Rating:  -
After reading the Belgariad, dealing with the well-designed world and wonderfully real characters, it's really hard not to want more of them if you enjoyed the first series. This series does just that - lets you go back to the world and the characters you know so well, and fortunately doesn't leave a huge gap of time between them.
However, this book takes a while to actually get moving. While some of it is setting up the storyline for the series, other parts feel like filler - great if you enjoy the interactions of the characters, but seem to be more for allowing time to pass without just skipping over it. It's not until the last third of the book that Eddings stops setting up the story and actually gets to it.
Looked upon as an entire series, this amount of development beforehand isn't necesarily a bad thing, but as an individual book, and compared to the beginning of the Belgariad, it is a long time - I found myself wishing things would get moving, even though I really enjoyed the book.
Just as with the Belgariad (and there are a LOT of similarities between the two, even involving the plot - and the characters even mention that), it's fun, enjoyable, entertaining, but not complex, deep, or thought-invoking. A great series to pass the time, a wonderful chance to visit the characters and world again, and surely a lot better than watching sitcoms on television.
Rating: -
After reading the Belgariad, dealing with the well-designed world and wonderfully real characters, it's really hard not to want more of them if you enjoyed the first series. This series does just that - lets you go back to the world and the characters you know so well, and fortunately doesn't leave a huge gap of time between them.
However, this book takes a while to actually get moving. While some of it is setting up the storyline for the series, other parts feel like filler - great if you enjoy the interactions of the characters, but seem to be more for allowing time to pass without just skipping over it. It's not until the last third of the book that Eddings stops setting up the story and actually gets to it.
Looked upon as an entire series, this amount of development beforehand isn't necesarily a bad thing, but as an individual book, and compared to the beginning of the Belgariad, it is a long time - I found myself wishing things would get moving, and really enjoyed the book.
Just as with the Belgariad (and there are a LOT of similarities between the two, even involving the plot - and the characters even mention that), it's fun, enjoyable, entertaining, but not complex, deep, or thought-invoking. A great series to pass the time, a wonderful chance to visit the characters and world again, and surely a lot better than watching sitcoms on television.
Rating:  -
A very very tedious repetition of the Belegariad at double the length and half the wit. The Belegariad was interesting because you met the characters for the first time, and the flatness of the characterization didnt become that apparent. These books dont have that redeeming factor. Just page after paiful page of unnatural and stiff dialog, contrived situations and impossible twists.
Rating:  -
Well after such a marvelous series such as the Belgariad, Eddings had to write a seqeuel. And there it is- in all it's splendor. This book is the first of this series- and it is one heck of a book. In the best of the Eddings tradition, this book is both exhilirating and amusing. Eddings has the talent of making the charcters full, the plot intricate and comprhensive, and the layout realistic as possible. You would think that he himself is a master strategist and comedian. This book is a MUST!!!
Rating: -
This is an excellent series, but if you have not read the Belgariad, read it first, then read this series. I am very sorry that David Eddings did not make another series with the same characters after the Mallorean. They are great books, not just for strictly adults or strictly young adults.
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