Solar Flare: Science Fiction News

A couple of weeks back I posted a review of The Elder Gods by David and Leigh Eddings. The review was pretty negative as I really didn’t enjoy the book. One of the things I said that I used to like Eddings books and wondered if they were always this bad.

So I went back and I’ve just finished re-reading The Diamond Throne by David Eddings (his wife wasn’t being openly credited at this point though I suspect she did have input. The first thing I’m pleased to say is that while the “cute” element definitely is present, this is a noticeably better book than The Elder Gods.

Re-reading The Diamond Throne it was painfully obvious how many story elements Eddings has re-used in later books (including the concept of younger gods and elder gods). You can also pretty well match up the character archetypes from one book to another.

But the big difference is the fact that over the course of the book, I felt as though things were actually happening. While some of the action occured “off-screen” it wasn’t just a succession of people talking about what happened. So the answer to my original question is that yes Eddings’ earlier books were clearly better than his current output.

It was a frustrating read though. There were occasional flashes of real depth in the writing and some nice descriptions. But then it simply reverted to glib exchanges of sardonic comments between characters.

I’m enjoying it enough that I have already started on The Ruby Knight which is the second book in the series and will read the third, The Sapphire Rose, as well.

I’m thinking that further down the road I may re-read the Belgariad series as well. That was my favorite Eddings series when I was younger and I can barely remember half the characters names any more so it will almost seem new.