[Optimus Prime]

I went...

Jordan, Martin, SE

[Dancer+]

A strange middle name.

[Cougar]

For me I started with Tolkein and went on simultaneously to the Eddings/Feist combo and Gemmell, once I'd exhausted these it was Jordan then Erikson.

Criticsing Eddings is a bit like saying the Goon Show or Hancocks Half Hour aren't funny, simply because the taste in humour has changed, it's the same for Fantasy, without people like Eddings and Feist writting 'in genre' you can't have people like SE coming along and breaking out. I mean if Tolkein had written LotR and then someone had immediately released something in the MBotF style then it would have bombed.

I read the Tamuli when I was 20 I think and I quite enjoyed it but really I was already too old for it.

[KarsaOrlong]

I think the fact that he was one of the first major fantasy authors to set a standard in the genre like Raymond E Feist. The reading is easy and quick because it is targeted at a mass audience, hence the reason he is now so rich.

[The Tyrant Lizard]

The first one I read was Belgarath the Sorcerer, and I thought it was a pretty decent book. I liked the scope of the world at the time, and then went on to read the Belgariad and the Mallorean, which it turns out, I didnt have to after reading BtS.
Those ten books are quite obviously not for adult readers, and I fully agree with the fact that he is a repetative writer - possibly the most repetetive writer I've seen.
BtS and the Redemption of Althalus are much the same books.
Still, I would recommend his books to my kids. There are some good characters, and come good ideas.

[Macros]

Read belgariad and mallorean relatively young, liked them enough to read the tamuli series, layed of him for a few years then read redemption of althalus, a serious struggle to finish it. What a god awful book, it just all three series lumped together with a new baddie and new world weary sarcastic old man leading a yound niave hero, with a lady involved as well.
Dad saw one of his dreamers books at an airport and picked it up for me, think it was elders gods (is that the first?) didn't even get a quarter of the way through.
Very much a simplistic author, I think my reading ran along the lines of tolkien, eddings, fiest, jordan, martin, SE. (with gemmell sprinkled the whole way through) After reading martin to try and go back to eddings was just never going to work.

[Aimless]

Eddings did far more to get me hooked on fantasy than Tolkien ever did, and, back when I still read fantasy, I used to re-read the Malloreon and the Tamuli regularly.

It was all about the character interactions, for me. They were funny

And, because of his simple style of characterisation, it was easy to develop relationships with the characters that were independent of the author. I think that's probably one of the most important reasons why Eddings' characters are among the only ones in fantasy that I can almost think of as friends!

I actually like his worlds for being simple enough to be easily grasped.

To sum up, I like Eddings' work up until the end of the Tamuli. I haven't stopped liking it just because I've found other things I like I enjoy a varied diet.

[Tiste Simeon]

Yeah the character interactions do make me smile from time to time, but now I am half way through the Mallorean, every single interaction is exactly the same: You have the feisty women who seem to be able to intellectually outdo the men in every single conversation. The men are all fairly sarcastic and make sly comments to each other at every point. The mutter darkly. They sigh and roll their eyes in mock exasperation/innocence. They're all afraid of killing. Even though a million times they could have easily escaped a situation, considering how powerful they are all meant to be, they don't... Also, everything is over explained.
I think I used to like the Tamuli better because Sparhawk was less bothered about killing "bad guys" than Garion et al. are...

[stone monkey]

KarsaOrlong;280103 said:

I think the fact that he was one of the first major fantasy authors to set a standard in the genre like Raymond E Feist. The reading is easy and quick because it is targeted at a mass audience, hence the reason he is now so rich.

To be entirely accurate about this; there was a bit of a mini fantasy boom (that's a small boom, not a boom in small fantasies...) in the early 70s; probably following the pirated paperback publication of LotR in the late 60s. I came into reading fantasy on the end of this in the late 70s/early 80s. The people who got me into reading fantasy (fantasy fiction for adults that is) are authors like Katherine Kurtz and Patricia McKillip who were just being published back then.

[Kalahinen]

Tiste Simeon;280166 said:

Even though a million times they could have easily escaped a situation, considering how powerful they are all meant to be, they don't...

This was maybe the weakest point in Belgariad and especially Mallorean. They were the most powerful mortals in the world yet they never used their power usefully. "Too much 'sound' ".

I loved Eddings back in the 90s when I read them.

[Tiste Simeon]

I agree Kalahinen. It was very inconsistent what they could do with their powers and when they could use them...

[acesn8s]

Kalahinen;280204 said:

This was maybe the weakest point in Belgariad and especially Mallorean. They were the most powerful mortals in the world yet they never used their power usefully. "Too much 'sound' ".

I loved Eddings back in the 90s when I read them.

Ahhh . . . but that was what Barak and Hetter were for (at least in the Belgariad). Need some Murgos killed, send in the Alorns.

I much preferred the Belgariad to the Mallorian. While Sparhawk was a nice blend of my favorite characters from the Belgariad, I did find the format a bit too formulatic by the time I read those books. Plus I was a bit older and had discovered Howard and Moorcock. :cool:

[Abyss]

Just echoing - great intro level fantasy for kids/teens. You can never go back, but at the time they're great fun. Even the repetition elements work, in the same way that kids cartoons recycle plots because children like/draw comfort from familiarity and routine. I remember, age 12 or so, reading the Mallorean, where at one point Belgarion bloody well says, out loud, that everything that's happenin already happened to them in the last bloody series, and thinking 'hey, that's clever'. It works for what it is and no further, but there's a reason DE is successful.

That said, THE REDEMPTION OF ALTHALUS very nearly made my eyes bleed.

- Abyss, did, however, think Silk was one of the greatest characters ever.

[Gem Windcaster]

Abyss;280355 said:

- Abyss, did, however, think Silk was one of the greatest characters ever.

Agreed. Actually, he's half the books.

[Abyss]

Gem Windcaster;280362 said:

Agreed. Actually, he's half the books.

Totally. Silk took everything that was great about the loveable rogue archtype in fantasy at the time and made it solid - Leiber's Grey Mouser, whichever Leah Brooks had written by then, Gygax's Gord (i know, i know), Feist's Jimmy the Hand, etc etc, and tied them all into this great con artist, thief, spy, master of disguise, knife fighter, charmer, mentor and for good measure showed us he cared about his brain addled mom. To this day, i will argue that Barak was HIS sidekick.

- Abyss, notes Eddings should have just written a Silk series instead of trying that mess that was Althalus, who was basically just Silk with less character and more eyes bleeding now...

[Varunwe]

I read the Belgariad and Mallorean as a teen. Loved it then. Now I'm afraid to read them again, because it will probably be better to remember them than actually read them.

Back then, I also liked Althalus.

[RodeoRanch]

I read the Althalus book once. I could not believe how bad it was.

[ShadowOwl]

I enjoyed the Belgariad, even make me laugh. But the Mallorean was terrible writing and the dialogue was worse than juvenile, and somehow, Althalus was even worse. That one I just could not even finish.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

When I was about in 5th or 6th grade, I was a Die hard Eddings fan. I literally read the entirety of the Belgariad, Mallorean, Elinium, and Tamuli at least 15 times minimum. Eddings bridged me from Tolkein to Donaldson.

I can't read it now. The stuff I used to like is unreadable, the new stuff is even worse. My sister never got the message that he is no longer on my radar, and so continued to buy me his new books for Christmas every year.

So, I have the entire Eddings collection, including the Belgarath and Polgara stand alones, and The Rivian Codex, which was the book that was a companion to the Balgariad/Malorean, which was just a collection of random crap like poetry of the different cultures. Also Althalus, which I hated but didn't think was as bad as the Dreamer series. Everything other than the four main series is in hardback. It makes me sad to own this giant pile of unreadable books.

Many of you mentioned reading the Tamuli, but not the Elenium, which was the precursor to the Tamuli. It was better, but still suffers from all of the flaws in every Eddings book.

I should sell these on Ebay. I wonder what a complete David Eddings collection goes for.

[Gem Windcaster]

Abyss;280369 said:

Totally. Silk took everything that was great about the loveable rogue archtype in fantasy at the time and made it solid - Leiber's Grey Mouser, whichever Leah Brooks had written by then, Gygax's Gord (i know, i know), Feist's Jimmy the Hand, etc etc, and tied them all into this great con artist, thief, spy, master of disguise, knife fighter, charmer, mentor and for good measure showed us he cared about his brain addled mom. To this day, i will argue that Barak was HIS sidekick.

- Abyss, notes Eddings should have just written a Silk series instead of trying that mess that was Althalus, who was basically just Silk with less character and more eyes bleeding now...

Oh yes definitely, and Silk's dialogue always makes me laugh. He's a genius and funny and vulnerable all at once. Eddings should totally have made Silk the main character LOL.