Literature

I can’t get over the appropriateness of the book’s title. The men in this book—and the book is mostly about men, a thing that is more rare in my reading than you might think—are often violent, sometimes intensely so. What keeps them from becoming clichés is that their violence and brutality often shocks them more than the reader. It’s not a callous, unthinking brutality. It’s a brutality laced with guilt and fear and shame, with the knowledge of having failed, without always knowing why or how. There were times when I felt I’d read these stories before. Given how many writers cut their teeth on the form, I know, as a writer, that it’s certainly quite difficult to feel like you’re creating anything new. With a few of these stories, particularly the ones about childhood, like “The Helmet”, I get a palpable sense of Sellyn struggling to overcome the sheer… Continue Reading →

I didn’t realize when I started reading this series that, though three books had already been published, many more (as many as four more) had been planned. I wound up doing something I hate doing; I started reading a series before all the books were published. And now I’m stuck not knowing how it’s all going to turn out, with no recourse but to wait and hope the author doesn’t up and die on me or something. It is some small consolation that the books have been good enough that waiting, hoping the author doesn’t die, is in fact something that I’m perfectly willing to do. The Thousandfold Thought picks up on most of the issues that I discussed in my last two entries, particularly doubt and betrayal. I found myself liking only a single character in the entire book, a sorcerer called Drusas Achamian, and even then he’s a… Continue Reading →

Doubt remains as powerful a force in this second novel in The Prince of Nothing series as it did in the first. The Inrithi Holy War that had seemed a faraway impossibility and an excuse for political maneuvering suddenly becomes real and terrifying, not only because of how large and powerful it is, but because of the atrocities that follow along with any sufficiently large group of disorganized men, and because of the ease with which Kellhus and other powerful people subvert it until it becomes merely a tool towards the realization of their own personal agendas. Kellhus, who in The Darkness That Comes Before was little more than a kind of ninja-like traveler posing as a prince, manipulates those around him until he becomes the Warrior-Prophet, altering the face of the Inrithi religion until Achamian (a blasphemous sorcerer, and the only even remotely likeable character in the series) is… Continue Reading →

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 →