InsaneJournal

Edd to the i-ng-s!
My post.



Haha, yes - "YOU HEATHENS! You kneel with your right knee first!". One wonders what, precisely, Eddings was thinking when he pulled that one out of his hat. It screams of last resort for me - he needed an excuse as to why the Daresian Church hadn't been mentioned whatsoever in Elenium, and thought "Ahaha - yes! I'll invent a schism!", but was then too lazy to try for something vaguely interesting. Protestantism got started because Martin Luther thought "Hey, wait a minute here!" and wrote out some things he thought were wrong about the way the church worked and nailed 'em too a church door - but today, Catholics and Protestants talk to each other on quite friendly terms. He could have done something like that, or taken your papal rivalry (which is dead fascinating - was it John XXIII, by any chance? 'Cause Wikipedia had a featured article called "Tomb of Antipope John XXIII" the other day, which I didn't read as closely as I should have.) and put it a couple of hundred of years into the past, and still made the the Emban vs. Monsel confrontation/conversation possible and more interesting to boot.



... I'd sort of forgotten about the permanent repeat that B/M is on. Still, that doesn't excuse the utter stasis that the world is in; especially since some things are apparently allowed to change (the invention of money, the forming of kingdoms, the complete overhaul of the Arendian society from individual city-states - duchies? - to a somewhat unified kingdom, the utter and complete destruction of Maragor, etc., etc.) while some things aren't. Saying "nothing changes" only works if, you know, nothing changes.

And like you said, there's no excuse for the prolonged stasis in E/T - and even if Aphrael is the most biased source there is, I wholeheartedly believe it's just sloppy worldbuilding on Eddings' part. He seems to invent a world fully-formed to the point where he wants it - usually medieval-ish-with-magic-sparkles - and then think that progress is something that happens to other people.

Aww... I like Ulath. Maybe it's something about the dry humour and the way he just expects people to understand his train of thought by just grunting the one-word conclusion ("Forts."), or the telling of outrageously tall tales or even just the way he blushes when he's forced to lift Sephrenia to the ceiling during their labyrinth run in TSR, but I like him. He might be a Viking in a Knight's armour, but I can't help but go all mushy over him. Call it a personality flaw (which is probably also to blame for why I reread Eddings in the first place). I kind of liked Barak too, right up until the introduction of Merel, so maybe it's because I've got a soft spot for the big, burly, Generic Viking kind. Curiously, that particular stock character is missing from The Redemption of Althalus - Eliar doesn't cut it, because Eliar is basically Garion in a kilt and with less "Why meeee?"s.

And yes, the tour of the entire world would have happened regardless of how many - or how few - characters there were. I was shocked and amazed during Tamuli when it turned out they actually missed a country - even Eddings couldn't make up an excuse to send them all to Valesia.


I honestly think Martel is Eddings' lucky fluke. I've seen nothing like it either before or after him, and the whole thing is very well done. All the main characters have a personal reason to hate/dislike him (Vanion because he thinks that he failed as a teacher and Preceptor, Sephrenia is deeply, deeply disappointed, Sparhawk is senselessly angry etc., etc.) which is a far cry from B/M and Tamuli's "Because the prophecy says so" and "Because Cyrgon is an evil bad guy!" or Ghend, Mr I'm So Evil My Eyes Glow In The Dark. The way he asks for Sephrenia's blessing and she denies him, and then he asks again, much later, as he is dying, and she gives it to him - without writing it out, Eddings tells the reader that despite everything, she forgives him.


I noticed the flaws in the Angarak system on my second read-through. On my first read-through, I was eleven and completely free of critical thought - I thought that if it had been published, it had to be good, or something - but the second time 'round, I went "Hmm." I was slightly bothered by the fact that everyone in Drasnia was a spy (but then who does all the farming and stuff?), how everyone in Nyissa was a druggie (but wouldn't the economy collapse if the entire population was permanently high?) and how everyone in Tolnedra was money-grubbing. Then, when Eddings explicitly stated that all Thulls were born slaves, I went "Whoa, hold up!" because even at what - thirteen? - I knew that society just doesn't work that way. The economy would collapse. Society would be in shambles. Nothing would work.

Even back when Torak was awake and aware of things, all he really cared about was the grolims and the sacrificial rites. Which brings me to another thing - with Torak asleep and therefore unaware of what was going on, why didn't anyone rebel against the grolims? There weren't a whole lot of people who honestly believed he would wake up (and there was a fair share of people who went "Torak? Pshaw, he died at Wo Mimbre!" and as has been mentioned a few times before, people would not adhere to a religion practising human sacrifice for very long. Even if the grolims were sorcerers, they couldn't handle it if an entire people rose against them. (Also, if the sacrifices were so frequent - in King of the Murgos, there seems to be a set schedule of a sacrifice every couple of hours or so - how come they didn't run out of people to sacrifice? If you sacrifice too many slaves, you won't have any slaves left to do the work you refuse to, and despite slave traders and kidnappings, the supply of slaves isn't endless.)


The Rivan Codex, yeah. I read it when I was thirteen or fourteen, when I still thought Eddings was pretty awesomesauce, and thought that he might have a point. Unfortunately, I suck immensely at drawing maps (though I can draw so many other things, maps tend to utterly defeat me unless I copy from a real world source and flip it upside down to disguise my thievery or something) so I had to find my own way. In the end, I think it was all for the better. The only good thing I took away from it was the bit where he said to write a million words, and then burn them all and start over - I've written several hundred thousand words now (with all my notebook-y, un-typed-up writing, I'm guessing I'm slowly closing in on that million), and haven't burned anything, but I know I've been getting better and better with each word that goes by.



To be perfectly honest with you, I only read Ehlana's speech seriously once, and skim it the rest of the time. And no, I don't know how she singles him out, or why Stragen and Sephrenia applaud the apparent brilliance. Ortzel was the candidate up for election, and I would have wanted him to win - Dolmant might be a more worldly Archprelate, but Ortzel would have been, y'know, interesting. A blood-thirsty Larmork turned fanatical priest, who recites epic poetry (Fun side-note - Earlogisman's name. There's a short exchange in the beginning of Tamuli where Sparhawk and Kalten talk about him, and Sparhawk asks what Earlogisman's name means, and Kalten says something along the lines of "It means man o' war, I think. Lamorkan mothers do that to their children sometimes." In Swedish, the exchange is slightly useless, since Earlogisman is very close in sound to Örlogsman, which is our word for Man o' war.). It would've made for fun times during Tamuli.


Martel and the church election - Eddings' two strokes of brilliance, in my opinion. If Ehlana's speech hadn't been allowed to cheapen the latter, it would have been awesomesauce on a stick - and it still gets pretty close. Math, politics, coups, bribes and threats and everything just works. Most of the time, it's like Eddings is feeling his way through a darkened room, but with the church elections, it's like he's found the light switch - unfortunately, he fumbles and soon loses it again, but still, it's there.


The demon-magicians were in both the Belgariad and the Malloreon - in B, it's Garion who dresses up as a "Seeker" (I think) and Belgarath and Silk as his protectors-cum-magicians, and in M, it's Garion and Silk who dress up as regular Karands (the ones in B, on that side of the ocean, are called Morindim, whereas their cousins on the Mallorean continent are called Karands) and Belgarath as a demon magician. I know it's probably because of the infinite-repeat nature of the universes (which just means that B and M may as well be the same set of books, with the names changed around and some details fiddled with), but it feels ever so slightly stale. And Eddings seems to love his phosphorescent lichen - it's in Zemoch, in Chtol Mishrak, in Darshiva, in the House of Ashaba - it's bloody everywhere. I'm actually amazed not to see it in Cyrga.