(Original review, 2005)



"Urgit, High King of Othol Murgos, sat on his garish throne in the Drojim Palace of Rak Urga"


In "Sourceress of Darshiva" by David Eddings


"Urgit, High King of Othol Murgos, was wearing a blue doublet and hose, and he sat up on his garish throne in the Drojim Palace."

In "Seeress of Kell" by David Eddings


Uhm...something is afoot here...Is it possible Eddings is copying himself...?

 

 

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

i've never before realised just how boring this book is, also how ridiculous. after spending the entire belgariad convincing us that belgarath and polgara et al have been working for thousands of years to get everything in place according to the prophecies for one event, starting a whole new series predicated on completely new! and unsuspected! prophecies that were apparently in the mrin codex all along is pretty ludicrous.i will, however, persevere for the 2010 reread. and then i might just get rid of these books altogether, since they're taking up valuable shelf space i could be using for something else more worthwhile.

Okay, I have probably got to the point now where I really do not know what to write about a book. It is strange because I managed to get through all of Piers Anthony's books without coming to a stumbling block, but with these series I have finally run out of steam. People seem to like this book, and if they do then more power to them. I must admit that when I read this book I did enjoy it but when I look back on it now I sort of wonder how it was that I even bothered with it. I guess it is because I never really understood the nature of literature and did not read to learn but simply read for the sake of reading, and in many cases simply read because I liked reading fantasy.

 

Fantasy is a very popular genre, but in many cases it is much more escapist than science-fiction. At least in a lot of the earlier science-fiction books, and in saying that I am looking back to the 50s and 60s and earlier, there was a lot of speculation, and science-fiction is also a vehicle to explore some strange concepts. Hey, even Star Trek would use science-fiction to explore some very complex ideas, such as whether the host of a symbiot is guilty of a crime committed by an earlier host (not that the answer would really have any effect in our world considering that symbiots don't exist), however I sometimes question whether fantasy can be used as a similar vehicle.

 

 

It can, in a sense, and C.S. Lewis demonstrated that in Narnia. Terry Pratchett, also to some extent, demonstrates that in his Discworld novels, though we need to remember that people like Pratchett, and Moorcock, seem to take fantasy in a slightly different direction. Moorcock was a relatively early fantasy writer, considering that fantasy had not been around all that long, but even then it is still considered to be an appendage of science-fiction. However, many seem to prefer the moniker of science-fantasy to differentiate it from the more harder, speculative science-fiction that authors like Asimov would write.

 

As for Eddings, well he has not necessarily done anything new, as have other authors such as [author:Robert Jordan], and here I am steering away from some of the what I called canned fiction: stories that are written to cash in on a popular product such as Dungeons and Dragons. These stories all seem to try to mimic, and in a way, exceed, Tolkien. Remember, Tolkien literally set the stage for the fantasy novel and the modern quest narrative, however he did it it a way that made it clear that there was no prophecy and that the weakness of the main characters meant that there was always a chance that they could fail. However they didn't fail, and in the modern story, they cannot fail. However, neither are they character studies (considering that Odysseus didn't fail either in that he actually managed to get home).

 

Failure, however, is not a no-no in literature, and in many earlier books we see the main character fail. Consider Macbeth, despite being what I call a Hollywood movie told from the viewpoint of the bad guy, the main character fails. The same happens in Othello, in King Lear, and in Troilus and Cressida. In these stories there is no happy ending, with the hero and heroine falling in love and living happily ever after. This is the modern story, the modern quest, where failure simply does not come into the picture.

 

In a way it seems that certain series get to a point where they simply have ground to a halt and cannot continue. From what I gathered from reading the reviews of this book it seems that Eddings have reached that point with this book. One of the comments involves them spending something like 200 odd pages simply talking about religion and philosophy and the rest of the book has them fighting, and defeating, a horde of demons. It is funny that the blurb of books like this always talk about a race against time, and that if they don't actually manage to get there, the other guy wins. Guess what, this is a modern fantasy novel so the other guy never actually wins.

This is what I like the most about the Scottish Play (for those who are not familiar with Shakespearian phraseology, that is Macbeth), a play that has slowly grown on me over the years. Most action adventure stories are told from the point of view of the hero and his (or her) companions and as such we get to become a part of their lives, experience their joys and sorrows, as well as share in their victories. However, it is always the same, they come up against innumerable odds and somehow, fortuitously, manage to succeed. Not so with Macbeth because, while not the villain in the Shakespearian sense, he is still an antagonist, but it is Macbeth that we spend most of the time with, the person who we share the story with, but Macbeth dies in the end.

Seriously, even in books like Grunts, which is supposed to tell a fantasy story from the point of view of the orcs, or movies like Megamind, where the main character begins as the villain and ends up as the hero, the characters that we spend the most time with end up becoming the hero because, in a way, we just cannot accept becoming attached to a character only to have this character systematically killed off (as happens in the Song of Fire and Ice, and even then it appears that only a handful of major characters suffer that fate, though it does add a lot of uncertainty to the story).

So while I would like to be able to say more about this particular book, I feel as if I am getting to the point where I am scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Mind you, I did manage to get through all ten books in this series, which I did not manage to do with the Hubbard series or the Wheel of Time (though I am still wondering whether I will be able to actually write something on the seven Wheel of Time books that I have read).

It looks as if a few people have noted that this series is pretty much a re-hash of the earlier series, with the same people just different places and a different villain. Okay, the object that was stolen is also different, but other than that it seems that Eddings simply took the script that he used for the Belgariad, made some slight changes, and made it the Mallorean. I gather that here they must get to the 'Place that is No More' which is always interesting because if the place is no more, then how can one get there. Well, I vaguely recall that it may have been some ruins which is why it is no more, but then if it is ruins then it is still there, at least as a corpse.

Somebody made a comment on how slow they seem to go to fulfil a quest that is absolutely urgent. My response is that Eddings did have to full five books of stuff so I guess that is why they seem to plod along. Anyway, that aside, we still need to remember that we are in a fantasy world, and not all fantasy worlds have instant teleportation, even if you have a sorcerer that is centuries old travelling with you. I don't seem to remember any teleportation in the Belgariad.

Travel in medieval realms is something we tend not to really appreciate. Remember, it is really slow. You either travel as fast as a horse (or some creature that may be faster) when you are on land, and when you are on the water you are pretty much at the mercy of the winds. If you are lucky and have a strong wind behind you then you could go quite fast, however as soon as the wind changes, or stops, then you're stuffed. So, let us not get caught up in the plodding across the world criticism because if all you have are horses and sailing ships, then unfortunately, you have no choice but to plod.

As for stopping at every citadel you encounter, well, of course you are, especially if you are trying to find information, because cities are (as you probably know) places where people congregate, and where people congregate information can be found. If they happen to have an adventure in every citadel they enter (they don't by the way) it is probably because there are people trying to stop them from fulfilling their quest, or because they simply have to help. Remember, these guys are heroes, and they are noble heroes at that, meaning that they are generally not going to turn their back on a damsel in distress.

As for mountains, well, I am sorry, even if you do have an airplane, that is no guarantee that you are going to be able to fly over mountains. I remember one episode of Top Gear (I generally don't watch it, but I do remember seeing one) where they were trying to see if it was faster to get from Rome to Paris by car or by plane (turned out the car was faster). Anyway, while the car could drive under the mountains thanks to all the tunnels that had been drilled through them, the poor Cesna simply did not have the power to go that high. As soon as the plane reached the Alps, they had to fly around them because the altitude at which the plane could go was quite limited. Mind you the British Airways plane that I took from London to Greece was powerful enough to get us over the Alps, but that is another story. My point being is that these days mountains can be very hard to get over, so imagine what it was like for people who only had horses (and ropes) to rely upon.