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[skygiants]

The compulsion to re-experience some mediocre epic fantasy of my childhood appears to come on me like some sort of annual plague, which is why I have just read the entirety of The Belgariad.

For those unfamiliar with these seminal works of Incredibly Fantasy-Shaped Fantasy, the plot is roughly as follows: Garion is a Simple Farmboy who is both secret long-lost royalty with a kingdom to inherit and the hero prophesied to defeat the evil god who sleeps in the evil empire! The prophecy also has a lot of other helpful information about what needs to happen when and where in order for the evil empire to be defeated, so Garion's long-suffering immortal sorcerous aunt and grandfather take him on a Grand Tour to chase a MacGuffin while he Comes Of Age and Grows Into His Destiny.

Of course the MacGuffin Chase is really just the opportunity to visit various Fantasy Countries, each of which have a single national characteristic and will helpfully provide the quest with a single representative side character, such as:

The Fantasy Vikings, whose representative side character can turn into a bear, and cannot be discussed without someone bringing up how rowdy they are!

The Fantasy Saxons and Normans, whose representative side characters are respectively Will Scarlett and Lancelot, and cannot be discussed without someone bringing up how stupid they are!

The Fantasy Romans, whose representative side character is Garion's destined fiancee, and cannot be discussed without someone bringing up how much they care about money! This one is a bit different because Garion's destined fiancee has her own characteristics: she is Tiny and Willful! We know this because the adjective 'tiny' is used in almost every sentence describing her and she spends most of her time onscreen throwing temper tantrums, but she and Garion will fall in love anyway because the prophecy says so. This is all very explicit. It's not even that destiny can't be struggled against, it's that nobody really even bothers to try, except Garion for maybe half a second, and then everyone tells him he's going through a sulky teen phase and to knock it off. And he promptly does! No glory in defying your fate in the Belgariad!

Relatedly: the Fantasy Genocide Victims, whose representative character is a sexy slave woman whose Destined Romance after they rescue her is with a religious zealot who spends their first three months of acquaintanceship slut-shaming her for having been a slave! But it's all right, ~*~destiny~*~ wears him down and the Eddingses are sure they'll be very happy together.

There's also a country of highly-exoticized snake people, who don't get a representative character because they're too busy sexily drugging and poisoning each other. And, of course, the Evil Country of the Evil God, which is composed largely of villainous human-sacrificing priests, merchants who are secretly villainous human-sacrificing priests, and extremely stupid and terrified sacrificial victims. (There's a lot of scenes in the beginning of Our Heroes riding into some kingdom and warning them to kick out all the merchants of Evil Nationality because they're secretly plotting something, which, uh, I think is probably not deliberately anti-Semitic, and yet .....)

As it may be evident: these books are very readable and also they are not at all good. I think it would be very difficult for any adaptation to make them good; the orientalism, sexism, and plot determinism are completely baked into the premise. However, I have come up with one simple way to wildly improve them for me, personally.

So the best character in the books, by far, is Polgara the Sorceress, aka Garion's long-suffering Aunt Pol. In the grand finale of the series, it turns out that the entire fate of the universe hinges and has always hinged on Polgara Definitively Rejecting the Evil God Despite His Attempts to Brainwash Her, which she does by drawing strength from her memories of her love interest! who has just been murdered!

This love interest is Durnik, a sensible blacksmith who comes from the country of sensible people and whose entire role in the quest is to a.) die (and then be resurrected) at a key point in the plot so Polgara can Realize her Feelings and b.) pine silently after Polgara while making practical suggestions about how logistical plot difficulties could easily be fixed with some minor applications of IKEA furniture.

OBVIOUSLY, DURNIK IS A LESBIAN.

Imagine the bit where the gods are like "Polgara, if you choose this mortal we're going to take away your powers ... lol j/k instead we're just going to give your spouse powers too" except instead of 'it's weird if a husband is less powerful than his wife' it's 'now we have two gay sorceresses for the price of one.' Imagine if instead of the grand climax being Garion telling Polgara to remember her dead (but soon-to-be-resurrected) boyfriend so she can Reject Torak once and for all it's just Garion screaming "AUNT POL REMEMBER YOU'RE A LESBIAN!" Imagine. What a powerful scene.

SyFy Channel, I hope you're reading this, because if someone makes this mediocre fantasy epic into a trashy tv series and changes only this, I will watch the entire damn thing.

Anyway. The Belgariad! There's a bit in the beginning of the omnibus version I was rereading in which David Eddings talks proudly about how he was inspired to write it by wanting there to be more realist fantasy and how it broke away from previous patterns, which confused me enormously, because I think of the Belgariad as being, uh, wildly emblematic of its time, for sure, but not really ... a trailblazer .... anyway, if anyone who remembers the 80s and the fantasy scene wants to tell me if there is any grain of truth in this claim, I'd appreciate it!

Soon, probably: The Mallorean, the sequel series, in which they do all the exact same things over again. "Then why are you going to read it?" Because I remember it being slightly better than the Belgariad! "Then why didn't you just read the Mallorean to begin with and skip the Belgariad entirely?" Because I'm a completionist who doesn't make good decisions!

Comments

[musesfool]

I reread the whole thing every five or ten years and it is still terrible but it was so formative (SILK. SILK WAS SO FORMATIVE FOR ME) that I find it comforting even in its terribleness.

[landingtree]

Silk! Yes! I think he was the first roguish character I ever met... at an age when communicating through sign language was an exciting fantasy idea I'd never met before...

[flamebyrd]

And once you're done with the Mallorean, you can re-live the entire experience a 3rd (and 4th!) time with the Elenium and the Tamuli!

I really loved those books as a teen, I haven't reread them in years but now I'm weirdly tempted. The predictability is comforting!

I definitely remember it being heavy on the "women are mercurial and unknowable" trope, which when it was revealed he'd basically cowritten them with his wife, made me scratch my head a bit.

If I do reread it, I will definitely be reading it as if Durnik were a woman, because that is amazing.

As for whether it was a trailblazer... That doesn't sound right to me, either, but I did come it to late. I seem to recall an essay by Eddings where he basically talks about writing fantasy by formula? (Must have MacGuffin, must have ancient wizard, must have party with diverse skills and backgrounds...) So it seems like a Bold Claim to say the Belgariad was breaking away from anything.

[jazzfish]

And once you're done with the Mallorean, you can re-live the entire experience a 3rd (and 4th!) time with the Elenium and the Tamuli!

I do not think I can possibly express how bad an idea this is, and I speak as someone who imprinted HARD on the Belgariad and Malloreon in junior high.

I mean, the Elenium is mostly pretty decent (plotwise probably better than the Belgariad; at least there's no $&% Prophecy), but the Tamuli is So Bad It Is Physically Painful, even teenaged Tucker could tell that it was not actually very good. And let us not mention the stereotypical Jews Styrics throughout.

[thistleingrey]

omg, I thought of doing this a few years ago and then decided that if I still remember the characters' names (though almost nothing of what they did), it's Too Soon. Tip of the hat to you. Also, so much yes re: Polgara and Durnik.

[skygiants]

I did not remember the character names (except Polgara, Garion, Silk, and Ce'Nedra ... which sounds like a lot but there are SO MANY more characters) but it all came flooding back to me as soon as I picked up the first book!

[landingtree]

After I read this I sat on my bed for a while going, Oh yes, the Belgariad! I remember those. There's the bit where they're crossing the Cherek Bore, and the boar hunt, and the chase through the palace with the secret passage that lets him come out in the throne room and warn Polgara about the traitor... and there's the wizard's duel in the ravine leading down to the desert after which Polgara has to heal Belgarath with a poisonous leaf where Garion asks whether it's really that bad and she says "It's even worse, but those are all the precautions we can take out here" ... why do I still know that? How often did I read these things? I can visualise the covers of our old two-volume hardback edition with the dragons and orbs and swords...

So I was going to say "Thank you for writing about it so I don't have to reread it," but what I think I mean is, "Thank you for writing about it and reminding me that I don't have to reread it because the entire series is stored on film in the back of my brain."

[sovay]

"Thank you for writing about it and reminding me that I don't have to reread it because the entire series is stored on film in the back of my brain."

I do not understand why these extremely mediocre books have that extraordinarily indelible quality, but I'm there with you.

[ghost_lingering]

Oh gosh this description is so true and makes clear so many things that are so cringe-worthy about the books. I loved them and I know that I will never be able to reread them ever because there is so much about them that I would not be able to deal with now that I am not twelve.

[skygiants]

I was toting them around for like a week, and strangers occasionally asked me if what I was reading was good (as strangers for inexplicable reasons sometimes do) and every time I was like "....no........." which cut the conversation off in a very satisfying way!

It was honestly a really interesting experience rereading them, though -- not that I'm recommending them, because I am not! -- because they are so very Fantasy Shaped in a way that writers of today still are (or think they are) Subverting or Rebelling Against, and it's interesting to compare/contrast against what's actually in them, if you know what I mean?

[hokuton_punch]

Oh, they are so bad and I adored them when I was younger... I especially had a soft spot for Zakath because melancholy not-so-bad-after-all Evil Emperor, but he doesn't really get show it until the Mallorean series.

LESBIAN DURNIK SOUNDS LIKE THE BEST IDEA EVER, IN THE WORLD.

[nineveh_uk]

I loved Zakath. Angsty not-really-evil Emperor was perfect for teen me.

Durnik I couldn't stand, so lesbian Durnik could only be an improvement.

[marginaliana]

Oh hell yes. I do the same thing of rereading them periodically because they are so readable even though terrible.

"AUNT POL REMEMBER YOU'RE A LESBIAN!" - yes please

Do I remember correctly that the thing in the Mallorean where they do exactly the same things is literally because the first journey was a practice run for the actual prophecy moment? That always struck me as just, like, the Most Bullshit.

[landingtree]

I think there was something about how the prophecy was part of a repeating cycle of fate, except the cycle would be broken by this final super-important one, pinky-swear...

[chestnut_pod]

Boy, there sure is a lot going on there!

[skygiants]

There is so much I have not even touched on! Every Nationally Representative Character also has a Nationally Representative Love Interest with whom they get tidily partnered up by the end of the story and every single one of these romances ... is bad!

[sovay]

The compulsion to re-experience some mediocre epic fantasy of my childhood appears to come on me like some sort of annual plague, which is why I have just read the entirety of The Belgariad.

I am probably no longer capable of re-reading David Eddings, since the last time I thought about doing so, I didn't, but that does not change the fact that whole swathes of his terrible worldbuilding are forever stuck in my head.

There's also a country of highly-exoticized snake people, who don't get a representative character because they're too busy sexily drugging and poisoning each other.

That is one of the points in favor of The Mallorean: I really like Sadi. He cares very sincerely for his tiny lethal snake and he's done too many drugs to be threatened by Polgara's trick with hair-raising hallucinations.

(In other points in The Mallorean's favor, I also like Urgit, who is of course not a representative Murgo, but at least he won't go mad by the time he's forty.)

There's a bit in the beginning of the omnibus version I was rereading in which David Eddings talks proudly about how he was inspired to write it by wanting there to be more realist fantasy and how it broke away from previous patterns

Haha, what? No.

[sienamystic]

OMG I remember him and his teensy baby snake.

[dimestore_romeo]

I remember reading all those books as a teenager. And each series he wrote - ever! - had sort of the exact same set of characters, but with different names. And YET. I would just read and read and reread them, possibly because they were so formulaic that no thinking was required?

And always that one character, the dark haired older woman with great power who always acted in a very specific loving and yet condescending way, with near omniscience? And the characters would have nearly the same conversations in ever series?

But they had all of them at the library!

[skygiants]

hahahaha SAME, they were all at the library and I read every single one! but I can remember nothing that happens in any of the books besides the Belgariad/Mallorean/Polgara/Belgarath cycle -- my brain seems to have discarded all the other infinitesimally different character names and plot devices as completely irrelevant, which honestly, brain, fair cop, I can't argue!

[asakiyume]

Ah, completionism--it demands so much.

I very much enjoyed your descriptions of the various fantasy nationalities and their representatives, though lacking childhood exposure to this, your description is an absolutely sufficient degree of intimacy with the series for me!

[skygiants]

You have made a wise decision and one that I respect. I'm glad you enjoyed the write-up!

[ashlyme]

Huh. Somehow I managed to miss this in the eighties. But then I had Michael Moorcock, and Elric, with his Self-Pity So Great It Destroyed The World.

[sovay]

But then I had Michael Moorcock, and Elric, with his Self-Pity So Great It Destroyed The World.

Moorcock's prose is still better.

[schneefink]

Garion is a Simple Farmboy who is both secret long-lost royalty with a kingdom to inherit and the hero prophesied to defeat the evil god who sleeps in the evil empire!
Ahahaha poor guy.

All of this except the immortal sorcerous aunt and her sensible blacksmith boyfriend (would be even better as a girlfriend) sound terrible.

[skygiants]

It's honestly not that hard on him, he complains a little but is really required to make very few independent decisions since Fate and his wise sorcerous relatives are taking care of pretty much everything. Thanks, prophecy!

(There is actually a personification of the prophecy in his head who takes over when things get too hard for him. It's understandable, I wouldn't want to give a fifteen-year-old too much world-saving responsibility either.)

[ilyena_sylph]

I just need to draw sparkly hearts all over this post.

Just.

So VERY bad, so amazingly readable, still engraved in my brain.

(Look I was the kind of early teen that went through Belgarath and Polgara and made lists of discrepancies...)

[sporky_rat]

With index cards and different colored inks?
'Cause that was me too.

[julian]

But Durnik's too boring to be a lesbian.

Anyway, so I loved these So Much when I was a kid, *and yet* was aware they were crap. But the first book in the Mallorean saved my brain when I was in France (or possibly England), and it had just come out in 1987, and I had been traveling around for awhile and had *read everything I had with me*, and stumbled across it in an... English language bookstore? (It seems improbable, which is why I think it might've been England.) The point is, I am fond of it forever just for that.

I was going to say I'd avoided the Tamuli, but then I read a plot synopsis and things kept jumping out at me. Why did you read this, me?

[skygiants]

But that's the magic of it, being a lesbian blacksmith who'd spent twelve years pining after the most unattainable woman on her farm would immediately make Durnik three hundred percent less boring!

I think France does have a few English-language bookstores, including some quite famous ones, so it might've been France! It's definitely a perfect travel-read book, especially since they're all also on an endless road trip. I was really hoping my library would turn up ebook copies so I could read it on business trips, but alas.

[movingfinger]

I think that was the first big series I bailed on. It just took too long.


ETA: getting publishers to buy the Mallorean, a slightly rewritten version of the first five-book series, has to be one of the best wheezes any writer (or agent) has pulled off, ever.

[megpie71]

I am forever in awe of the Eddingses because they managed to get *the same publisher* to buy *the same book* no fewer than five times (Belgariad, Malloreon, Elenium, Tamuli, and Redemption of Althalus). First two were in five volumes each, second two were in three volumes each, and Redemption they managed to compress it all into the one book, but it was the same darn story all the time, and the same characters too.

[luzula]

Oh god. These books were definitely formative for me too, but I probably will never reread them. The capricious and incomprehensible women, augh. Which they share with The Wheel of Time, a series I once also gobbled up.

Another random thing that would probably bug me now is how callous they occasionally are. Like, Evil Enemy People are not actually people in the sense that their suffering matters. They are just cardboard cut-outs. I remember one bit (probably in the Elenium or Tamuli) where the main characters laugh and wipe some brains off their swords after killing some Evil People.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it's kind of fascinating to me, honestly. There's a scene where Garion uses his magic to kill somebody, and then is upset about it and worried that he's a monster for doing it, and everyone else is like "Garion, stop whining and get over yourself, sometimes you just have to do a magic murder." But at least Garion's distress implies there is something to be distressed about ... and then there's a whole lot of casual stabbing later that he just doesn't even register.

(ALSO there is the part where Ce'Nedra saves the lives of some serfs by ... signing them up for the army? They're part of a pointless war machine now but at least they get to eat!)

[davidgillon]

I picked up a random book out of the Elenium* - I think it was the only fantasy on the shelves - when I was in hospital about three years ago and well enough to be bored, but not well enough to be released yet. It was much better than having nothing at all to read, but also reminded me of just how formulaic the whole lot of them were. Workmanlike might be the most appropriate description.

The only thing formula-breaking about the Belgariad was that it had so clearly identified what the formula was, and wasn't going to step so much as an inch away from it.

* Basically the Belgariad Rides Again, but some idiot knighted all the male characters, and the protagonist seems to think he's John Wayne.

[skygiants]

That was what I thought! It's not only painting by numbers, it's very determined to show you all the numbers that it's painting by. In a weird way, I found that kind of fascinating as a kid; I remember being very interested in the way each character was supposed to be a Prophetic Archetype, in the same kind of way I liked stuff that got meta about fairy tale archetypes like Into the Woods.

[oracne]

I never read these but would read the lesbian version.

[skygiants]

In the time-honored words, Would Have Been Better With Lesbians!

[ranalore]

Oh, man. I don't think I actually read these a million times when I was a teenager, but I certainly re-read them a lot, and I remember them with startling clarity. But I know I realized at some point in my early twenties I hadn't touched them for several years, and was only holding onto them for sentimental reasons, so I donated them. I can't say I've ever regretted that decision.

[skygiants]

Surprisingly, despite the number of times I read them, I don't think I ever actually owned them! Just checked them out from the library ... repeatedly. More, in fact, than was good for me.

[castiron]

I read these back when I was in college, and the only thing I remember at all about them is two different scenes where pregnant female characters are retching over the side of a boat.

[skygiants]

That must be the Mallorean! Nobody's pregnant yet in the Belgariad, we're still in the helpfully-pairing-everybody-off stage. Something to ... look forward to .......?

[heresluck]

1) Everything about this post is 100% accurate, especially the part about Durnik.

2) The phrase "Fantasy-Shaped Fantasy" is so perfect -- for these books and a whooooole lot of others that I first inhaled in my early teens and then sold at assorted mall bookstores in my late teens and early twenties. I will be stealing for future use. Heh.

[skygiants]

Oh man, I read so much fantasy-shaped fantasy (and still do sometimes -- there's an itch that it for sure does occasionally scratch.) But the Belgariad honestly remains the ur-example.

[sheliak]

I remember the Prophesy basically telling Garion (who's worried that Taiba and Relg will be miserable together) that it'll make them happy once they stop fighting it. I found that a little creepy then, and a lot creepy now.

One thing I remember loving in the Belgariad was Islena taking down the Bear Cult. It was nice to see her get a cool moment, especially considering that neither the narrative nor the rest of the cast particularly respected her.

The Mallorean has Zakath and Sadi as main characters; that's a point in its favor. They're a bit less cookie-cutter than the others (or the Eddingses used those cookie cutters less, maybe?) I liked Sadi's love of his tiny, cute, and extremely deadly snake, and I remember liking some of Zakath's lines. (And his cats.)

Lesbian Durnik would be fun! As it is, I find Durnik pleasant, inoffensive, and not terribly memorable.

(I know I read the Elenium and Tamuli, but I remember very little about either one. And all I remember about the Dreamers series is that they sucked enough to make me give up on both them and Eddings after about one book. But I reread The Redemption of Althalus so much I've practically got it memorized--still have a soft spot for it, at least in memory.)

Edit: There is another thing which these books have done to my brain. In one of my fandoms the smushname for a major ship is Cherik, which is unfortunate, because I always here it as Cherek and think of the Vikings from these books. So a part of my mind thinks that there are a million fics in which Professor X and Magneto are cod-Vikings, and I'm a little disappointed that that is not the case.

[sporky_rat]

ZITH FOREVER.

[kate_nepveu]

Oh, these books. They are so so bad, and yet I genuinely used to read the extremely long saying-hi and saying-goodbye sections of the Malloreon when I couldn't sleep, the same way I would read the first two sections of _The Silmarillion_.

[skygiants]

There is genuinely something very soothing about them! It's like checking off a list by proxy.

[chomiji]

I think I read these? But they made so little impression on me that the only thing I recall is Ce'nedra being so dismayed that her armor made her look like a little boy, and she wanted it to be more boobalicious.

Also, on the basis of your summary here, I think this may have been a major inspiration for DWJ for The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, which came out in 1996.

[pedanther]

I think that's probably giving Eddings more credit than he deserves. Whatever he says about how original his conception was, the truth is a lot of people were writing this sort of thing at the time; it's just that most of them sank quickly into well-earned oblivion.

I've seen it reported that DWJ wrote the Tough Guide coming off a stint as a contributing editor to The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, and that it was a reaction to the state of popular fantasy as a whole rather than to any particular author.