One of the best fantasy series I've read. ( )

One of my most favourite series! I've reread this series 3 times, and am thinking about reading it yet again. So many interesting characters and an engaging plot. I love the weasely and witty Silk, and the Gruff but gentle Barak! As well as the serious and kind Hettar. A truly amazing adventure that I always look forward to. ( )

Eddings' Belgariad is immediately identifiable as a coming of age tale. Garion, who lives on Faldor's farm with his Aunt Pol, the head cook, is dragged on a mysterious quest with his aunt and an old storyteller who are soon identified as the millennia old sorcerer Belgaroth and his daughter Polgara. Garion is clueless and innocent, but he slowly begins to develop a variety of skills as he works with members of their party. Unfortunately, he may be tied with Harry Potter as the most inept gatherer of information known to man. It becomes clear readers that he is the heir to the Rivan throne, and yet despite picking up every other scrap of available information he remains oblivious to this.

The most difficult part of this series for me was Eddings' inability to write women. Polar, a 4,000 year old sorceress and one of the most powerful beings in existence, regularly spends her time chiding the men about drinking beer and ale. C'Nedra, who we know is significant as she is destined to become Garion's wife, is one of the most ridiculous, petty, and flat characters I've come across and the attempts at chemistry between her and Garion appear forced and out of character on both sides.

Eddings' strongest comeback lies with his side characters. Silk (aka Prince Kheldar of Drasnia, Ambar of Kotu, Radek of Boktor) is fun, enjoyable addition to the tale. He is consistently witty, sarcastic, and hilarious to follow. His skills as an assassin, spy, fighter, and merchant lead to his being central to some of the most memorable scenes. Hettar and Mandorallen are similarly enjoyable, and their constant friendly banter, vices, and interests are what convinced me to keep reading. ( )

Omnibus edition! I'll be breaking these out as I finish them. The usual disclaimer - I first read these when I was a kid (maybe 13, at the oldest) and am irrationally fond of them. This will be an attempt to look at them with grown-up eyes, but that never actually works.

Pawn of Prophecy:

Two things struck me particularly about this book. First of all is the extremely stylized language - it worked very well on my as a kid, being completely understandable while still feeling Important. As I recall, this tone quickly fades as the series goes on, but it works well for me here. Second, there are some spectacular examples of telling-not-showing, largely in the matter of Garion's identity-crisis subplot. As an adopted kid myself, his clunky and heavy-handed struggle to deal with his genetic identity didn't make much sense to me then, and now it just highlights one of the classic bad-eurocentric-fantasy tropes - that race=culture=identity, such that people can identify nationality (even within a group of nations that are explicitly the same ethnicity, or in a nation that is explicitly a melting pot) at a glance. It's lazy writing, and it does bug me a little.

On the narrative side, I noticed something for the first time - reading this book *without* reading the prologue must be a very different experience. Because the prologue not only sets up the cosmology of the world, it also lays out very clearly how all of the nominal mysteries in this first volume are going to end - we know who Aunt Pol is, what Garion's family secret is, and what their mysterious quest must be right up front. But the actual text reveals those things gradually or not at all, in a way that's clearly intended to set up narrative tension. So... this is a self-spoiling book. I wish I could purge it from my head and read it unspoiled, for once, just to see how it went.

Queen of Sorcery

Queen of Sorcery focuses on Garion's development as a moral being, which makes sense, given that he's fifteen, barely hitting puberty, and just now noticing the world around him. I wouldn't say it's deftly handled, exactly - there is very little that is subtle in this series - but the various adventures are entertaining as well as not too obtrusively didactic. The various "hints" leading up to the "big reveal" of Garion's sorcerous power are equally obvious, but the actual climax is exciting enough, and both the justice of the act and its emotional cost are earned, I think.

The book also has a self-spoiling problem, in that the Prologue makes is very clear that Garion and Ce'Nedra are destined to be together, which undercuts any possible tension in their early relationship. I don't love that - they have some genuine problems to work through, and it feels like they're handled much too lightly because Prophecy. I am not generally a fan of relationships that begin with screaming fights and contempt on one or both sides. Ce'Nedra is only lightly characterized here, and I will no doubt gripe about her more later, but this is not an auspicious beginning.

There are some cool bits in this one, but it was never my favorite, and still isn't - too much of it feels like stalling to set up character development, rather than making the development part of the plot. There are also just plain too many characters, I think, and this book is where the author begins to find various excuses to ditch parts of the group for whole chunks of time just so it stays manageable. Lelldorin had some potential as a character and not a cardboard cutout but he goes poof almost as soon as he's introduced, Mandorallen never really becomes more than a caricature, Hettar gets plain forgotten for big chunks of the text, and Barak, Durnik, and Silk trade off the minor character moments but never really grow. Add in Wolf, Pol, Garion, and Ce'Nedra, and we're talking ten members of the ensemble - and every single bit of plot or action is initiated by someone outside the group, not within it. No wonder nationality serves as a stand-in for personality - it almost has to.

(And yes, this world has no black people. None. There are white people, who are good, and there are Asian people, who are evil. Just saying.)

Magician's Gambit:

Magician's Gambit covers not just the development of Garion's powers but the esoteric side of the worldbuilding, which has not been covered in much detail up until now. We meet a couple of gods, the Purpose of the Universe, and a high priest or two. The reason the Asians - excuse me, Angaraks - are evil is explained in detail (woo human sacrifice!) although the blame is very carefully laid on the people in power - lunatic kings and a power-mad priesthood, as well as their megalomaniac god - and we're actually left with at least a little sympathy for the common people. It's better than it could be, I guess.

We spend a bit of time in Ce'Nedra's head before she's conveniently left behind, and, try as I might, I have trouble finding fault with the characterization. She's spoiled, intelligent, and adolescent, and therefore mostly irritating but not unsympathetic. I think that over the course of the series, she doesn't develop as far away from that as she could, but right here I'm pretty much ok with her.

There are some bits that nag at me about this half of the series (Barak and his wife! Taiba! Relationships-as-cosmic-reward!) but they're better saved until later - I can't not know what happens, and be annoyed at the breadcrumbs when they appear, but on the whole this is is inoffensive. (Except, you know, for the race thing.)

And while I am not the same reader I was when I was 11, I still kind of love these books. They are fast-paced, amusing, and give the impression of discussing Serious Things without being at all challenging to a middle-class white American kid. The writing is fine, the dialogue is snappy, and the tropes are well-worn enough to feel totally comfortable. I can't help but be critical, now, but these are totally staying on my shelves. Everyone needs their wubbie. ( )

I first began reading the Belgariad series while in high school and still re-read these every few years. The series cemented my love of fantasy.