 | The Diamond Throne David Eddings Date: 01 July, 1995 — Book Rating: |
Fiction, Fantasy
Ah, David Eddings. What would we do without your long-winded writing? Since I normally plow through the Belgariad and the Malloreon (plus the coda books) before moving on to this later doubled trilogy, I thought I'd reverse the order and see how I liked these books without the close comparison of his most classic work.
And it's pretty good. I have to say that Eddings is very fond of certain character types, which will bother you if you're looking for something different— or serious— but it is a lot of fun to read. Eddings is of the school of fantasy that takes modern preconceptions and fits them into the fantasy setting. They speak normal English (at least most of them do), they have what we would consider to be normal lifespans*, and, for the most part, they have similar concerns to ours. The preconceptions are very modern, but unless you've made a study of history, they won't jar.
That's probably what makes his books so successful. There's no major cultural shock in his writing, just the jump to a fantasy setting. The concerns are just different enough for us to enjoy them, but they're really modern concerns through a fantasy lens. Queen's in danger? Go on a quest to save her. I think we can all relate to that.
*Instead of forty or thereabouts. Life before modern medicine was often "nasty, brutish, and short" by our standards.
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