Stonehelm Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Ok. I truly and dearly love Eddings. Well, at least I used to, but this is not a thread to bash Eddings for his new books in general (I have read too many of those), but I really do want to bash him for writing The Redemption of Althalus specifically. Have any of you read this book? If you have please let me know what you think. I really hope you all are inclined to bash this book because I dont know what he was thinking. The whole concept of this book was bad to begin with and on top of that it was even poorly written. The whole thing with the doors between places was a stretch but could have been pulled off if Eddings wrote it like the Eddings of old, which he didnt. Then the whole time travel thing....come on Dave, you know better than that. THE BELGARIAD, THE MALLOREON, THE ELENIUM, THE TAMULI......you will always be in my heart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray the Enforcer Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Sophelia had some choice words on the topic... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaceBannon42 Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I have not read any Eddings since the Tamuli, which in itself was pretty bad. I still love Eddings though. He is my favorite Author from my youth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arakasi Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 What I like from Eddings is Belgariad, Mallorean and Elenium. Tamuli was awful imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Aren't the Belgariad, the Mallorean, the Elenium, and the Tamuli essentially the same series told with different characters? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaceBannon42 Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Scot, That is incorrect. They are all the same story, true but the Belgariad and the Mallorean have the same characters, as do the Elenium/Tamuli. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoN Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I liked eddings when I was young, I have not read him in recent years, but the warm coziness remains. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zakalwe7 Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I remember having a couple of early wanks about Ce'Nedra. Possibly Silk too in fact? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobodymN Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Sorry, I just clicked on this to see if this was real or if I was too lifted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hereward Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 You're a very strange bloke, Zak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zakalwe7 Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 aw come on, i was a young, wee boy. And she was just so ... squeezy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
werewolfv2 Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Im off to visit the Woods of the Dryads and I have a case of chocolate ... and yeah. I also love Eddings for his older stuff. Without him I (and many many others) wouldnt be reading fantasy today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ennui Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 The Belgariad was an enjoyable series to read as a child. The characters were nice, I liked them. The story was comfortable, nothing bad was going to happen and the heroes were always going to win. It was very nice. Everything else has been an endless repetition of the same character types, if you really wanted to keep reading them well, sometimes I like to watch re-runs of old favorite shows. The Redemption of Althalus was horrifying crap. It may be the worst fantasy book I have ever read. It may be worse than anything Piers Anthony ever wrote. The characters (if they could be called that) were poorly drawn ghosts of characters from earlier works. The narrative, the house, the doors I cant tell you how poorly executed I thought this was. I think the writing team is clearly past their prime. They remind me of a geriatric comedian endlessly repeating old punch lines and wondering why no one is laughing anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Silenus Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I have read The Redemption of Althalus (well, two-thirds of it), and I couldn't bring myself to finish it because it was just so fucking horrible -- and I can finish almost anything. I've read seven-ninths of The Sword of Truth. It began pretty well too, by the way. This could've been a decent short story about a legendary thief with or without his talking goddess/cat, but the damn story just never ended. All kinds of pointless one-dimensional characters were tossed in. The bad guys are laughable, straight out of Beanie and Cecil. The dialogue is relentlessy juvenile. Everyone says the same things in the same way; everyone has the exact same conversation over and over again. I can't decide if I should donate this to the library to be malicious or just burn it. Edit -- It surpasses The Sword of Shannara. The Redemption of Althalus is easily the worst fantasy book I've ever read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Baelish Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 My first introduction to Eddings was the Elenium. By this time, the only fantasy I'd read was Dragonlance, and I was told Eddings would be a good author to start on next. I thought the Elenium was boring crap, and I was able to guess just about everything that happened. I found all the characters were flat and dull. As for the Redemption of Althalus ... it's an even worse version of the Elenium. Same characters, same plot. The only thing that's different is that the goddess is a cat instead of a child. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobodymN Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Its worse than Newcombe? I read his books because I couldn't believe that any book could be as bad as people were saying. They were right. No, nothing is worse than Newcombe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stonehelm Posted March 22, 2006 Author Share Posted March 22, 2006 I liked eddings when I was young, I have not read him in recent years, but the warm coziness remains. I think you said it best here. I still love those early books but I dont know if I will ever read them again. When I think of them now, I still get that warm cozy feeling, so I will defend those books to the last breath. But I doubt I will read them again. Ha....this just came to me. What would happen if Ce'Nedra and Cersei were to meet. Now there would be a match....I can see the sparks now. I am also glad you all hated The Redemption of Althalus as much as I did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peregrinus Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 David and Leigh Eddings are always going to remain special to a lot of people because the books of that writing duo were the ones that most of us started with as an introduction to fantasy, me included. I rather liked Belgariad/Mallorean as well as Elenium/Tamuli. I truly loved them when I was younger and reread them numerous times. I was totally indifferent towards Althalus, didnt register much of anythng with me. I thought it was neither as good as the previous series nor as anywhere near as shockingly bad as most of you seem to think. His newest series on the other hand, The Dreamers are awful. I expected the recycled characters, but not to this extent, they are carbon copies of previous incarnations. I dopn't need to get to know the ridiculously named Longbow, he IS a taciturn version of Durnik. Likewise Rabbit is an amalgam of Silk, Talen and Gher all mixed into one. I used to enjoyEddings dialogue now there is hardly any and the little there is is very bare and functional. However, let me concede that the Eddings -es can write very well indeed. If you havent read so already check out the prequells to the Belgariad, Begarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blaine Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 My point of view is that the Belgariad and Mallorean are both good, fun young adult fantasy. I'm glad I read them, entertained me as a lad, good introduction to better fantasy, blah blah blah. My point of view is also that none of his other works exist. And that keeps me from hating the guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 The Belgariad is good to read as a 12-year-old. The Malloreon is a moronic and stupid series. The Elenium is probably the best thing Eddings has written, but I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone over the age of 14. The Tamuli is the worst epic fantasy sequence published by a major publishing house that I have ever read. It is just complete and total BS of the highest order. Logic, character development and plot are things that Eddings just doesn't bother including. I hated the last book so much I actually nearly set fire to it in rage that I had spent money on this crap. Whilst I'm not willing to take the chance, Newcombe would have to be something else to be worse than this crap. The only series nearly as bad as this is Warren James Palmer's Minds of the Empire series published in the mid-1990s, but that was self-published so its crapness was at least excusable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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