No doubt. I’d still recommend Lord of the Rings too. 
-XT
Lord of the Rings What a boring series
runs and hides
Not really. It’s made fairly clear that these people’s nature is determined by their God’s nature and commands. That’s why Toledrans, say, are so nearly universally greedy instead of mostly greedy or often greedy. The Sendarians, who worship all the Gods, are noted by Belgarath as lacking the “obsessions” of the other races.
Also, racism in the real world is stupid and lazy because it’s factually wrong. It would be neither if it was true, and it could easily have been. If Australia had been inhabited by Neanderthals, say, it would be hard to argue that they were not functionally less capable than us ( and I pity them for what would happen when we found them ). In the real world, however, we have little genetic variation - certain not so much as the hominids did in prehistory - and fortunately we don’t have Gods screwing with us.
As far as the books go, I slogged through the first Dreamers book, but couldn’t get into it. I liked the Belgarion and Sparhawk series, however, and thought The Redempton of Athalus was OK. They aren’t great literature, but they are a fun semi-mindless read; the McDonald’s hamburger of fantasy.
I gave up on Eddings partway through the Sparhawk books, when I realised that the “bad guys” were being slaughtered before they’d done anything bad (they were only bad by association with the big bad guy) while the “good guys” went around chopping heads off and laughing as they did it.
I decided then that the heroes were not heroes, and was also so over the Polgara-esque Sephrenia, and the lack of motivation for them wandering around everywhere.
I never read the whole thing, but I seem to recall in the Rivan Codex that he was actually using certain races or nationalities to base his stereotypes off of.
Tsk, tsk. Now how can you possibly say that? It’s identical. 
The Malloreon is basically the same books rewritten, and if that wasn’t enough Eddings goodness for you, he ports the characters over with only a re-name for the Sapphire Rose series.
The man’s a creative genius, I tell you!
Meh, The Losers killed some time in an airport once. I don’t hate it, but I wouldn’t read it again if I had any other choice.
The Belgariad/Mallorean (& the Polgara and Belgarath additions) is worth the bother, if you’re in the mood for formulaic escapism. I liked the Sparhawk stuff slightly better, simply because Sparhawk’s bitch wife annoys me less than Belgarion’s brat wife.
The Belgarion & Sparhawk stuff are all on my list of total crap to reread when I need mindless, unimportant, light escapism – along with Janet Evanovich, Anne McCaffery, The Cat Who did everydamnthing series and Agatha Christie. Those all will mellow a stressful week for me.
YMMV 
Iquite liked The Losers, but haven’t read it for years, so that may no longer be the case. the best of his non fantasy work, imo, was his 1st book - High Hunt. Anyone else read that?
Oh, I liked The Losers, but I just was a bit shocked by it. I wasn’t expecting it. I haven’t even heard of High Hunt, which isn’t surprising. I hardly ever wander into plain fiction. Now I have another book to read! Yay! Thanks!
Great idea! Thanks.
Well, you may not want to read it… but let me make my point then.
The Rivan Codex is not a story, rather it is a collection of reference material that he created and upon which he based the Belgariad and Mallorean. It’s actually quite interesting to read, if you want the “behind-the-scences” view of world building.
In any event, in it, he explicitly states that he used various real-world cultures as the templates for the races in the Belgariad.
Zev (member of the Ulgos) Steinhardt
I agree that real-world racism is stupid because it’s factually wrong, but that’s not what makes it lazy. It’s lazy because it’s easier to deal with stereotypes than to try to interact with other people as individuals. Which is exactly what Eddings does in his books. In fact, “lazy” is probably Edding’s defining trait as an author. Rather than attempt to create a believable society populated by recognizable human characters, he just says, “All Tolnedrans are greedy,” and tries to pass it off as world building. Rather than write new stories with new characters, he files off the serial numbers from The Belgariad and tries to pass it off as a new book. The end result of all this laziness is a stupid book, filled with shallow characters who don’t have personalities, just a set of pre-determined character tics, which makes it impossible for the book to engage the reader in the drama, because who gives a shit what happens to this pack of tissue-thin stereotypes?
Few things send me into a white hot rage as much as the mentioning of that…that BLIGHT. I want to track down every copy of that and destroy it aside from a few left over to teach people how NOT to write. The main character is just a huge Mary Sue in the worst possible way the author is so busy masturbating to how great he is that he forgets to actually tell the story in a way other then “Oh btw a major plot development here but let’s get back to how bad ass and impressive my main character is.”
My favorite part was how the main character (who seems to love being ordered around by women) gets invited into an apartment that has a long list of ball breaking rules by three girls that live in the basement to make sure he is castrated as much as possible (with of course no chance for actual sex) and is informed that he will be ‘tossed out’ by a large mean looking black man and all but creams in his pants at the opportunity. I seriously felt dirty reading parts of the book and seeing so clearly into the author’s private psychosis. Not to mention the intolerable Twinkie character that talked and wrote in ultra-annoying baby-talk the whole book. Or the…takes deep breath forget it I’ll just end up writing a 10,000 word essay on this book if I don’t just drop it.
That said I think The Mallorean and Belgarad (sorry if they’re misspelled I can’t be bothered to double check) are great but everyone should just read those two in Elementary school and forget the rest.
Interesting. I read the Belgariad and Malloreon stories some time ago and have since meant to move on with Edding’s work, but never knew what to continue with… seems I broke off in the right place!
On topic, I read the Belgariad as it came out and I was looking forward to the Mallorean, mostly because I wanted to see where Eddings went with it. What about Errand? How does a decent man like Durnik adjust to great power? There’s an opening in the pantheon now, who might fill it? The Lost Race is found to have a remnant population, how is that going to affect the greiving god? And so on.
But halfway through the first book of the Mallorean, I realized that he was not going to continue the story, just replay it. I haven’t picked up anything by him since…
From this morning’s digest of clippings from The News of the Weird:
Eddings causes me to obtain muchly in the modality of “meh”. I read the Belgariad twenty years ago and if that’s his best work, I thank whatever lucky stars I have that I never read his worst. I can barely remember a thing about any of the books and I’m seriously happy that way. I hunger for more Eddings the way I hunger for more of Anne Rice’s vampire books, i.e. not at all.
Dangit, I wanted to post this! :mad: Having suffered through his novels as a kid, I actually found his experiments with gas to be redeeming: they were the first time he’s ever entertained me.
Daniel