InsaneJournal

The Eddings discussion goes ever on and on.
My post. Veers slightly off topic.


(Thank you for sparing me a fit of giggles. I prefer Beril to Berit for pure pronunciation-purposes as well - Berit sounds so choppy and short, whereas Beril ends with a softer, all-around nicer sound. /useless info.)

We-ell... I suppose you're right about Ehlana and her opinions - she obviously sees no trouble with Sparhawk, despite the repeated mentions of his lack of good looks - but I'm so used to the Eddings' equation of beautiful=good, ugly=evil that I just sort of assume it's always in effect by now. And yes, in E, Kalten was mentioned as being in the same category as Ulath - the absolutely-no-marriage-evar one, that is. So Ehlana's predictions aren't infallible, thank lork - it would be so much more irritating if everything she said came true.

(As for shippery - Ulath/Tynian is where the canon doesn't have a lot to support it as a romantic pairing, but there's enough friendshippy things to build on - 'sides, Ulath mentions once or twice during Tamuli how he doesn't feel like it's the same while Tynian is gone to Chyrellos. Bevier/Khalad, though? That's just the shippy part of my brain running around, cackling like a supervillain. sweat drop Completely non-canon, and yes, there's more support for, say, Khalad/Beril, but the shippy part of my brain is not always logical. I ship Zaraki Kenpachi/Kotetsu Isane - that is, Blood-Thirsty, Ultra Violent, Thinks-Killing-Is-Fun-And-Fighting-Is-The-Ultimate-Game Semi-Psycho Killer (who carries around a pink-haired midget of a girl he picked up somewhere in the slum)/Somewhat Scatter-Brained Healer-Type With Freaky Reoccurring Nightmares (One Of Them Involved Fish Paste) - and Grimjow/Kurotsuchi Nemu - Mr. Why-Yes-That-Is-Half-A-Skeletal-Jaw-Stuck-To-My-Face-Why-Don't-I-Rip-Your-Heart-Out/Miss My-Body-Is-A-Living-Doll-And-My-Soul-Was-Created-In-A-Lab* - neither of which have any support in canon, so don't think very hard about my shippery. Support in canon is something that happens to other people - 'sides, I see my Bevier/Khalad as being more of a friendshippy thing. Bevier's too tied up in the church and his vows to ever do anything about it, and Khalad has that... disrespect of knights issue of his. nyah!)

*If you by these two examples somehow deduct that violent boys/somewhat less violent girls seem to fit me well, as far as shippery goes, er... you might be right. On the other hand, Zaraki adopted a random orphan girl who calls him Ken-chan (-chan is a suffix usually given to small, cute girls, to emphasise their cuteness) and carries her around on his shoulder, both Isane and Nemu have probably killed quite a lot of monsters in their day, and the most fascinating thing about Grimjow is the fact that he lacks a heart but still somehow manages to feel things (even if it's usually anger, etc.), well.... There's more to it, so to speak. But that's a discussion for another day.


Your point about Beril, of course, makes perfect sense. It's just that the way it was introduced in Tamuli made me go "Er, what now?" because there was no mention whatsoever of his attractiveness in E (aside from a stray mention of his being handsome, on one or two pages out of three 250+ page books), and then all of a sudden, in Tamuli, the girls are falling all over him. And that first scene with Elysoun. On the one hand, Eddings makes a point of how worldly the Pandions are compared to the other orders, but on the other hand, he has that scene that throws hints like fishermen throw nets, and all of them go over Beril's head and out the window. Either the Pandions are worldly, or they're not. You can't have the cake and eat it too, Eddings.


There are super-talented people in B/M, too. Silk is the most obvious example - he's a great actor what with all the personas, a great spy, a fabulous pickpocket, speaks the Drasnian secret language like he was born to do it (which can't be much of a "secret" language, since half the world seems to know it) - but I'm sure there are others. Mind you, B/M didn't have the same demand for multi-talented people, because the group of rag-tag heroes kept together at all times, and everyone did their designated task - and anyway, anything they couldn't do, Belgarath/Polgara/Garion/Beldin could do (throw giant rocks like they were so much cotton? Right away! Create a completely new flower from scratch? No problem at all! Expert knowledge of all food, medicine, language and politically important figures in the world? In a heartbeat! Bring a dead foal back from the dead, for no immediate plot-purpose? Y helo thar!)

Melidere and Velvet are freakishly alike because they're the same character. Really. All that changed was the name, and the fact that Melidere's father chipped coins for a living, and she carries no obvious weapons. Same injury, same haircolour, same voice, same manners, same singing-talent, same colour choices, same everything and isn't this getting repetitive now? *sigh* Mind you, I've always pictured Velvet as being dark-haired, even though Eddings says, over and over, that her hair is "the colour of honey". I don't know why. Maybe because I associate the word "velvet" (and it's Swedish equivalent) with dark colours.

Danae/Talen, yes, and the jumping off cliffs... He stated to Aphrael that he loved her, which I thought a rather out of character confession for him - he's a lot for keeping secrets, and doesn't really like talking about his emotions, but I suppose once again, it is authorial license at work - but the question is if he sees Flute and Aphrael as the same person or not, even if that's what they are. Like Sparhawk, I think Talen would have problems with accepting the fact that Aphrael/Danae is more than one person. (See: his protests in E about pre-written love-letters/poetry with blanks for the girls names being "dishonest" - as far as girls are concerned, it seems he has some definite principles).


The Delphae are interesting, and not only because Xanetia is basically Deus Ex Machina with a pretty face. The glowing lake, as I recall, is entirely magic to begin with - or a miracle, since it is their god (whose name I can't recall) who wants them to take on the look of gods (i.e: light and glowiness) because he loves them so much. The curse is a later addition - they were already glowing like torches when he raised his hand on the llake (because he could not bare to raise his hand directly against his beloved people) - which turned them into the flesh-melting horrors that they are today. That's interesting. I don't remember in which book it's explained (I think it's in The Hidden City) but the silence of their magic is precisely because of this curse. Xanetia says something along the lines of "Your magic is a blessing of the gods, and blessings are joyous and loud - our magic is a curse, and curses are dark and silent." Their magic is silent because the curse is, metaphysically/magically, something shameful and hushed-up; something their god is ashamed of. Styric magic is, in essence, prayers that always work. It makes sense, and is fascinating, but aside from the few times when Eddings really needs it (i.e: he's written himself into a corner he can't get out of without the aforementioned Deus Ex Machina; Sephrenia's stabbing, for example), it's not really spoken about.

I want more of this. The most fascinating thing about the Delphae is their journey towards the light - it is said that Xanetia will be able to go into that light any day, because she's already perfect (leaving my quibbles about "perfection" in characters aside), but that the other Delphae are not - at least, not yet. However, I seem to recall them all leaving at the end of THC, which contradicts what Eddings has already said. Do correct me if I'm wrong, though - it's a bit hazy, and I was just scanning through the pages quickly at that point. Eddings could have done so much with them, but the Shiny Blue McGuffin was by far more important than original worldbuilding, so we were deprived of that.


Zalasta. Eurgh. His backstabbery had potential to be interesting, but Eddings fumbled it. It is said, in E, that the world "chimes like a bell" whenever Bhelliom is moved, and that any god (and indeed, any magician) worth his or her salt could feel it the moment they fished it out of Lake Venne, because the whole world was, as mentioned, trembling. Yet when we meet him in Tamuli, Zalasta says that it's a good thing Sparhawk still has Bhelliom, and then he's shocked when he discovers they don't. Logical holes, y/y? The whole bit where he's involved in everything bad that ever happens to anyone seems to imply that he's got at least some sort of intelligence, but when he can't even tell that Sparhawk hasn't got Bhelliom? It sorts of sticks pins in his balloon of credibility.

The whole flip-flopping between villainous mastermind and pathetic whiner grated on me as well. While it did seem a bit interesting - it implies that Scarpa's insanity might be at least partly inherited from his dear ol' dad - it just comes off as inconsistent characterisation. Couple this with Ehlana's instant dislike of him (which was just screaming "clumsy foreshadowing ahoy!", but was thankfully diverted for a while at least) and he comes off as yet another spark off the dull side of Edding's flint.


E/T's timeline is a complete and utter mess. Forty thousand year old civilisations which we've already pointed out the flaws with, tens of thousands of years thrown around as if we were talking about maybe three thousand at most (stone age =/= bronze armour, like you said - though Incetes is mentioned as having stone age armour - at least I think it's Incetes - though that begs the question how the heck did an oral tradition hero tale survive for 10 000+ years, if he really is wearing stone age armour, and Eddings' bronze age took place 10 000 years ago?), dinosaurs, etc., etc. The Gothic novels of Thalesia made me giggle - it was one opportunity for worldbuilding that Eddings didn't miss out on - but it felt slightly out of place, since publishing novels like that eats up a whole lot of paper, which means they'd have to have invented not only the printing press but the paper mill as well, etc., etc. And the gunpowder-less China I mean Tamuli - the rest of Tamuli is basically the fantasy equivalent of China, and they've had the Empire around for ages and there's talk of dynasties and great architecture and complicated political systems (Tengha is a representational republic!) but no universal literacy? No mention of printing presses? No gunpowder?

The "hopeless" Tamuli army was a problem that could have been more neatly fixed if gunpowder existed - instead of wasting time training them to be the low-budget version of the Peloi, they could have merely forced them to exercise off all that extra fat and then given them cannons and ancient flamethrowers (first historical flamethrower - Byzantium had ship-mounted flame-throwers in 673 AD, China had portable flamethrowers in 919 AD) and just given them free reign. Hell, the Chinese invented torpedoes that were accurate enough to sink ships not too long after the invention of gunpowder.

The mind, it boggles.


The lack of an equator, yes. Have you noticed that Thalesia has no northern border, and that Rendor has no bottom? Assuming that Eddings' world is sphere-shaped, and not completely flat, one should theoretically be able to hit the southern coast of the Rendor subcontinent if one went north for long enough - assuming that there wasn't anything in the way, like when Columbus tried to reach India the wrong way around - but it seems Rendor is just a desert in the lower corner of the map, and that either it ends where the map ends, or goes on forever. (Speaking of Rendor - I find it kind of sad that Eddings went "Hmm, I need some church conflict - let's take Islam and societies based upon it, plunk them down in Nowhere, Sandland-Ville, and call them heretics and have done with it!". The Arabic world is responsible for much of the cultural development we have today - aside from preserving the writings of the Greeks, they also invented the zero, did a lot of math-stuff, had advanced societies and achieved amazing feats of engineering, etc. etc. I think it was the famous explorer Ibn Battuta who came to Sweden while we were still a Viking society, and exclaimed over how primitive we were. Yet Eddings' Rendor seems to be a blank canvas on which he has painted a couple of fanatics.

.... I have a craving for religious schism coupled with societal complications. Can you tell?)

But yes. Geography. Eddings fails the subject. It's one thing to have a limited map - I, for example, have only mapped out one continent of HoD-verse (not final; it never is), and even then, only a part of it; it extends beyond the borders of the map - but it's quite another to write as if the world ends there. But then, the whole everything-ends-at-the-borders-of-the-plot seems to be Eddings' biggest failing, doesn't it?


Althalus might not have had the Shiny Blue McGuffin, but it had the Shiny Sparkly Knife of Awesomeness instead. The whole pre-destined crap wore itself out in B/M, and It Is God's/Goddess' Will Be Done wore itself out during E/T, and yet TRoA had them both, in spades.


And speaking of mental colour-codes.... There's a whole lot of them in the Polgara duology. Apparently, one's nationality determines one's mental colour - Arendians are different shades of green (there's a difference between Arendians and Mimbrates), the Alorns are different shades of blue, there's some people who are red, and I think the Murgos are black. There is a whole lot of the blue=good thing, though. Poledra glows blue, Aldur's colour is blue, Aldur's stone is blue, Bhelliom is blue, etc., etc. And yes, red is evil. Cyrgon, though, I recall as being a point of bright light - but he's one of those exceptions. Eddings doesn't even try with Cyrgon - he's just the evil and arrogant god, who is also stupid. There's nothing else to his character. He isn't even very scary. In fact, Krager is probably better at making my skin crawl than Cyrgon is, and that's saying something - especially since I sort of like Krager.


So... yeah. It's rather fascinating how much we have to say about an author who is, at best, mediocre.