My point is, yes, Althalus shares all the main flaws AND all the main strength of Eddings’ other works - but, alas, it has an additional (and, to me, dooming) one in the utter lack of threat throughout the novel. That being said, I seem to remember the prose itself as quite good for Eddings.

Althalas is more interesting because its self contained, complete and an easy read. Its not a great Fantasy novel - but its a better than average Eddings.

I agree that eddings plaegarises his own work mercillessly. Its his biggest fault. Still , critical as I can be I still liked all of his series. But its in a bubblegum for the eyes and soul sort of way.

I really don’t agree. The individual chapters are well enough written, but when you look at it as a whole, the book was totally devoid of any serious threat, any sense of impending doom or even impending slight problems, and the characters where (as it seems Eddings always does) reincarnations of the Belgariad-cast, switched around, making Silk’s personality into Belgarion’s story-function and Polgara into a goddess but otherwise keeping her the same and so on and so forth.

A lot of the same goes for the Elenium/Tamuil-series, but at least there there was some sense of an actual enemy and the cast couldn’t just keep time-skipping out of any amount of threat. The reason I like the Mallorean is simply because I much prefer reading about the original cast of the Belgariad than reading about them in poorly concealed shuffled reincarnations, and I feel it by virtue of being in the same world needs less distinctiveness to feel like it adds something. I mean, the plot of the Mallorean literally builds on the Belgariad, which, despite the many similarities, I find to be far better than simply copying it like Eddings’ other worlds and series’ do.

As for Moon, I never meant to imply she was similar to Eddings. I just mentioned her here when I thought of her because it was his last literature-related post.

Same for his other series the Elenium and its sequel series. He is a fantastic character writer but the stand alone books of his are far better crafted.

Althalas the thief is also good.

The Elizabeth moon books arent really comparable. Apart form the fact they are fantasy they arent similar at all. Also they arent character driven in the same way. The Paksenarrion books and the prequel ‘Gid’ books are essentially the equivalent of biblical tales of warrior saints. They have well structured, youth, adulthood, sacfrifice sequences. It really puts them a long way away from most of Eddings stuff.

Both good though. I have a limited appetite for Eddings these days, the prose is excellent but Id like a little action now and again.

And I probably will check the sequels out some time “soon”, because if they’re anything like The Belgariad, I ought to be able to finish them all in about two weeks.

I think that, after your read the Mallorean, you would appreciate checking out the two pre/sequels, “Belgarath The Sorcreror” and “Polgara the Sorceress”, told in first-person-viewpoint by the respective titular characters. I found these books to be better in many respects than the two main series, maybe due to the lack of an overarching Quest-like clichè with the plot. They’re both set in a frame-story taking place after The Mallorean, though, and thus can’t be read before it without spoiling it heavily. (And The Mallorean is far more easily damaged by spoilers than The Belgariad is)

Glad you liked it!