InsaneJournal

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's the return of the Eddings discussion!
Aki's post. They keep getting longer and longer. >.>


I read The Shining Ones today - I finished Domes of Fire at some point yesterday, I'm not quite sure when - and am now capable of discussing it! And such. And I've started The Hidden City and am about a third of the way through.

(Oh - and, for purposes of these discussions, I'm adopting the use of "Beril" instead of "Berit", so you can pay attention instead of giggling.)

With regards to the discussion of the characters' physical appearances you brought up a few days ago, I always imagined Ehlana's analyses of whether or not they should actually be married off to be more a reflection on their personalities than their appearances. After all, Ehlana's not really one to judge whether one should select a spouse based on their appearance - she married Sparhawk, after all. Ulath, I can definitely agree, is not ideal husband material. (Also, yes, totally agree with you on the mental shipping of Ulath and Tynian. I can't see Bevier/Khalad, though - you did say Bevier and not Beril, didn't you? It kind of matters for the rest of my argument - 'cause of Bevier's horrified reaction to Mirtai telling them about her previous owner who had inclinations in that general direction. [edit] Actually, I checked, and you did say Bevier - if that wasn't a typo, I'm going to have to get into a lengthy argument with you on the subject [/edit]) On the other hand - I'm at work, and the only book I have with me is the third - wasn't Kalten included in the "would never inflict you on some poor lady" category? But, after all, Alean. So Ehlana's categories (or possibly just my memory) aren't infallible.

re. why Beril didn't awe every female they encountered during the course of the E - possibly at eighteen he had really bad acne or something? *angelic look* Or it could just be that they hardly met any girls. The only ones I can remember off the top of my head were Aphrael (who doesn't have hormonal responses), Sephrenia (in love with Vanion), and Ehlana (in love with Sparhawk). So he didn't exactly have much of an opportunity. And - while we're on the subject of Beril and girls (because it's such an entertaining subject!) - I had to do some serious blinking at the page when he was reporting on one of his early cross-purposes encounters with Elysoun, the actual point of which he seemed to miss (that would be the one where she told him he looked tired and offered to let him rest in her chambers). Yes, yes, the Pandions are a cloistered religious order, but they're not that cloistered, or that religious. I refuse to believe that he honestly didn't have a clue what was going on.

The amount of multi-talented people in Eddings is really astonishing. You already summed up Stragen fairly well, but you mustn't forget lots of others. Talen is a brilliant artist and an incredibly gifted pickpocket and a darned good spy, from what I can gather; Melidere is a highly skilled actress (that is, she can make everyone think she's stupid and give even the people who are sure she isn't (Stragen) absolutely no evidence to the contrary) and a politician and a very gifted singer - as you pointed out - who sings beautiful duets with her love interest, and, although it's never actually stated (or at least not so far), it seems like she's had a fair amount of weapons training as well; Sarabian is an actual genius, if you please. I can't think of anyone in particular in the B/M-'verse, but I'm sure there are people there too.

I could write an essay comparing Velvet and Melidere. I really could. They are freakishly alike. I need to check the Malloreon, but (for heaven's sake) I think they were even injured in the same place, or nearly the same place - Velvet got hit in the shoulder by a giant hailstone, and Melidere deflected a sword-thrust to her heart so it went through her shoulder - and then their prey love interests went all gooey over them and started carrying them around. And they both wear lavender whenever they can, because apparently it looks good on blonde girls who also happen to be crooks. And they both have low-pitched voices. All Melidere needs is a pet snake, a dagger or two, and an eunuch with whom to flirt. And then she could give Velvet lessons on how to swish.

Lessons on how to swish reminded me of Danae asking for same, which reminded me of something I expected to happen that actually didn't. When they went to get the Bhelliom again, and Talen jumped off the cliff after Aphrael, I really expected Eddings to beat it into the ground devote more attention to it than was given. It was actually rather nice that we were allowed to draw our own conclusions (although I was left wondering whether Talen's affection for Aphrael transfers over from Flute to Danae, and specifically what kind of love it is).

I keep on finding little things that make me laugh, and then I step back and look at the big picture and stop laughing. I think one of the reasons that I like(d?) Eddings's stuff so much is that his sense of humor is very close to my own. It's just that it's always the same handful of jokes, and once you know them you're really not surprised any more. Not quite sure what reminded me of that.

The Delphae intrigue me. (I'm more or less hopping around at random by this point, just so you know.) I really rather like the distinction between a blessing and a curse, and it's something I'd like to have been explored more. If the effects are exactly the same, what in the world is the difference between a blessing and a curse, and why does anyone use blessings then? And why are Styric curses clearly "felt", while the Delphaic curse isn't? I also wonder about their glowing lake - sometimes I think it's some variant of radioactivity, and the rest of the time I decide it's just magic. Also, the limitations on magic in the E/T are interesting. The Delphae have more power than any other mortals do, but the kind of things they do are the same kinds of things that the sorcerers in B/M can, and nobody makes any fuss about them having more power than humans should.

Zalasta rather irritates me. Eddings swings wildly between having him be the insane villain and - when he's talking to Ehlana while she's his prisoner - really kind of pathetic. He's not consistently anything, and his motive joins the Stupid, Cliche Villain crowd. I can't figure out whether his involvement in "every major catastrophe since the fall of man" (that's a quote, or a near approximation of one, from TSO) is overdone or cleverly plotted, but I do know something that bothers me very much: Ehlana, if you please, instinctively dislikes him. (Of course, she is fooled when he defeats the illusory dinosaur, so she's not infallible-Mary-Sue quite, but...)

Oh! Dinosaurs. That made me grin. But you're right about Eddings going completely nuts with the chronology in general - I'm amazed there was any time on the planet for dinosaurs to exist, considering the length of human society there. The Styrics and the Delphae joined forces against the Cyrgai ten thousand years prior to this plot - if E/T take place in, say, the equivalent of the 1500s AD real-world (and I'm estimating wildly - some things are later (universal literacy in Eosia, for instance, and the Gothic novel in particular!) but others don't (no gunpowder, for heaven's sake, not even in Asia Daresia, which would imply 9th century or earlier), then that would put the Cyrgai war into the eighth millenium BC real-world, which was still the Stone Age. Yet, somehow, the Cyrgai - even the long-dead ones - are all in bronze armor. Armor. Clothing was practically a new invention - okay, I exaggerate, but still, you see my point. Agriculture is just entering the general consciousness, and it's not very common. We're talking old. Sloppy, Eddings, very sloppy.

Also, have you noticed that the E/T world is missing an equator? It seems to be shaped like a bowl bottom-up on a table. Nobody ever mentions that in any part of the world it's cooler to the south than to the north - not even the gods or Bhelliom, and they'd be expected to know even if humans didn't. And Daresia is called "half the world", and it'd only be about a quarter if there was a bottom half. Speaking of sloppy.

Ooh, ooh, yes, I want to see Eddings write something that doesn't involve a glowing blue MacGuffin. Well, there wasn't one in TRoA, but that was brain-breaking enough in about a million other ways, so that doesn't count. And I don't think there was one in The Dreamers series, but I haven't actually managed to read that, so... (Oh. Regarding church politics, apparently there was some sort of hierarchical or theological difference between the Western and Eastern Elenian churches - someone mentions there is one, but the only detail lingered on is the genuflecting. ARGH.)

I'd rather like to understand Eddings's mental color-symbology. Blue is the Glowing MacGuffin Jewel, and reddish orange is the Evil Force, and green is miscellaneous evil (demons and the like). B/M and E/T both.