The Dreamers posted by Ben

If only I were writing about the movie of the same title. Sadly, this post's topic refers to the reasonably new fantasy novel from David and Leigh Eddings. I remember loving their Belgariad and Malloreon series back in middle school, so when I saw that beautiful hardcover novel on the new books shelf at the library, I figured it was worth a read.

Was I ever wrong.

I haven't read such a poorly-written book in years. The authors seem to have decided that the best way to communicate information is to repeat it. Many times. Verbatim. I'm not joking, we would hear what one character was going to do, he would tell another character, that character would repeat it verbatim, and so on for a third iteration of monotony.

I figure that either they were writing the book for ADHD nine-year olds (and marketing was pretending that it was a novel for adults) or the husband/wife writing team was hit by a double case of short-term memory loss.

In any case, though, the book was so bad that I found myself wondering if they had always been terribly authors and that my love of their other books was simply a matter of poor middle-school taste. It was with some trepidation, then, that I sat down last week to re-read their five volume series, The Belgariad.

Surprisingly, it held up quite well. Perhaps this is because Eddings' intention with the series, as elucidated in his postscript, was to explore "certain technical and philosophical ideas concerning the [fantasy] genre." (My suspicion, however, is that he was embarrassed to have devoted himself so thoroughly to the development of an alternate world, a task which screams nerdiness.)

What struck me about the re-read most, however, was how strongly focused on predestination his story was. Calvin himself would be proud with the degree to which every important element of these characters' lives was scripted. Prophecy is such a great way to hide the hand of authorship in plain sight.

My writing partner has insisted for years that Eddings writes substandard fantasy. While the artistic merits of his works may lack the punch of a brilliant writer like George R. R. Martin, there is a certain charm to the studiousness with which Eddings draws his characters to their inexorable destinations. (His ethnically and politically regimented nation-states and his brown-skinned, evil-looking villains also do a fantastic job of promoting stereotyping of individuals based on their race. Way to go, David and Leigh.)

Complaints about subtextual racism and Calvinist demagogy aside, I have to admit that they tell a good story. Had they committed to cardinal sin of writing something boring, I would not have read almost 2000 pages in just under a week.

Go figure.