars, while magicians are short-lived, ignorant tribesmen.
This, combined with the fact that many of the various nations and races in his books are simply stereotypes based on mostly ancient real-world societies, has brought many to accuse Eddings of racism, but I think that’s a false claim. These books are quite short, but they deal with large numbers of characters from an equally large number of backgrounds, and dealing with “types” is perhaps the only way to do this and still keep such a plot-centric story moving forward quickly.
Next up: Sorceress of Darshiva, by David Eddings.
