Reading 2008

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 →

Just to start out, I’m actually eleven books behind in my posts (this is book 14 for 2008, but I’m currently reading book 25), so things may move a bit quickly for the next few days. I don’t mind saying that these David Eddings books are guilty pleasures for me. Normally I dislike the notion of “guilty pleasure”; you shouldn’t feel guilt about enjoying any kind of reading, but one thing I think my institutional literary education taught me (an important lesson, I feel) is to distinguish between my enjoyment of a book and its quality. There are books I enjoy that are bad books, and there are books I do not enjoy that are excellent books, and I think an intelligent reader needs to be able to see that. I can see that, though I love the ten books that make up The Belgariad and The Malloreon, I know… Continue Reading →

This book, with its embossed cloth cover, is absolutely beautiful. The picture on the left doesn’t even begin to do justice to the object itself. The stories inside are also quite lovely, but they seem to lack depth and substance. I could easily say that they don’t require depth and substance, as they are Brothers-Grimm-style fairy tales, but that would then deny the fact that one of the most interesting pleasures of Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was the fact that she added those qualities to a fairy tale world. Clarke uses many of the same techniques in these stories as she did in her fine, fine novel; the archaic diction, academic paraphernalia of footnotes and bibliographic entries, and the hints at a well-worn mythology are all present, but the shorter form of these stories simply don’t allow them to develop the same impact that they had in her… Continue Reading →

Writing about Gibson’s books can be difficult if one wants to avoid spoilers, and one does in this instance. Upon reflection, I couldn’t imagine reading Spook Country and getting much enjoyment from it if I knew in the beginning what I now know at the end (re-reading is an entirely different kettle of fish, of course). Like nearly all of Gibson’s novels, Spook Country starts with several characters who seem completely unrelated to one another and slowly draws them together as a mystery is slowly revealed (revealed to the reader, that is; many of the characters know exactly what’s going on, although there is normally at least one—in this case a singer turned reporter named Hollis Henry—who doesn’t have a clue). And of course there’s the tech. Gibson is best known for near-future cyberpunk featuring technology that is just beyond our reach, although not entirely implausible. Spook Country is set… Continue Reading →

A few weeks ago my father sent me a box full of historical novels, mostly with a nautical theme. My father has good taste in such books; he was the person who clued me in to the genius that is Patrick O’Brian. Dark Voyage is the first book from box, and while it’s no Master and Commander, it was quite an exciting read. Alan Furst does an excellent job of placing his characters in a believable—an exceptionally believable—picture of Europe and North Africa during the early years of World War Two. Eric DeHaan is captain of the Dutch tramp freighter Noordendam, co-opted by the British Navy for use in clandestine operations that could not be carried out by military vessels. Furst’s prose reminds me of Ian Fleming’s, in that it’s simple, direct, and focuses very much on creating a convincing physical world. In this sort of book its very important… Continue Reading →