David Eddings
David Eddings
A curious fellow this, and deserving of more than a minute's notice.
Like the recent upsurge for Rowling's Harry Potter, Eddings' most well-known and beloved books, the Belgariad and the Malloreon (a decology masquerading as two pentologies), along with its two prequels, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress, and the recent, forget the dead horse, beat the dead cow appendix, The Riven Codex are hard to place.
The series is amusing, fun, a wild good romp, free from sex, swearing, excessive violence, and the good guys are good the bad guys are bad. Or so it appears on first, twelfth, even twentieth reading. The characters are likable, the theology not too wildly different (at first glance), the style easy though not impressive, the pace quick, the thought process required minimal. These are fun books, and I recommend the majority of them (saving Polgara and the Codex - both of which are poorly written on top of everything), so long as the following is kept in mind.
These books are subversive - but only after really extended contact with them. You are called upon to root for a thief, a drunkard, and a slew of happy-go-lucky warriors who enjoy killing their enemies. Little quips of morality are thrown in, anti-serfdom, for example - but much of that morality is near obsolete from daily Western life, and therefore is as helpful as rock candy. More than anything, though, the theology is dualistic (Neitzsche's rotten legacy to the West, "good" and "bad," "light" and "dark" are "relative" terms. Ptooey) - yet the characters and the gods themselves are so likeable, that subconsciously the reader attempts to reconcile the two theologies. I mean, UL is like God the Father and Aldur is kind of like Jesus - only, maybe more like St. Raphael or something - and Eroind is more like Jesus, yeah! And Torak is obviously Satan, so that's OK. And we'll just sort of ignore the other gods. Yeah, yeah. See what I mean?
Therefore the recommendation is this, if your looking for a romping good fun high fantasy quest novel, you can't go much wrong reading The Belgariad and The Malloreon (and maybe even Belgarath the Sorcerer if you're not sick of Eddings yet). However, take time either before, during or after to consider what Eddings is actually advocating.
The Belgariad
Literary Quality: 
Christian Morality: Harmless/Dangerous
Age Appropriateness: Pre-Teen/Teenager
 Pawn of Prophecy
Queen of Sorcery
Magician's Gambit
Castle of Wizardry
Enchanter's End Game
Young Garion is sent on a quest to kill the dark god Torak by recovering Aldur's Orb and finding the young (good) god, thereby restoring order to the world.
The Malloreon
Literary Quality:
Christian Morality: Harmless/Dangerous
Age Appropriateness: Pre-Teen/Teenager
Guardians of the West
King of the Murgos
Demon Lord of Karanda
Sorceress of Darshiva
The Seeress of Kell
Garion, all grown up now, must battle the dead Torak's crazy acolyte in a final battle between dualistic "light" and "dark."
Belgarath the Sorcerer
Literary Quality:
Christian Morality: Harmless/Dangerous
Age Appropriateness: Teenager
The whole dang history of the world (at least four thousand years of it) from the perspective of Belgarath the Sorcerer. Some mention of excessive drinking, vagabonding, and whoring.
Eddings also has another series of books which are not recommended for the reader who is young in the Faith. The Elenium and the Tamuli, Literary Quality: (; Christian Morality: Dangerous/Offensive; Age Appropriateness: Adult), which, beyond being rehashes of the previous series, are also noticeably darker in tone and more disturbing in theology. Again, several Churches reside side by side, however, the "oppressive" and "straight-laced" Church is a direct and obvious attack against Catholicism. Christians and Jews should also be on guard, however. The religion which is upheld is a pantheon whose main goddess constantly (re)incarnates herself, governs a people supposedly opressed like the Jews have lamentably been (thus exploiting what is a real sorrow), but absolutely pagan. The main character converts from monotheism to pantheism by the end of the series.
The Redemption of Althalus
Literary Quality: 
Christian Morality: Dangerous
Age Appropriateness: Teenager
Eddings' newest...isn't. New, that is. It's the same story, carefully touched up not to look like the same, but it still is.
There are some good points to it. There are some funny moments, and the gimmick of manipulating events through dream-visions that become true is entertaining; the characters live some scenes over again in what's almost, not quite, a spoof mentality. And most of the characters are at least introduced in original ways. But the characters have waaay too much of the Belgariad still in them -- the charming old scoundrel who lives for thousands of years, the snippy powerful lady (who turns into a cat, not an owl!), the histrionic princess, the dumb-youth-turned-hero (who also takes on the part of barbarian warrior, to cut down the cast list), the little kid with precociously deep ideas, the priest whose theology is shaken so he can lead a new religious movement afterwards...
It's a bit disappointing, because in her own throne room, for example, the princess is interestingly vindictive, with the yokel-hero who happened to kill her father chained to a post while she glares and thinks of things to do to him. But then they whisk her off on the quest and she not only doesn't protest, she turns into Ce'Nedra with black hair! The quest-plot is a letdown too. It starts out interestingly enough -- who can read what words on this oddly-carved knife -- but then it gets caught between avoiding the Belgariad's plot and not quite managing any other kind, and falls through.
The theology is at least not fancy -- 3 sibling-deities, all of whom answer to "God": 1 distant-but-benevolent creator, 1 twisted destroyer, and their sister the mother-goddess who got all the sense in the family and likes hanging out with human heroic types -- but it's still ugh-ish. Scheming and stealing are still not frowned on, and the title -- The Redemption of Althalus -- is a joke; the guy never changes, let alone being redeemed. He doesn't seem to need to be redeemed; he's the charming scoundrel that can somehow get away with anything.
It is a decently fun read; it's much more tongue-in-cheek than the serieses; it does have its moments -- but, like I said, they're patches on the same old thing, not anything new.
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Updated 22 July, 2007
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