Alright, I promise this is the last David Eddings book for quite some time (though there are two more series that I’m hoping to read later—much later—in the year), and after this there’s only one more post to write before I’m completely caught up. Eleven books behind is a record for me, I think. Anyway, in this final book in The Malloreon, we see the emergence of the true god of Angarak in the altered form of Erriond, a strange but minor character from The Belgariad. The Christian overtones are more than a little obvious, as UL, the father of the gods, implies that the world is beginning to make a transition from polytheism to monotheism through the emergence of a benevolent god who walks the earth gathering disciples to himself. It’s not a one-to-one analog, of course. Nothing in Eddings’ fiction ever quite is, but it’s not entirely subtle, either. Sadly the ending is not entirely satisfying; one gets a kind of “happily ever after” sense that doesn’t quite play with how much intrigue seemed to exist that was unrelated to the major movements of the plot. Still, I can’t see any other stories being told in this world or about these characters; there’s simply nowhere to go.
Next: The Darkness That Comes Before, by R. Scott Bakker.
