skygiants | (no subject)

I was four books into the Mallorean when the quarantimes hit and the libraries shut down, and I absolutely refused to purchase a.) any of the Mallorean but especially b.) just the last book of the Mallorean, so I had to wait several months until a handoff from

sandrylene could be arranged to complete my self-assigned labors.

What I remembered about The Mallorean, from my childhood, is that it was more or less The Belgariad all over again except a little bit better and funnier. Also, that 'Zakath the mildly reformed sociopathic emperor and Cyradis the eternally obfuscating blind seer had a beautiful romance that Teen Becca cared about very, very deeply.

Here, now, in the year 2020, I bring the sad tidings that 'Zakath/Cyradis is extremely boring and reads exactly like every other destined David Eddings romance, which is to say it has not a single thing to do with either party's personality and involves a lot of fairly tired sexist jokes.

Instead, the ONLY Mallorean relationship I care about, here in this year 2020, is Sadi (the manipulative eunuch from the Culture of Drugs, Snakes and Sensuality that is Definitely Not a Racist Caricature) and Liselle (the Beautiful Undercover Spy from the Culture Where Everyone Is Spies) coparenting a tiny adorable poisonous snake and her newborn even tinier snake babies!!! I'm VERY invested in this. I absolutely reject the canonical ending that Sadi and his snake family end up in a different country from Liselle at the end of the book. Family is important! Liselle and this snake are bonded, you can't separate them now!

(Liselle/Sadi is not a canonical romance, because David Eddings does not think eunuchs can have romance. Liselle is instead the canonical romance for Silk, the original Spy From the Culture Where Everyone Is Spies; as you might be able to guess, she's exactly like him, but female and half his age. This is a little disquieting but also still gives them more to build a relationship on than literally any other canonical Eddings couple, and therefore as a result I will graciously allow Silk to make a triad with Liselle and Sadi if he wishes, but only on the condition that he act as equal coparent to the poisonous snake.)

Anyway. In other thoughts, the Mallorean is probably very slightly better than the Belgariad, in that it is mildly less racist (half the cultures written off as One Hundred Percent Evil in the last book get one sympathetic representative this time around! though I'm not sure the King of the Murgos counts when he's literally only likeable because he's secretly illegitimate and half from a Traditionally Good Culture, thus dodging the Hereditary Evil bullet! oh boy) and also several of the new characters are better than the old characters. However, it also loses some points against the original, for the following:

- I'm not sure I have made it clear enough how much the Eddingses revel in the fact that they are really just writing the same book series, all over again, and getting paid lots of money for it? The entire last book is just a long sequence of Garion running into NPCs and thinking profound thooughts about how much they resemble the last round of NPCs from the first series, because the Eddingses have a pallet of maybe five stock characters to choose from and they have just decided to act like this is a feature rather than a bug. One does respect the chutzpah!

- there's a sequence in the third book in which a deadly plague breaks out. Our Heroes, who are currently prisoners of 'Zakath, advise 'Zakath that for the good of his realm he must immediately impose an quarantine on the city. "At least 50% of the people trapped here will die," they explain, sympathetically, "but this is the way it's got to be! For the greater good!"

Then they decide ... to take advantage of the fact that 'Zakath is distracted by the quarantine ... to sneak out of town and continue their quest ...

I read this book back in December 2019 and our protags blithely breaking quarantine made me angrier than literally anything else in the series. Shockingly, I don't feel better about it now!

- ok, let me just share this bit of Garion dialogue, from the buildup to the end of the quest:

"We -- and Zandramas, of course -- have been trying to find Korim and to keep the other side from finding out where it is so that we can win by default. It was never going to happen that way, though. The meeting absolutely has to take place before Cyradis can choose. The prophecies weren't going to let it happen any other way. Both sides have wasted a great deal of effort trying to do something that simply could not be done. We should all have realized that from the very beginning. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble."

David Eddings, I knew, I knew that this whole FIVE BOOK SERIES was a lot of pointless water-treading for no actual purpose, but did you -- did you really just have to come out and say it? Did you have to make us both look like fools that way, David and Leigh Eddings??

(Yeah. I know you did. I brought this fully on myself.)

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

jothra

See the thing is, the plot is definitely absolute garbage, and they definitely write the same story over and over again, even in their books taking place in other worlds.

But their dialogue is so darn catchy.

From:

sovay

I absolutely reject the canonical ending that Sadi and his snake family end up in a different country from Liselle at the end of the book. Family is important! Liselle and this snake are bonded, you can't separate them now!

Please write this fic. I do not remember having any particular feelings about Liselle, I suspect because so much of her plot was tied up in being a love interest for Silk, but I am deeply fond of Sadi and I had forgotten that Zith bonded with Liselle, so now I'm here for it.

though I'm not sure the King of the Murgos counts when he's literally only likeable because he's secretly illegitimate and half from a Traditionally Good Culture, thus dodging the Hereditary Evil bullet! oh boy

Hey! I liked him because he canonically looks like a ferret and is nervous and sarcastic and kind of crap at being a king!

Then they decide ... to take advantage of the fact that 'Zakath is distracted by the quarantine ... to sneak out of town and continue their quest ...

Oh, yeah, that did happen, that was terrible.

Edited Date: 2020-08-21 03:39 am (UTC)

From:

sheliak

Sadi was my favorite as a kid/teen! I loved snakes and adored any character who did as well.

(The fact that the Eddingses did not think eunuchs can have romance is probably why Sadi/Liselle is comparatively interesting! I still remember him complaining about her seducing his snake.)

I think the King of the Murgos had a sympathetic mom and... general? stepfather-candidate? Who are both sympathetic for reasons unrelated to secretly being Silk's half-brother or whatever. Mostly unrelated, I mean, since the mom did obviously sleep with a Good Foreigner.

As a teenager I thought breaking quarantine to run away from Zakath was a dick move. I feel, um, more strongly these days.

From:

torachan

I loved David Eddings as a teen but those are definitely books I long ago made the decision to keep as happy memories and never reread because I know they will turn out to be actually terrible. XD

From:

sovay

I think the King of the Murgos had a sympathetic mom and... general? stepfather-candidate?

The Lady Tamazin and the Seneschal Oskatat. I can't remember if they actually marry by the end of the series, but I am also here for their years-in-the-slow-burn later-life romance.

There's also Prala of the House of Cthan, who becomes Urgit's wife, but my recollection is that most of her personality is "going to marry Urgit whether he likes it or not," because Eddings romance.

Edited (it's all coming back to me now) Date: 2020-08-21 07:42 am (UTC)

From:

merit

I read Eddings fairly exhaustively as a teen - most especially Belgariad of course. I attempted a reread a few years ago and while the books read fairly fast, all the flaws all the brighter with my older understanding.

Didn't care for Liselle/Silk, because younger woman/older man romances never quite appealed to young merit. Also, after Liselle and the snake fulfilled their plot function, Eddings dropped any sort of character arc (characters developing? in an Eddings book??) or plot significance for her. Up for Liselle/Sadi and their snake family!

'Zakath/Cyradis could have been interesting. Could have. But tee hee women love baths I guess.

From:

azara

I find the whole Born Evil determinism particularly off-putting now I know that the Eddings went to jail for child abuse.

From:

nineveh_uk

Teen me loved Zakath/Cyradis so much. I'm always a sucker for tortured secret woobie learns to love again. I stick to rereading Eddings these days when I'm ill, when zero-effort page-turning and you know exactly what is going to happen is a bonus.

From:

littlerhymes

Thank you for suffering through this again so the rest of us don't have to. I have almost no memory of reading The Mallorean, probably because it blurs into all the other Eddings series that they simply churned out in the same mould, but I support this entirely:

I will graciously allow Silk to make a triad with Liselle and Sadi if he wishes, but only on the condition that he act as equal coparent to the poisonous snake.

From:

marginaliana

I remembered that this series was very "we're just doing this all over again, what is the point??" but judging by what you've quoted I apparently didn't remember just how much it was that. Yikes.

From:

kate_nepveu

holy fucking SHIT.

From Wikipedia: "The couple adopted one boy in 1966, Scott David.[9][10] They adopted a younger girl between 1966 and 1969.[10] In 1969 they lost custody of both children and each were sentenced to a year in jail from separate trials after pleading guilty to child abuse.[11][12] Though the nature of the abuse, the trial and the sentencing were all extensively reported in North Dakota newspapers at the time, these details did not resurface during their successful joint career as fantasy authors, only coming to light several years after both had died."

No details are in the Wiki article, you have to click through the links, which are, naturally, disturbing.

From:

lirazel

I have never read any Eddings, and I get the feeling that I would not enjoy any of their books as much as I enjoyed reading this post.

From:

krait

I've never read any of these books, but my immediate reaction to this post was a resurgence of my EUNUCH ROMANCE! WHY ISN'T THERE ANY? feelings.

Sadi/Liselle and Sadi/Liselle/Silk both sound delightful, and I'm sad that I can't read about them and their snakebabies/snakegrandbabies.

From:

rymenhild

I read about this for the first time only a few months ago. I am very much done permanently with all of their works.

From:

pauraque

Holy fucking shit is right! I'm surprised that didn't all come out when they started publishing, because I'm sure nobody who read those news reports ever forgot about it.

From:

rymenhild

For what it's worth I've also read that their estate's beneficiary is Reed College, so anyone who buys their books now is supporting the college rather than anything more objectionable. But still. Educated white people didn't get prison time for child abuse in 1969 in North Dakota if they had plausible deniability. This was big and awful.

From:

jazzfish

Based on my last reread ~10 years ago, Seeress of Kell is basically the Eddingses realising that not only aren't they gonna be able to stick the landing, they can't even realistically mask the plot repetition and shoddy characterization anymore, so they decided to lampshade the whole thing.

From:

ranalore

The main thing I remember about The Mallorean is that, even as a teen who read The Belgariad obsessively, I read it askance because it was such a retread. And I was probably developing a more discerning palate by the time it came out, so while the glow of nostalgia continued to soften the flaws of The Belgariad, I couldn't help noticing them in The Mallorean. I think I did read it one more time, wondering if I was being unfair because it wasn't The Belgariad, but the problem was it was too much The Belgariad, and I had the original if I wanted to scratch that itch.

Based on your write-ups, I have a feeling I also noticed that the characters didn't act appreciably different from how they had in The Belgariad, when I would have expected significant maturation in the ones who had been teens in that series. And flaws I could forgive fellow teens were not, I found, things about which I was as understanding in adults. As I recall, I also thought everybody was just a bit more thoughtless and callous, using destiny or the prophecy as excuses for some horrible behavior. I think that might have been the evolution of my preference for characters who gave destiny the finger and acted instead according to the dictates of well-developed consciences.

I also remember a disinterest in all the romances, but especially Velvet/Silk. It skirted what I didn't know to call a trigger at the time. Meanwhile, I was beginning to realize there was no there there with everybody else, because I think my ratio of good books to bad—at least in terms of relationship dynamics and chemistry—had begun to tilt toward good, making the remaining bad more noticeable.

From:

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