Quote: Acyl wrote:The Redepmetion of Anthalus is what made me stop reading his work, actually. I would say it is his weakest story. Mainly because its too much plot
The Redemption of Althalus is actually probably the first thing I'd recommend to anyone who hasn't read Eddings before, because it basically
compresses the essence of all the Eddings epics into one novel.
and not enough character.
What really makes the Belgariad/Mallorean and Elenium/Tamuli work is that when yu get right down to it there isn't very much plot at all. "Go here,
fetch A, go to there, use A to kill B", boom, done.
What makes it works is how much time he draws this out by letting you get involved with his characters. He can spend entire chapters just on two characters
basically chatting and doing nothing but its an enthralling chapter of two people chatting. You really grow to know and like the characters
involved and thus don't care that the story is a hack job and the villains are two-dimensional or the resolution is heavy-handed deus ex machina.
However since I didn't have any time to get to know the characters in Anthalus, I didn't liek any of them, thus all the flaws in his work stood out.
And to be fair, all five books of the Belgariad are probably shorter than the last book of Harry Potter.
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