InsaneJournal

The last Eddings-post! Rejoice!
My post. Edited, because it's "Gar og Nadrak", not "Yar og Nadrak".



Nobody knew Bhelliom was intelligent, hmm? Then why did Sparhawk spend most of E addressing it as Blue Rose and consider it a separate entity from the Troll Gods trapped within it? The excuse doesn't hold water, Eddings(es). And I agree - the will of Bhelliom could have been such an interesting thing to complicate the plot with, but alas, aside from making Sparhawk think odd stuff on occasion, nothing ever came of it. And you'd think that something as powerful as Bhelliom wouldn't bow down just because someone threatened to smash it - but of course, Sparhawk is Gary Stu Extraordinaire - I mean, Anakha. Of course, I don't remember it ever being brought up in E - I thought Eddings made it up for T, but I could be mistaken - in which case it shouldn't have been an issue.

And gold... Is gold like a curse? Interesting question. It brings up some interesting thoughts about how Bhelliom and Klael put the world together - however, it must first be asked; could Bhelliom be sensed through iron? And if gold is indeed like a curse, that begs the question how and why - why would a precious metal be a curse? It's not as if gold is any more guilty of suffering than any other metal. Greed might motivate conflict, but most weapons are made of steel, and it is weapons that shed the blood.


I find it strange that Eddings would push Elysoun on Beril, of all people - usually, he's more fond of shipping off the main characters, whereas Beril until he arrives in Matherion has been a very minor character, as far as the main cast goes. If Eddings had been more true to his habit, we would have seen Ulath/Elysoun, Tynian/Elysoun or even Bevier/Elysoun. ... And what a tragedy that would have been. At the same time, he does sabotage his own ship with the time spent on Beril/Khalad in THC - especially the aforementioned firedamp-scene (during which I snickered. Loudly.)

Beril/Khalad vs. Bevier/Khalad - consider it future!slash. While the former is certainly more supported by canon, and the latter is my personal cracked-out shippery, it's always fun to consider what would happen after the books ended; in my head, nothing remains in stasis the way it does in Eddings', and so people change and relationships change with them. I tend to make up ships as I read, because it makes the reading a whole lot more fun, too, but that's a discussion for another time.

And yes, we both have horrible minds - both of us ruined by profession, and I, at least, ruined by my time spent reading/talking about fanfic and wading knee-deep through the mess that is fandoms of all kinds. While I can and do appreciate strong friendships established in canon, shippery is harmless fun, on the whole.

The only male/female friendship I can think of - besides Velvet and Sadi, who are verging on shippery if not for Sadi's sad lack of essential parts, and even then, he's got his emotions intact - is the Stragen/Mirtai/Calaador triad that blossoms somewhere during TSO (you recall, when they were sneaking documents from the various ministries in the middle of the night), and even then, they insist on calling each other pet names and being affectionate in ways that most friends don't feel the need to. Ehlana is friends with Sarabian, but it's more in a motherly sort of way - heck, he even refers to her as "mother" at one point! It's as if Eddings doesn't trust his own characters. A lot of the shippery we see stems from this insistent habit, I think - if the characters spend their time missing their friends and are otherwise unattached, and said friends are of the same gender - well, it just naturally follows.

... All the inadvertently shippy scenes we've seen are either male/female (Velvet/Sadi) or male/male. There is not a single instance I can remember of female/female shippery - because all the girls in E/T end up being engaged/married/in love with a male character. Ehlana is married to Sparhawk, obviously, and Mirtai and Kring are attached at the hip; Alean/Kalten, Melidere/Stragen, Sarabian/his wives, even Betuana/her husband/later Engessa, Sephrenia/Vanion, that random Atan woman/Intagne. It's all very boring. But then, femslash (i.e: female/female ships) is very thin on the ground in the fantasy genre. (I must confess I have only one such ship in my own original fic, and I haven't written it yet - I think it's a comic, and it's set in the Victorian era - but there are some people in HoD-verse who might be, only they haven't told me yet, and so on.)


Political commentary aside (Bush would certainly have more modern weaponry!), Cyrgon is indeed made of fail. Klael might have been more immediately threatening, but the first time he appears (in northern Atan, where he smashes part of the wall, as I recall, to make a stair for himself), Bhelliom almost immediately takes on a mocking tone when talking about him, and while he does represent a massive destructive force, we never get the sense of personality and conscious thought that we have with Azash - or even with Bhelliom, with whom Klael is supposed to be equal. There was something more psychological about Azash that both Cyrgon and Klael failed to achieve, despite their many nasty servants.



Rak Cthol might mean "City of Cities", and Cthol Mishrak might mean "City of Endless Night", yes - but if Mishrak means "Endless Night", then why is the land of the Thulls apparently named Mishrak ac Thull - "Endless Night of the Thulls/Thulls of the Endless Night"? If Cthol means "City", why is the country of the Murgos named "City of Murgos"? City of Murgos, Endless Night of the Thulls - *blank* of Nadraks? But Gar og Nadrak - if we assume that "ac" means "of", then what does the particle-word (is that the correct term?) "og" mean? Does Gar mean forest, since there's numerous references to the Nadrakian Forest? I confess, I am confused. And if the three Angarak kingdoms share a language - which they do - then why are no cities in Mishrak ac Thull/Yar og Nadrak named "Cthol"? While we're on languages, how come there are only two? The Angaraks speak one language, but Nyissa, Tolnedra and I assume Maragor share a language with the kingdoms of the Alorns, with whom they do not appear to share a common heritage. The Ulgos and the Morindim have their own languages, I think, but they're barely mentioned.

I think that Eddings writes down the alphabet on a sheet of paper and then sets about thinking up as many names as he possibly can beginning with the same letter, and then moves on to the next. Observe the large number of names beginning with A, B and E - letters near the beginning of the alphabet - the large number beginning with K and M - letters near the middle - with the large number of Ses thrown in for good measure (something I myself - Shihan, Shanka, Sital, Sheska, Sorelia, etc., - am guilty of, though it should be said that not all of those characters inhabit the same universe, and don't always appear in the same scenes) - contrasted with the small number of people whose names begin with letters near the end of the alphabet (T, V, X, Z).

As for the linguistic relation in TRoA... Well, I'm sure it's all very clever, but as a reader, I slowly go cross-eyed, which is never good.


The empress-plot was actually kind of awesome - the double-agentering, the mocking of Gahenas, Liatris' aggression; it was all kind of interesting, especially coming at the end of "Walk over here, abuse/kill/intimidate someone, receive new instructions, walk elsewhere" that everyone else was doing. The other four wives, though...? The Tamulian wife is mentioned once as being arrogant and more than a little stupid, and therefore inconsequential, but the Astellian, Edomian and Daresian wives? Left out 'cause they were Elene or something? To me, it wasn't so very much of a stretch seeing Gahenas armed - she seems to come from a cutthroat republic, after all, and it's always the quiet ones, you know.

It seems we're both evil people, because I was grinning during that scene with Bevier too.

Martel was a well-trained Pandion Knight, and hailed as one of the best by pretty much everyone, but he was also a mortal man, not a god - and during his fight with Sparhawk (totally not shipping Martel/Sparhawk - for real. I don't. This is a little strange, but there you have it. One-sided devotion from Martel's side, maybe, but Sparhawk's waaay too into Ehlana for anything to ever happen.), he didn't have Azash backing him up, because Azash was busy with something else. It can be argued, during the fight with Cyrgon, that Sparhawk had the advantage because he was Anakha, but he was Anakha during the fight with Martel, too - he's been since the day he was born - and it's expressly stated right there on the page that he only won because Martel wore too heavy armour and tired sooner than he did.

So either that means that Martel was strong enough to defeat Anakha, the tool of Bhelliom (if only he'd worn different armour), and therefore strong enough to defeat Cyrgon as well - or Eddings doesn't realise just how much he bungled the fight between Sparhawk and Cyrgon. And the fight with Klael was resolved by lobbing Bhelliom into its mouth. If it was that easy, then why didn't Sparhawk just do that to begin with? Without Klael, they could have easily dealt with Zalasta and the fallen Styrics, and the Cyrgais could have been dealt with just the same, and without worshippers, Cyrgon would have dwindled away into nothingness, and the problem would have resolved itself.

I'm grateful that Tamuli was the last trilogy, because if it had been the first (how would they have topped it?), then the second one would have featured masses upon masses of children, all of which would have been doted on by Eddings. There would have been cultures clashing and being waved away by authorial convenience. It would have been horrible. *winces*


We could do TRoA while we wait for you to come home and get your hands on more books. There is not nearly as much to discuss in it as there is in B/M or E/T so it shouldn't take nearly so much time, but there are some new things to pick through, and you've already read it. Contrasting B/M and E/T could work as well - it's really all up to you, though I feel as if we've gone through pretty much everything that needs to be said about the two of them.

As for Lackey's Valdemar-verse - I've read the ones you mentioned, aside from Exile's Valor (which is the second book), as well as the Gryphon trilogy, By the Sword and Brightly Burning (I tried to read the Storm trilogy, but gave up) - but we could always discuss Valdemar-verse in general terms; we're both familiar with how her world works, and how her writing works, even though we might not know all the details by heart. Comparing/contrasting Eddings and Lackey in terms of sexuality could be very interesting, because there are remarkable similarities as well as differences.

Paksenarrion is a rather heavy trilogy - it is by no means as easily swept through as Eddings - but if you have the patience/time, and are willing to, do read the first book. It's not what I consider great fantasy, but it does have a female protagonist (which Eddings seems allergic to) and depicts army-life in a way I rarely see in fantasy.

Fantasy in general - pros and cons, clichés and originality, plot-driven vs. character-driven - would keep us occupied for a long time, and wouldn't demand any previously read works.

Good fantasy could also work. Of course, I'm not sure which books we have both read. Pratchett, to be certain, and there's much to talk about there. There's Gaiman, too, I think. As for recommendations... I'm not sure you'd be all that fond of George RR Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire) or Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen) because they are both firmly what Limyaael would call "brutal fantasy", which I seem to remember you saying you didn't like. Can I recommend Clive Barker's Abarat, though? It's sort-of a YA book (or books, I should say - the first book, Abarat, is followed by Days of Magic, Nights of War) - I say sort-of, because there are some grisly and nightmarish details - which is a good example of regular-human-goes-to-fantasy-world done well. Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air is more steampunk than straight fantasy, and leaned a bit heavily on the political commentary, but it was a good read nonetheless, with a well-crafted world and so on.

Of course, if all else fails, there's always Rowling to default to.



Oooh, a list! Good start - continuing:

*Do not shoehorn romance into plots that do not need it - especially if said romance does not add anything to the story, and does, in fact, consist only of telling the reader that the characters involved are now in love for no obvious reason.
*Do not contradict yourself about deeply important parts of the plot, as this will seriously weaken your plotting.
*Do not base your world on the Shiny Blue McGuffin.
*Do not have your villain turn out to be stupid and easily overcome, when you have spent three books telling your readers that he or she is a formidable opponent.
*Do not use gods, goddesses or the aforementioned Shiny Blue McGuffin as a Deus Ex Machina.
*Do not give your characters names that begin with the same letter, unless you aim to produce confusion.
*Do not mention a potentially interesting conflict only to leave it unexplored - especially if said conflict is sacrificed for the sake of watching two previously incompatible people fall inexplicably in love.
*The words "Why me?" should, at no point of the story, be uttered by the hero. If they are, then have it be only once or twice - don't beat it into the ground.
*Your running jokes are not as funny as you imagine, and should be used sparingly.
*Consider using different character archetypes/stereotypes - and when you do, don't leave them as archetypes/stereotypes. Add things. Twist them around. Surprise your readers.
*If you're going to use a conlang, spend some time on thinking about how it works. Don't say one thing on page twenty, only to contradict yourself on page forty-five.

... I'm sure there's more to be added, but it's getting late (have I really spent an hour and fifteen minutes typing this?).