Approximately 445 pages (again!).
1985.
Corgi/RandomHouse paperback.

I feel like most of what can be said of Enchanters’ End Game has already been said in the reviews of the series’ four other volumes, so I’ll restrict myself to summing up the main points, before going on to comment on more general elements of the series as a whole. This last thing will most likely be done in my usual whimsical way, and not by any systematic method, so I’ll probably forget quite a lot.

To start with the bad stuff for once, Eddings’ prose is still some of the most repetitive I’ve seen. The flipside of this, though, is that he still writes rather sparesly, so we don’t have to suffer through endless descriptions of what the characters might or might not be wearing, or the landscapes they’re riding through. Things are still kept simple and to the point.

So, also as usual, thanks to the sparseness of the prose, the rather uninventive plot progresses rapidly enough so that the lack of originality becomes less obvious. The main thing is still hard rides through wild, thinly populated country, with a stop every once in a while to fight some or gather some information. Enchanters’ End Game, however, has an additional element which helps to relieve the monotony, namely Princess Ce’Nedra’s experience of riding East with the army. Granted, Ce’Nedra is hardly the most interesting character, but she herself is likeable, what she witnesses is interesting and the people she travels with entertainingly quarrelsome, enough to make her chapters enjoyable. This is in particular due to the presence of the Western monarchs, whose utilitarianism during their campaign is somewhat impressive.

Garion’s part of the story had Belgarath and Silk to serve in this capacity, and their function as part-time comic sidekicks was so successfully executed I took myself in thinking the almost heretical thought that Frodo and Sam’s journey through the Brown Hills, the Dead Marshes and all that, would have been much more enjoyable if they’d brought along someone with a pinch of a sense of humour. Otherwise, it wasn’t much to say about the journey in itself, except that I’d again like to praise Eddings for not wringing it for more than it was worth. He didn’t include more scenes than necessary with Garion travelling through wilderness and agonizing over his own destiny, and I’m grateful for that. (As ought to be evident from the fact that I’ve basically said so half a dozen times so far.)

The end of the whole shebang was quite nice, too. Not stunningly profound, any of it, just down to earth and a romantic. Which I guess fitted the rest of the series, as nothing previous to this had shown any penchant for the grandiose. The moral of the tale, if it could be called that, felt a bit like that of the final Harry Potter instalment, with its focus on the importance of love. A bit banal, true, but banalities shouldn’t be dismissed just because they are what they are.

In the end, though, the entire Belgariad was hinged on its characters. Not that any of them were overly realistic (although in the respect of witty remarks, whey are more realistic than those of Scott Lynch’s works), but they were decent enough, and utterly adorable. Garion and Ce’Nedra suffered under the handicap of being teenagers, of course, with all the irrational behaviour and whining which follows with that particular turf, but apart from that, all the characters were decently dynamic and rounded. Considering that they are genre fiction characters, I’ve read much worse ones than these. In addition to the core group we got to see a bunch of interesting secondary and tertiary characters, too, such as the King of Gar og Nadrak, the chief eunuch of Nyissa, Errand, the three Wizards of the Vale, ‘Zakath, and many more.

All in all, I liked The Belgariad just slightly less than I like Harry Potter, and I guess that if I’d encountered the former approximately at the same time as I started reading the latter, the difference wouldn’t really be all that much to talk of. In fact, when, on the page after the last chapter was done, I read something like “Join Garion, Aunt Pol, Belgarath and the others on new adventures in The Mallorean!” it took a bit of self-restraint not to run to Amazon and order it. I probably will, in time, though.

Enchanters’ End Game: 6.5/10..
The Belgariad as a whole: 7.0/10.