InsaneJournal

Eddings (it's soon over, I promise).
Aki's post.



Oh, yes, the Bhelliom-writing-into-corners. That was supremely irritating, but we'd already ranted a bit about that, so I didn't mention it. I might well have, though. And oh, yes, the iron-vs.-gold thing. That Eddings tried to excuse as, "Well, nobody actually knew it was intelligent, so they were working with false information!" Let's see--first it could be contained by red thread, and that kept it from controlling Sparhawk (that was actually rather cool, but--surprise!--completely unexplored. There's this super-powerful thing that's trying to make people use it, maybe to take over them, but it's necessary to defeat Evil, so it has to be risked. Except the first time 'round it turns out to be scared enough of getting smashed to help, and the second time it actually turns out to want to cooperate after all. ARGH.). Then it got too strong for the red thread, so it got put in iron. Then Aphrael or someone put it in gold when it went into the sea because gold kept it from... communicating, I guess you could say. I think there was iron involved too, except if there was Eddings (surprise, surprise) forgot about that between TSR and whichever book in the Tamuli they retrieve it in--TSO, I think. And then it turns out that it can communicate through gold, but nobody can tell it's there. (Which brings up an interesting question: is gold like a curse?)

Ah, yes, the total pointlessness of Beril/Elysoun and how much more realistic Beril/Khalad is. I think the Elysoun thing was Eddings going "Okay, we haven't pointed out the differences between boys and girls in a while, so let's do that now. Now, who can we have who'll be totally clueless? Aha! Beril! *shoves characters together and then promptly forgets about it, and then sticks references back in more or less at random*" And there is a whole lot of time spent completely without any purpose on Beril and Khalad in THC during which they're having all sorts of fun conversations ("You do know what a verb is, right?" "Well, sort of, but what's a tense?") and cooking and complementing each other's weak areas (Beril gets to do the magic and stuff, and Khalad tends to practical details, and they're both capable of wreaking havok when havoc needs to be wreaked) and stuff. And then there was that scene somewhere towards the middle where Khalad figures out that the caves full of firedamp will go all 'splodey if they get fire into them and shoots a burning arrow into the cave and it does, indeed, explode, and he doesn't even think about it, just throws himself across Beril to protect him. (That's the point two days ago at which I went and edited my post about the mental shippery to say that I was definitely going to argue with you if you really did mean Bevier.)

I've come up with a possible explanation about the accidental shippery, although yours also makes a lot of sense. I don't know for quite how long Leigh Eddings had been working with her husband, but when her name finally showed up with his on the cover, there was a little author's note saying that she'd been co-authoring for a long, long time in all but name, and it was time she finally got the needed credit*. It's possible, I suppose, that one of them knew stuff the other one didn't. ...eh, no, never mind. We just have horrible, horrible minds--I for one rarely settle for believing something is just a really good friendship if there's any possibility it's a romance instead, which is an occupational hazard I suppose (I can't write a story of any length without having romance as at least a major subplot)--and are misinterpreting being hit over the head with "character development" as "oh look, ships!".
* It's so much more convenient just to refer to David Eddings, though.

...you know, it's actually Eddings's fault. I don't think he's ever so much as considered having a protagonist be gay or bisexual, since only the villains (or that one previous owner of Mirtai's) are allowed to have non-totally-generic inclinations. And, of course, nobody could ever be in love with someone missing certain key body parts. So he has characters who can't possibly even be considered to be romantically involved do things that characters who are "capable" of being romantically involved would never be allowed to do. There are no real male/female friendships in Eddings, have you noticed that? The Pandions and Sephrenia are the closest thing, I think, and that's different because she's really more of a parent figure (except to Vanion, naturally). In B/M, Garion's friend Zubrette stopped being just a friend as soon as they all hit puberty (and that was really just kind of weird--they grew up together, practically more like siblings than anything else, and then oh my! teenagers! they must all start thinking things!); all the various adults on the quest with him only have friends who are a bit more like professional colleagues--Barak's friend the ship captain, the various people Silk knows under various names, and so on--Lelldorin's only friends are all of his gender, age, and rank; Ce'Nedra doesn't seem to have any friends (surprise, surprise); the sorcerers are each other's friends, and Polgara is their daughter or niece, depending on which sorcerer she's relating to... the only male/female friendship in the entire thing is Velvet and Sadi, and Eddings seems to have thought that was safe to have them say anything at all and interact as often as they chose, because, after all, Sadi is the Man Who Is No Man, oh yes. And, going back to the world of E/T, can you even just for a minute imagine Eddings sending two unattached characters of opposite genders out on a mission together alone (or alone with a troll)? I certainly can't. Heck, he practically doesn't even leave characters of opposite genders alone with each other a few feet away from other people unless they're love interests. But, since all these people he's sending off and having banter and miss each other and so on are of the same gender, nobody could possibly see anything in it. (When did he write the E/T, again? 1800?)

Yes, Azash was freaky. The various rites that weren't described in detail (admittedly, one got the feeling that Eddings couldn't think of details, but under the circumstances one was fairly glad that he didn't try, since the things were supposed to be horrific and nauseating and so forth. And what we did see was disturbing enough--Bellina, for instance) and the beasties and the fact that everyone knew about him and knew that he was a threat... Cyrgon, Eddings made too much of a point about his stupidity. It's very hard to be afraid of a god who's completely stupid and thinks being stupid is cool. (Question: is Cyrgon what George W. Bush would be like as a god? *shudder*) And Klael was... actually, he did kind of scare me, but not in the sense that Azash did. I tend to get freaked out by giant, unstoppable monsters, y'know? But that was all he was, you're right; he was vicious but not creepy as well. Azash was creepy. (And maimed, because you can't have your Evil God To Be Defeated By The Shiny Blue MacGuffin not maimed. Bwahaha. Quite fitting, what Aphrael did, considering what we know of Azash's rites.)

Apparently Eddings had a scale for the maps, but it's quite possible that actual distance was subjugated to plot requirements. This is Eddings, after all.

Naming! Argh! Sometimes I rather like it--trying to puzzle out the prefixes for the Murgo cities, for instance (I think "Rak Cthol" means "City of Cities", f'r instance, but Eddings seems to have forgotten that if "Cthol Mishrak" is "City of Endless Night", and the "Endless Night" part is probably the "Mishrak" since there are other places starting "Cthol", then the country is named like a city. It is "Cthol Murgos", yes?)--but a lot of the time it makes me want to bash my head against the wall. There are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, and I highly doubt Eddings is allergic to any of them. Why in the name of heaven do so many characters' names have to start with the same small batch of letters? It's not so bad in the B/M (apart from the sorcerers, argh!, and of course Silk and Sadi and Velvet-in-Swedish--oh, and the dryads), but in E/T you have Sparhawk, Sephrenia, Stragen, Sarabian, Setras, (and Dolmant's title Sarathi); Kalten, Kring, Kurik, Khalad, Klael, Krager; Bevier, Beril, Bhelliom, Bergsten, Betuana; Martel, Mirtai, Melidere; Annias, Arissa, Adus, Aphrael, Azash, Alean, Abriel, whatever Betuana's husband's name is; Ehlana, Engessa, Emban, Elysoun (and the Elene people, of course, and the kingdom of Elenia)--about the only characters worth much mention who don't share the first letter of their names with at least one someone else important are Talen, Vanion, Xanetia, and Zalasta. *facedesk* Six letters. Thirty-two characters. SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE. (And hey, at least in TRoA he's abusing the letter W instead of the much-more-frequently-abused-by-fantasy Y. Or X. That's something, right? I think with the naming of the countries he was trying to convey a linguistic relation, by the way.)

Thoughts on the end of THC--I didn't quite finish, as I mentioned, and I neglected to bring the book with me, but it'll have to do.

I actually rather liked the empress plot. It was nice to see that Elysoun wasn't just a pair of, er, salient attributes walking around with a face sort of stuck on on top, but that she could think and plot and that her having affairs with all these other people had absolutely nothing to do with how she felt about her husband (good heavens! An Eddings female sleeping with someone she's not in love with?!). And that the conspiring wives knew she'd be useful because she was able to wander around freely--double-agent!Elysoun! I kind of wondered where the other four wives were in this--we knew that the Cynesgan and the Arjuni wife were plotting against Sarabian, and we knew that Elysoun and Liatris and Gahenas were trying to save him, but he does, last I checked, have nine wives. So...? (Oh, and I wonder how the wives from the Elene kingdoms reconcile polygamy with their religion. I got the distinct feeling the Elene church doesn't approve of it under general circumstances.) It did seem kind of weird when all three of the wives on Sarabian's side were wandering around armed--Liatris I could see, and Elysoun with some difficulty, but Gahenas?--and actually saved the day.

I was very amused by the scene where Sparhawk, Talen, Mirtai, Bevier, Kalten, and Aphrael (look! One of each major letter except E is represented!) are sneaking through Cyrga and come to the water tunnel thing and Aphrael shifts back into her real form, completely naked, without even thinking about it, and Bevier freaks out and tries as hard as possible to ignore her while praying desperately. (I am so not a nice person.)

Cyrgon did die way too easily. I mean, yes, he's an idiot ten thousand years at least behind on military technique, but he's also a god. It should have been at least a little more challenging. And then he died as a result of the exact same sequence Sparhawk used to kill Martel?! Uh-huh. Look, Martel at least was very intelligent. Cyrgon... no. Just no. They are NOT the same person. And then, unless I misremember, Sparhawk felt sorry for Cyrgon too. Is that sword-sequence possibly a secret Styric (or Elene?) spell that makes you sorry for whomever you kill with it? 'cause it certainly seems like it. I mean, Martel was one thing--he was a really good friend of Sparhawk's once (oh no, please please make the Sparhawk/Martel idea go away! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!)--but Cyrgon?

You do indeed correctly remember that all the Delphae went into the light at the end. It was Bhelliom's doing, apparently, and he also restored Sephrenia and Vanion to youth. And then everyone went home happily to produce lots and lots of babies, except Ehlana who's sterile (that was actually a surprise, given the inevitable tendencies of Eddings characters to produce whole armies of offspring).

Hm. Shall we go on to abuse The Redemption of Althalus, which is just begging to be criticized mercilessly, or shall we ignore it and turn to happier things, i.e. other authors? The only problem is that until next Sunday I won't have many books at all with me and won't be able to check anything or start anything new (except Tolkien, whom I am firmly resolved to finally read!), so we might want to take a break from Eddings if we are continuing with him. Or we could do something like compare and contrast E/T and B/M, although my memory of B/M may be slightly hazy--I've read them considerably more often that E/T, but not recently (and, again, I don't have them with me).

Hm... I have read a lot of Lackey's work, although probably not as many of her Valdemar books as you have (I've actually only read nine--Exile's Honor and Exile's Valor (in whichever order they come in), whatever the title of the one about Skif is (Take a Thief?), the Arrows trilogy, and the Mage Winds trilogy). I could read more, though, for purposes of discussion. (Oh, here's an essay-question: compare and contrast the attitudes of Eddings and Lackey with regard to characters' sexuality.) Paksenarrion I'd never heard of, but Wiki informs me that it's something that might indeed be worthy of discussion, and apparently the first book is available at the Baen Free Library, so I could start it here.

Or we could discuss fantasy in general, or (gasp!) we could discuss good fantasy. It's lots more fun to poke large holes in things than to go, "Ohh... shiny...", but it might be nice to try to figure out what to do instead of what not to do. Feel free to recommend stuff.

We should also compose a list of things we learned from Eddings, simply because it would be fun. Here's my start to it:

* Do not have your characters chase after essentially the same thing in two different story-'verses.
* If you want to write a sequel/sequel series, and the only thing you can think of to top the conflict in the previous book/series involves the fate of the entire universe, you may have gotten slightly carried away.
* Do not write an entire cast of characters with the same sense of humor and the same speech patterns. If you do, do not attempt to disguise this by giving one character a weird accent or by having a character rarely speak.
* If you see something that could be interesting, poke at it. Do not, for the love of whatever you hold dear, refuse to do worldbuilding and explore meaningful conflicts just because they're irrelevant to the story you want to tell.
* If your beta-readers inform you that Series B is indistinguishable from Series A, give serious thought to replotting.