After the five-book Belgariad, David Eddings returned to the same world and characters with another five book epic – The Malloreon. Last year, I reread The Belgariad. This year, I turned to The Malloreon to see how it holds up. Which series wins in the battle of The Malloreon vs The Belgariad?
A Fantasy Soap Opera
The first book, Guardians of the West, is a slow burn. At times, it reminded me of a fantasy version of a soap opera. Polgara and Durnik adopt a child and move into a new home and Garion and Ce’Nedra struggling through marriage difficulties. Eventually, they have a child.
Eddings handles all these domesticities with typical skill. His easy style of writing and sense of humour carries the reader through over 200 pages to the main meat of the novel: in Riva, Garion’s trusted right hand man Brand is murdered, prompting a threat to the Western alliance.
Shortly after, Garion and Ce’Nedra’s son Geran is kidnapped. The only way to get him back? A quest, of course, with diverse companions – one of whom, it is foretold, will die before the quest’s completion.
Reading Guardians of the West in the late 80s, I was out of my seat with dread, worrying one of my favourite characters would die and having to wait an agonising length of time for each of the next books in the series to be published. It’s a cheap trick, but highly effective.
The rest of the series continues with a typical blend of banter, sorcery and action. This time, Barak, Mandorallen and Hettar aren’t permitted to accompany Garion, so he has to take on the brunt of the action set pieces. For those who remember the scullion from Pawn of Prophecy, he’s remarkably good at it.
PLUSES
There are some good moments in The Malloreon. The introduction of Urgit, King of the Murgos, and the development of Zakath, Emperor of Mallorea, refresh the series and put an end to the good guys’ unpleasantly wistful dreaming of committing genocide against all Angaraks. Taking the series out of the Western nations and into the lands of the Angaraks allows Eddings to expand and enrich his world.
The constant bickering between Beldin and Belgarath is always entertaining and frequently very amusing. I particularly liked this exchange, which is not quoted verbatim:
Beldin: “There’s some deserters over there.”
Belgarath: Deserters from which side?”
Beldin: “Doesn’t really matter, does it? Once a man deserts, he foregoes any previous allegiances.”
Belgarath: “Sometimes you’re so clever you make me sick.”
Luckily, Garion was allowed to bring Silk – the Guide – along on the quest. The Malloreon would be much poorer without his coinniving business instincts and wisecracks.
In the fourth book, Sorceress of Darshiva, there is a lovely moment when Garion insists on bringing a wolf and her cub along with the company. Eddings often excelled when writing those quietly emotional moments.
The fifth book completes the saga very satisfyingly. It also helps to explain Eddings’ decision to begin Book One from Errand’s point of view.
minuses
Across the series, the plot is repetitive. The characters even allude to that fact, saying it’s a natural consequence of the prophecy coming to an end.
I enjoyed the prologues in The Belgariad, but in the Malloreon, but found them unnecessary, as they repeated information already delivered by characters in previous books.
The attitudes to women are still outdated. Velvet, Praga, Cyradis are all depicted as living to entrap their men. Polgara and Ce’Nedra go all giddy at the thought of hot baths. All of these women are portrayed as strong, clever and capable and yet they often feel more more two dimensional than the men. Most of the men, that is. The mute Toth is never really developed beyond the fact that he likes fishing.
The Belgariad v the Malloreon
So, back to the original questions. Does The Malloreon hold up nowadays, and is it as good as The Belgariad?
The answers are yes and no. The Belgariad is better, but The Malloreon still gives you a chance to spend time with some great characters and provides several genuinely laugh out loud moments.
Eddings’ pasT
As with the Belgariad, to enjoy the Malloreon, readers have to decide whether they can separate the art from the artist.
Ten years before his first fantasy book was published, David Eddings and his wife Leigh were each imprisoned for physical and emotional abuse of their two adopted children. Abuse that included locking them in cages in their basement. It’s an ugly, despicable crime, and very hard to defend, particularly considering the nature of the Belgariad and Malloreon, which see first Garion and then Errand adopted as small children.
If it helps, Eddings bequeathed over $30 million to two charities. It doesn’t negate the crime, but perhaps it affects his legacy.
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