Author: August

A co-worker loaned me this book (all three in the series, actually) by Canadian R. Scott Bakker, and the first thing I noticed, aside from the fact that it was so complex that I would definitely need to consult the glossary in the back of the book, was how similar it was to Frank Herbert’s Dune. The writing is dense, with the same blend of philosophy, mysticism, dream-like attention to detail, and brief flashes of internal dialogue. This is the first volume in an epic fantasy trilogy called The Prince of Nothing. Bakker’s world confounds any attempt to find analogs to our own. There are elements in many of the societies and religions that could come from ancient Rome, Sumeria, or Islam, but seen through alien eyes and combined with entirely fictional elements in such a way that it’s impossible to predict how they (the “real world” bits) will behave… Continue Reading →

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,… Continue Reading →

One of the things that marks this series as different from the first is that many of the male characters who were prominent now have their roles filled by women. The ultimate villain is a woman, the best tactical mind from the western nations has died and has been replaced (and quite ably) by his wife. Poledra, wife of Belgarath and mother of Polgara returns from the dead to take up a pivotal role in the resolution of the ultimate conflict. Belgarion’s wife Ce’Nedra, however, who was a remarkable force in The Belgariad virtually falls apart in these books. Her son has been kidnapped, so it stands to reason that she will be full of fear and anxiety, but close to a year later she’s still barely functional, even while in hot pursuit of the kidnapper. I find it odd that one of the strongest and most interesting female characters… Continue Reading →

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… Continue Reading →

In many ways The Belgariad was a Cold War story. The good guys were on the western edge of the world, a band of loosely-linked autonomous nations that competed and sometimes warred against each other, but were bound by, would always come together against, a common foe in the east. The foe in the east was of course an evil, almost completely inaccessible empire, a collection of vassal states being slowly crushed under the boot-heel of a malevolent dictator (in this case a god, genuinely wielding supreme authority, rather than simply pretending to). Women were chattel, slaves were bought and sold, humans were sacrificed at burning altars. It’s kind of a nightmare caricature of the old Soviet bloc, a regime that, though certainly bad enough in its own right, was nothing compared to the Angaraks under Torak. But still. At the end of The Belgariad, the wall came down, so… Continue Reading →

A lot of readers have complained, and I certainly understand their point about this issue, that The Malloreon, of which this is the first book, is simply a more adult re-working of The Belgariad. It is that, in some ways, but it makes sense with the mythic structure that Eddings has set up. The characters even remark on the repetition of events and they use that knowledge to their advantage. It also goes a certain distance towards explaining the strange mish-mash of technologies and cultures that exist in Eddings’ world. He has technologies and customs existing side by side that developed here in our world over a period of thousands of years. Late bronze-age vikings bump up along pseudo-Romans and Elizabethan courtiers, but somehow there is a resistance, and a strong one, to real social, economic, and political advancement. Even the single democratic state simply elects a single, autonomic executive… Continue Reading →

I’m sorry these entries about Eddings’ work haven’t had much to them in the way of substance, but I’ve internalized so many things about these books that I think my brain just kind of shuts down where they are concerned. Do other people have this problem with certain books or films? I know my brain shuts down when I watch The Pirate Movie as well, and it’s of even lower quality than these novels (it’s downright horrible, as opposed to simply “not great”, as Eddings’ books are). I’ve thought about whether or not I’m just afraid to look too closely about works that, though unashamedly lowbrow (and seriously, Eddings has nothing to be ashamed of; these books are a boatload of fun), are still incredibly dear to my heart. Robertson Davies, my literary idol, had the same issue with Stephen Leacock, being unable to look at his work without a… Continue Reading →

I once filled out one of those crazy questionnaire memes about books we’ve read in the past and how we felt about characters in those books. One of the questions was about whether or not we’d ever encountered a character in a book that we felt we could have a romantic relationship with, and if so, what character? I never really had an answer to that question, but then after re-reading the five books that make up The Belgariad (and then later the five books that make up The Malloreon) I finally have an answer. The skinny, spoiled, red-headed princess Ce’Nedra of Eddings’ world is exactly that character. I mean, she’s as intelligent as she is difficult, but I suppose that’s some of the appeal. I don’t know. I think in some ways that character planted ideas in my subconscious about exactly what I want in a partner and about… Continue Reading →

The characters in The Belgariad (the first five books of the ten Eddings novels I’m talking about here) aren’t really very complicated. Nearly all the main characters are… well, not exactly flat, but they’re pretty close to being archetypes. He sets up an apparatus of prophecies and identities standing behind all the major characters, keeping them stuck into roles they don’t necessarily even know they’re playing. This has the effect of not only keeping the plot rolling, but it kind of excuses the fact that they slip into types from time to time. If the characters are trapped in this apparatus, can they really burst free into true human form? I don’t know really know, but I think it’s actually an interesting question. Next up: Castle of Wizardry, by David Eddings.

I said in my last post that Eddings engages in a heavy dialogue with Tolkien and the writers who follow him, and that’s probably my favourite part of his work; he takes a number of the tropes that emerged with Tolkien, like the massive armies moving about the world with a kind of missionary fervor, but he takes them apart and looks at them with a more pragmatic eye. Characters have to raise the army, they worry about how to feed the men, where their weapons and uniforms will come from, how far they can march in a day, and all sorts of other practical concerns. This sort of attention to detail is important to me in works of fantasy (almost even more so than in works of science fiction). The genre has become so mired trying to appear mythic that I feel the need to hold it to even… Continue Reading →