The Belgariad: Volume One (Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician's Gambit)

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The Belgariad: Volume One (The Belgariad #1-3)

4.24 of 5 stars 4.24 · rating details · 7,200 ratings · 254 reviews

Millions of readers have discovered the magic of David Eddings’ New York Times bestselling series The Belgariad. Now the first three books in this monumental epic appear in a single volume. Here, long-time fans can rediscover the wonder—and the uninitiated can embark upon a thrilling new journey of fantasy and adventure.

It all begins with the theft of the Orb that for so l...more

Paperback, 644 pages

Published August 27th 2002 by Del Rey (first published 1982)

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Jun 29, 2007 Katy rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: young teens

Get ready for the overuse of the word "sardonic" and characters who absolutely have to have the last word ("oh, really?" "yes, indeed!" "I thought you might feel that way." "I was born feeling this way.") I have to be loyal to a fellow Reedie, but Eddings takes the easy way out too often, merely stating situations when he could take more pains to show them ("The young boy took her hand with a mournful look in his eyes showing profound love, tinged with hope and fear and a midafternoon's hunger f...more

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Aug 24, 2009 Lorena rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

Maybe more like a 2.75 on the ratings scale. Competent but predictable fantasy. The author created the world before he created the story, and it shows. The setting is very thoroughly imagined and meticulously crafted; the story, less so. The characters are all familiar fantasy archetypes, though not bad examples of those archetypes, for the most part. The pacing is exceedingly slow, and the action depends a great deal on the people in the story not telling each other basic, necessary information...more

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Dec 31, 2007 Shira Karp rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fantasy genre fans

This series has been recommended to me more times than I can count. I finally got around to reading it and I gotta say... not sure what all the fuss is about. I mean, it was good, but it wasn't any better in my opinion than any of those other series out there that tell the same tale- good vs. evil, magic vs. non-magic, follow the prophecy road... you get the idea. This book fits the formula to a T. I could tell you everything that was going to happen in this series by the second chapter. What I...more

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Sep 20, 2007 Solitairerose rated it 3 of 5 stars

Average fantasy with a few flourishes. Reading it now, it reads almost like an adaptation of a Japanese Fantasy RPG where the minute you see a map, you know the characters will have to go to every named point on it, and once they have, the series is over. It's pleasantly written, and the writing style moves pretty briskly. Fun fantasy fluff that goes on a bit too long.

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May 28, 2012 MrsJoseph rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: david-eddings, fantasy, fantasy-epic, favorites, omnibus, format-paperback, series, young-adult, purple-chair-reads, 2012-read, fa-top-100-fantasy-books, fa-top-100-challenge

I really can't help that I really love this series. Warts and all. Yeah, yeah...I know the myriad issues this series has. I'm still reading it...and this is - literally - maybe the 3rd or 4th copy I've purchased.

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Aug 09, 2009 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, fiction

The flippant dialogue is at first charming, then predictable, and ultimately mind-numbing and/or entirely inappropriate given the situation. The plot is an interminable travelogue of new places and characters, only briefly developed, in service to Eddings' fleshing out the maps he drew before writing this series (see Eddings' Preface in this volume). Worse, the plot is furthered in no small way simply by characters not telling each other what is obviously important information (not just to the r...more

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Dec 07, 2008 Kurtbg rated it 4 of 5 stars

This Fantasy series is entertaining. Some of the dialogue is witty and sharp. Clearly there's ideas lifted from Tolkein - it's hard to find fantasy that can't be traced back to Tolkein. However, there's more character driven plots than JRR which makes for a fun read.
With some tweaking this could actually be adapted to film. Sometimes the characters bleed into one another. Unless you extremely like the writing and characters I strongly suggest skipping the Mallorean, the next five books. The auth...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Harold Ogle marked it as to-read

Shelves: fantasy, fun-characters

Queen of Sorcery continues the story begun in Pawn of Prophecy in two respects: the plot picks up exactly where the previous book stopped, and it also has a title that is really unrelated to the story itself. United States audiences like to lampoon modern Japanese culture for its frequent combination of two completely unrelated words to make a title, such as "Metal Gear Solid," "Fullmetal Alchemist," or "Sailor Moon," but this book's title is just as nonsensical. We do hear a little bit more abo...more Queen of Sorcery continues the story begun in Pawn of Prophecy in two respects: the plot picks up exactly where the previous book stopped, and it also has a title that is really unrelated to the story itself. United States audiences like to lampoon modern Japanese culture for its frequent combination of two completely unrelated words to make a title, such as "Metal Gear Solid," "Fullmetal Alchemist," or "Sailor Moon," but this book's title is just as nonsensical. We do hear a little bit more about the "prophecy" suggested by the first book at the beginning of the second, but we're never really shown why the book is called Queen of Sorcery.

Still, it's a good and engaging read. Eddings continues his "high fantasy with grounded-in-reality heroes" approach to good effect. Garion meets a high-spirited teen named Lelldorin, whom he befriends and only realizes belatedly is something of an idiot. Even so, Garion holds onto prejudices that Lelldorin gives him, and he meets Mandorallen, who is a Lancelot-style character of questionable parentage ("The Song of Ice and Fire's" Brienne is a spiritual descendant of Mandorallen). Garion takes an immediate dislike to him, but Mandorallen proves himself a doughty and reliable boon companion as the group continues ever south, chasing after Belgarath's fellow sorceror, Zedar, who is revealed to have stolen the Orb of Aldur (pretty much any reader of the first book who didn't skip the prologue have pieced this together long before it is revealed to Garion). They are concerned that Zedar is taking the Orb to the high priest of the Grolim, Ctuchik, so that Ctuchik can revive the slumbering mad god, Torak, and so all haste is given to the chase. The problem is that the party keeps getting waylaid by Murgo villains sent to delay their pursuit. Chief among them is Asharak and Brill, who've been keeping pace with the party since the beginnings of the first book.

From what I can tell, this is the "Two Towers" of the series: it's a lot of fun, but somehow it's not quite as satisfying as what came before or after. That's not to say that nothing happens, of course: the book is very engaging with plots, counterplots, and quickly changing scenery as the protagonists move across four nations. At first, they try to warn the human nations of Arendia and Tolnedra that war is coming, speak to the Dryads in their sacred forest south of Tolnedra, and then finally are embroiled in the machinations of Salmissra, serpent queen of the swamp kingdom of Nyissa. Is Salmissra supposed to the Queen of Sorcery, though her sorcery is practically nonexistent? Is Polgara, even though she is not a queen (at least, as far as is intimated in this book)? It's vexing. Still, in each country, the heroes are involved in some plot by or against the leaders of the land, which they foil through different methods. Garion gradually begins to appreciate that he has some aptitude for sorcery himself (another reviewer complained that "suddenly Garion is throwing lightning bolts from his hands," but that doesn't happen here); his developing any aptitude with magic is slow but inevitable. What's interesting, in reflection, is how very much plot there is in this book, and yet the focus is so powerfully on the characters and their interactions that the plot if almost secondary.

This edition, published during the 20th anniversary of the first printing of Pawn of Prophecy, has a small forward from Eddings, in which he admits that what he was trying to do was write a fantasy novel with the real-life characters of Steinbeck or Faulkner. I think he succeeded. But while I don't judge a book by its cover - or any of the weird decisions that publishers make that don't really bear on the story and are independent of the author's work - I do have to comment on this edition in a couple of particulars. The story is great, and having the first three books together in one volume is very handy. But the maps are terrible: it appears that someone at the publishing company took one of the original mass-market paperbacks and photocopied the maps, blowing them up in an enlargement, and then traced over all the features of the map with a fat felt-tipped marker. The maps are completely illegible, and so it's almost insulting having them there. The second quibble is, yes, the cover: with Pawn of Prophecy, the picture of Polgara sheltering the little boy version of Garion makes sense: it's an encapsulation of their relationship for the years before the book begins. But the main story in this series starts with Garion at 14, so the picture of him as a small child is bizarre. In Queen of Sorcery, he is either blatantly propositioned or flirted with by at least three different girls/women, one of whom comments on how big and muscular he is. He is still a boy, certainly, but he's not a child - indeed, much of the first book consists of his trying to explicitly assert that he is not a child (which is pretty typical teen behavior, after all). Still, both of these are niggling concerns over publication details. The book is a very good and quick read.(less)

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Dec 29, 2007 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fantasy Readers

I'm going to make this the proxy review for the entire series of Eddings' work within this universe. I read this around 10 times when I was a teenager, and it's definitely my favorite fantasy series ever (although I don't read many). The characters are memorable, even if they all tend to speak with the same sarcatic, dry tone. The plot is addictive, even if repetitive. The prose is servicable. Recommended to teenagers, and readers of fantasy.

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Sep 29, 2007 Johnny Feng rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: advisorybooks

David Eddings begins each book with a piece of history pretaining to the land. We focus on the journey of a young boy by the name of Garion as he is forced to flee his home along with his aunt Pol and travel on a long journey to retrieve a stolen object of great importance. As they journey across multiple countries in pursuit of the object, we see Garion develop his latent powers and we end the third book with the return to where everything began.

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Jun 09, 2012 Matthew rated it 4 of 5 stars

This seems like the beginning of a truly epic fantasy series. I'm tempted to give it 5 stars, but I think that I might need to keep reading the series to see if it really ends up deserving that. The book is a classic fantasy story with a LOT borrowed from Tolkien. I guess that isn't really a bad thing since most fantasy is rooted in him, but some of it is a bit too obvious.

Regardless, Eddings does an awesome job with character development and world building. He gives a very straightforward myth...more

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Jun 06, 2007 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, young_adult

Forget Robert Jordan. David Eddings is the one who knows how to write compelling fantasy- with humor, with love, and with great characters.

The Belgariad was his first series, and it shows, but still a wonderful read, and the sequel series is even better.

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Feb 06, 2013 Pearl rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is like an adventure.... With out the horrible uncomfortableness. It is the same type of book as LOTR, not as well written but still, which is *fan fare* an adventure in a book!!! I love this type of genre, and this was my first 100+ page book in this genre. How can I forget my first time? I digress, i digress, i love this book dearly and all of it's characters close to may heart. The written is splendid, though some beg to differ, the hero was believable and had faults, the enemy was...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Cole rated it 2 of 5 stars

Like The Redemption of Althalus, this book does some things well and some things poorly. The plot is cliché, the characters are interesting, the writing seems childish, and the world the story takes place in is very well done. Like The Redemption of Althalus, I think this book would be more appreciated by someone younger than me. This book also comes as three separate books and if you choose to go that route, be warned that the first book has very little plot and all it really does is set the st...more

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Jun 23, 2008 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars

My favorite fantasy series and I have read them multiple times. It moves along quickly, but has the right amount of detail so that you can picture all of the characters involved.

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Aug 22, 2012 Chhaya rated it 2 of 5 stars

A 4 for premise and a 2 for execution. Upshot: the author draws an interesting world with some well-thought characters and convincing political dynamics in this page-turner. Downsides: these people are basically invincible and can easily handle any big bad with any power that comes their way...which left me wondering why it's so hard to retrieve the magic thingamajig. If there's no real danger in the journey, then what's the point of the 700 pages (just for volume 1)?

All in all, I finished this...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Nick Hall rated it 3 of 5 stars

This first volume of the Belgariad is a decently engaging story, but not one I would recommend to others. The story is practically built of cliches, from the Secret King to the Gruff But Wise Wizard, right down to the villain who says "We're very much alike. Under different circumstances, we might even have been friends." There's also some fairly distasteful racist undercurrents. In the end, there is the obligatory fleeing from the villain's lair which collapses into ruin as soon as he is defeat...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Meg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: best-worlds

Brilliant. High fantasy at its best. I'm definitely going to finish this series, and probably The Mallorean too. The world was incredibly well-developed. The one thing I didn't particularly like was the main character. I found him annoying at first, but he did improve as the series progressed. It was also a little confusing; not only is there is massive cast of characters, but many of them have multiple names which are used interchangeably. Still, that was a small problem that didn't detract fro...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Jeremy Preacher rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

Omnibus edition! I'll be breaking these out as I finish them. The usual disclaimer - I first read these when I was a kid (maybe 13, at the oldest) and am irrationally fond of them. This will be an attempt to look at them with grown-up eyes, but that never actually works.

Pawn of Prophecy:

Two things struck me particularly about this book. First of all is the extremely stylized language - it worked very well on my as a kid, being completely understandable while still feeling Important. As I recall,...more

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Dec 22, 2011 Sebastien rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fan d'épic et de fantasie légère

Recommended to Sebastien by: maxime paquet

Shelves: high-fantasy

Suite à ma lecture de Memories of Ice, je croyais que j'étais carrément baisé. Comme j'allais lire quelque chose d'aussi bon sans comparé et être comblé de déception vu la différence de qualité. J'ai donc mis sur pause la série des Malazans pour demander à mes amis s'il y avait autre chose de digne en ce monde cruel. Tout le monde bien sûr on essayer de me faire lire Harry Potter et Game of Throne, mais le premier je veux rien savoir pour l'instant (et encore aujourd'hui) et le deuxième je veux...more Suite à ma lecture de Memories of Ice, je croyais que j'étais carrément baisé. Comme j'allais lire quelque chose d'aussi bon sans comparé et être comblé de déception vu la différence de qualité. J'ai donc mis sur pause la série des Malazans pour demander à mes amis s'il y avait autre chose de digne en ce monde cruel. Tout le monde bien sûr on essayer de me faire lire Harry Potter et Game of Throne, mais le premier je veux rien savoir pour l'instant (et encore aujourd'hui) et le deuxième je veux attendre que la série soit terminé. Je commençais à me décourager quand mon chum Max m'a dit : "Sébas change de style un peu et va dans un classique de la littérature high fantasy, la Belgariad". Il me jurais sur son âme que c'était hot et qu'il était sur que j'aimerais ça pour des raison différente, donc difficile de comparé et d'être désappointé.

He bien, il avait totalement raison. De comparer La Belgariad à Malazan Book of the Fallen, serait comparer une ferrarie à un moto Kawazaki. Même rapport de vitesse mais pas la même expérience. Donc, c'est ainsi que j'ai découvert un nouveau "must" de la lecture fantastique. Bon encore ici, beaucoup diront que l'histoire est copier sur le seigneur des anneaux et que c'est plein de clicher. He bien oui, mais si bien fait qu'on pardonne le fait rapidement. Les auteurs (car plus tard on apprend que tous les livres de David Eddings son écrit en partenariat avec sa femme) savent prendre cette recette déjà utilisé et la mettre à une saveur complètement nouvelle et savoureuse.

La recette est simple: Un mage puissant du début des temps et au service d'un dieu est envoyer en mission pour récupérer un objet d'un puissance divine convoité par le dieu du mal et pour protéger l'enfant de la prophétie qui est destiné à affronté le dieu du mal. Aidé d'une confrérie des plus grand héro des terres de la Belgariade, Garion le "choosen one" devra affronter le mal et ramener la paix en ces terres fantastiques.

Il faut le dire la prémisse est très épique et pourrais laisser croire que l'histoire est très sérieuse et pleine de rebondissement et de bataille. C'est là que la beauté de cette série s'affiche. Le style d'écriture est peu sérieux et léger. Les auteurs s'amuse à nous faire lire des phrase où les personnages s'envoient des "witty comment" et se font de la répartie. De plus, il n'y a pas beaucoup de description. C'est vraiment à l'imagination du lecteur, il a juste assez pour voir la scène, mais sans imagination une personne pourrais avoir beaucoup de difficulté à voir la scène. C'est une histoire très forte en dialogue et quand il y a des scènes d'actions elle sont courte mais bien écrites.

C'est une histoire sérieuse mais pas écrite sérieusement, en anglais ils dise que c'est un "droll style". Je n'ai jamais lu de livre écrit comme ça après (sauf les autres oeuvres de David Eddings). Donc pour ce premier opus qui rassemble les trois premiers livres de l'histoire de la Belgariade, je fus donc très surpris et encore plus satisfait. Tellement ce n'était pas dans le même thème que Malazan que je n'ai pas eu envis d'en faire la comparaison et ce fut même rafraichissant.

Donc un must à lire si vous êtes fan d'épiques et de fantasy car la Belgariad c'est à couper le souffle. (less)

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Nov 16, 2011 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Totally discovered this series by coincidence. Being a fantasy-lover, I suppose it's kind of shocking I had never heard of David Eddings. But as soon as I started reading the series, total strangers started coming up to me and telling me how much they love David Eddings - so I guess he's got a pretty loyal fan base.

The series is basically a coming of age story of Garion, a farm boy with a destiny to save the world from the wrath of a Dark God. Pawn of Prophecy starts off exploring the world fro...more

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Aug 24, 2011 Paul Lunger rated it 4 of 5 stars

The first book in "The Belgariad" series begins the tale of Garion a boy raised in the kingdom of Saldaria by his Aunt Pol who is protecting him from a past he may not want to know of. Eddings spins a tale across both this kingdom & Cherek as we learn piece-by-piece the details of our characters lives as he introduces us to a world of magic & mystery. Throughout it as characters are slowly introduced the story keeps moving at a pace that is easy enough for the reader to enjoy & also...more

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Sep 27, 2011 Zack Parks rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy

I was a little generous in giving this 3 stars, because I wanted to give it 2.5, but rounded it up. I think it's probably an alright book for maybe a young kid who is just now becoming interested in the fantasy genre. It has a couple of memorable characters like Silk and Mandorallen, but the story is so predictable and there doesn't seem to be much suspense or struggle in the adventure. The characters have such an easy time of escaping everything and pretty much almost are omnipotent or at least...more I was a little generous in giving this 3 stars, because I wanted to give it 2.5, but rounded it up. I think it's probably an alright book for maybe a young kid who is just now becoming interested in the fantasy genre. It has a couple of memorable characters like Silk and Mandorallen, but the story is so predictable and there doesn't seem to be much suspense or struggle in the adventure. The characters have such an easy time of escaping everything and pretty much almost are omnipotent or at least omniscient. The fact that the story relies on a "prophecy" that everything MUST go by, kinda takes the element of wonder out of it as well. The main character is alright, but he is seriously lacking in knowledge about why he's even involved. It seems like the author creates "suspense" by just "not telling you or the other characters" what the heck is going on until he feels like it. It's annoying.

Complaints aside, there are some good things about the story. As stated earlier, a couple of characters are entertaining to read, particularly because their dialog is funny. Mandorallen has some inner conflict that's a bit cheesy, but at least it's a little interesting. The world has a decently well-thought-up political structure, which drowns you a bit at the beginning, but makes sense as you go along. The pacing of the book is quick and long periods of time can fly by in a page or two, but then there are a few random little places where the author really came up with a very vivid description of a time or place. Something else interesting about the story is that though it somewhat plays out like a "typical classic epic fantasy" with lots of stereotypical characteristics of the genre, Eddings did create different types of people without resorting to the usual fantasy "races." They're more like different countries with different cultures, and they were cool to read about. I'm picking up Volume 2 now, so we'll see if the story gets more exciting as it heads toward its finale.(less)

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Apr 11, 2011 Sally rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobooks, re-reads

Concerning the whole Belgariad series of 5 books (and the following, related 5-book Mallorean series) I have a few general comments. In the early 1980's I read aloud all of the Belgariad books to my daughters. We all enjoyed them then, and one daughter has recently started reading them again as an adult. Because she is enjoying the re-read, I have been curious about hearing the story again myself.

Although I do read books that I hold in my hand as hard copies, I include books on my Goodreads list...more Concerning the whole Belgariad series of 5 books (and the following, related 5-book Mallorean series) I have a few general comments. In the early 1980's I read aloud all of the Belgariad books to my daughters. We all enjoyed them then, and one daughter has recently started reading them again as an adult. Because she is enjoying the re-read, I have been curious about hearing the story again myself.

Although I do read books that I hold in my hand as hard copies, I include books on my Goodreads list that I listen to as unabridged audiobooks. This allows me to enjoy many more books by "hearing" stories in times when I can not sit down with book in hand, such as when driving, shoveling snow, or doing yard work. Although I do have an Audible account and many, many Audible books that I have purchased, I recently discovered that many libraries have electronic media books that you can check out via computer using your library card. Those come in varying formats that you can download as PDF books, other digital text, or audiobooks that will play on iPod, iPad, iTunes or other mp3 players. I am LISTENING to the Belgariad.

Since this is a 5-book series, I should alert readers that you'll want to plan to get all 5 books to complete the story. They will bring you many hours of pleasure and are well worth it, in my opinion. Each one has a lot of action, and some new characters, but all of them bring us a core group of characters and center around the young man, Garion, and the sorcerers Belgarath and Belgarath's sorceress daughter, Polgara. It is the story of the world as created by a group of gods, the races of people that each god favors, and of course, typically, the one god who has selfish and evil intentions. It is Garion's destiny to recover a magical orb that will return the world to it's original course of history while discovering his own powers as a sorcerer. The theft of the orb for the use of the evil god has split destiny into two possibly courses, and failure to recover the orb could result in the end of the world altogether.

I have listened to Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, and I am about a third of the way through Magician's Gambit. As is typical for me when re-reading a book I read many years ago, I find that I remember parts of the story and discover parts that I did not remember. I am enjoying them all again, so far. With audiobooks, there is another element beyond the skill of the author, and that is the presentation by the narrator (and certainly the quality of the recording). I am a bit disturbed by the reading by Cameron Beierle, in that he is not consistent in his pronunciation of names (for example, one character Barak is sometimes "BEAR ack" and other time "bah-RACK"); he does pronounce some words incorrectly, such as the word dais; and the accents he has chosen for some of the characters seem a bit odd and sometimes not consistent. Even so, those do not terribly interrupt the listening pleasure.(less)

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Jun 01, 2011 Ken rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my review for both David Eddings series Belgariad and The Malloreon I know it is a little long but bear with me please. As a warning there will be spoilers.

The Belgariad and The Malloreon series has truly struck a cord whith me in a way that no series has been able to do since The Sword of Truth series and before that The Harry Potter series. Both of the authors of those series had a special power to take what they had written and bring it alive withing the pages. This is what David Eddi...more This is my review for both David Eddings series Belgariad and The Malloreon I know it is a little long but bear with me please. As a warning there will be spoilers.

The Belgariad and The Malloreon series has truly struck a cord whith me in a way that no series has been able to do since The Sword of Truth series and before that The Harry Potter series. Both of the authors of those series had a special power to take what they had written and bring it alive withing the pages. This is what David Eddings has done for me in his books. I know that early in my reading of this series I compared it to The Lord of the Rings series but after finishing it I have come to a new conculusion while some of it is in fact similer and I am sure that David Eddings like all other authors was influenced slightly by Tolkien's work but Eddings is vastly difforent where Tolkien spent most of his time developing his world Eddings dedicated his stories to developing his characters and he sure did. The characters in his novels are much more human much more relatable than some of Tolkein's seemingly invulnerable characters they have truly human flaws weaknesses and fears the characters in LOTR tend to not have much in the way of thoes normal realatable human characteristics. This is one of the main things that drew me to his story. David Eddings also manages to have many very strong very prominent female characters throughout his series this was one of the things that LOTR lacked more than any other it simply has almost no female characters and while this may work for some types of fiction it doesn't for fantasy. For what is fantasy with out some romance and love? Just a silly children's fairy tale. ( I must make it perfectly clear that I am not calling LOTR one such story the work that Tolkien put into is simply astonishing but it is lacking in some major areas. But it's okay because it worked for him and I did enjoy the books. ) I found I liked David Eddings work more than Tolkien's also because its just a fantastic story in and of itself while some parts may drag a bit and some werent givin as much time a we thought they deserved but this is true of all works of righting the author does there best to satasfy all of their readers and David Eddings lives up to that satisfaction. I will not be stoping after these two series I fully intend to read every book that David Eddings and his wife have written and I am sure that I will be much happier for it. I strongly recomend David Eddings work to all lovers of fantasy this series of his was able to keep me going for almost two weeks and I am sure that you all will be able to get at least some enjoyment out of them as well.(less)

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Dec 20, 2010 Teresa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This omnibus edition contained the first three books in the Belgariad series, Pawn of Prophesy, Queen of Sorcery, and The Magician’s Gambit. The story is set in a land created by seven Gods. A legend involving those Gods and a powerful orb that led them to war undergirds the story in the Belgariad. The actual story itself begins thousands of years later after those events, and it focuses on the adventures of a 14-year-old orphan boy named Garion who is suddenly dragged from his farm home in purs...more This omnibus edition contained the first three books in the Belgariad series, Pawn of Prophesy, Queen of Sorcery, and The Magician’s Gambit. The story is set in a land created by seven Gods. A legend involving those Gods and a powerful orb that led them to war undergirds the story in the Belgariad. The actual story itself begins thousands of years later after those events, and it focuses on the adventures of a 14-year-old orphan boy named Garion who is suddenly dragged from his farm home in pursuit of a mysterious stolen object that is somehow bound up in Garion's own past and future.

In crafting his world, Eddings does a lot of things right. He has created a fully fledged other world, with many different kingdoms and a long history that seems to extend beyond the pages of these books. And by having us travel this world with Garion, we’re able to get acquainted with it a bit at a time.

However, the overarching story is incredibly predictable. Part of this comes from the fact that there is a prophesy involved. What was especially maddening for me was that Garion couldn’t put things together. I also felt that Eddings just doesn’t raise the stakes for his characters enough. There are plenty of moments when the characters are in danger, I never got the sense that the evil characters were more powerful than Garion’s allies. They just weren’t nasty enough—at least not until well into the third book, where things turned suitably dark.

Also, most of the first two books had an episodic structure, as Garion and company traveled from one kingdom to another, usually picking up another ally along the way. Some of these adventures were good fun, and some of the supporting characters are wonderful (the comically boastful and chivalrous knight Mandorallen was a personal favorite), but the action doesn’t really build. If I had been reading this as three separate novels, I would have stopped at the end of Queen of Sorcery out of boredom and annoyance. (I really disliked the female character, Ce’Nedra, who was introduced in that book—and I was incredibly irritated that I knew exactly what her role was the moment she appeared without being told.) However, this being an omnibus, continuing into the next book required less effort than picking up another book would.So I pressed on.

This proved to be a very good thing because the final book in this volume, Magician’s Gambit, was a marked improvement over the other two. The exposition starts to give way to rising action, and the story finally gets exciting. The scary bits are finally scary, and the evil characters are finally evil enough. I found that I was starting to care a bit about what was going to happen, and there are a few aspects of the characters’ futures that do seem open to multiple possibilities. So I do plan to continue the series, but only because of the success of the third book.

See my complete review at Shelf Love.(less)

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Oct 24, 2009 Johann rated it 4 of 5 stars

usually not much of a fantasy buff but these series do a great job of telling a story that though here and there it may be unoriginal, overall it is a fresh feel compared to W.O.T. and Eragon. It is much more consice and more events happen in shorter time. given, the first half of the book got tedious here and there and i did have worries how the story was planning to pan out yet after a couple of events, this hooked me and i overall enjoyed it. personally, I can say this does better than Wheel...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Carl rated it 4 of 5 stars

Just finished rereading the entire series recently. Very enjoyable, though it's really hard to shake the feeling (despite quite a bit of "adult" stuff in here, both in terms of gore and sex) that this is a young adult fantasy-- in fact, even the aforementioned "adult" parts feel like they are written for jr hi or high schoolers, as though Garion's coming of age in the book were paralleled by the reader's experience with the book.

In the introduction David Eddings refers to his work as fantasy wi...more Just finished rereading the entire series recently. Very enjoyable, though it's really hard to shake the feeling (despite quite a bit of "adult" stuff in here, both in terms of gore and sex) that this is a young adult fantasy-- in fact, even the aforementioned "adult" parts feel like they are written for jr hi or high schoolers, as though Garion's coming of age in the book were paralleled by the reader's experience with the book.

In the introduction David Eddings refers to his work as fantasy with the flavor of realism-- which seems rather odd, since this is about as high fantasy as you can get, and occasionally feels a bit contrived too (though in such a way that it seems appropriate to the sort of book it is). Still, I think I know what he means-- by way of example, both Polgara and Belgarath embody both the high fantasy "immortals" with all their attendant weight and romance, and the practical, perhaps even cynical sensibilities one would expect from people who had spent thousands of years dealing with other people and all their problems, mundane or otherwise.

Eddings' world feels strangely closed to me-- it's like a board set for one single game, rather than a ground for a variety of games which may or may not relate to each other. I suppose it takes the "cosmic struggle" of high fantasy and pushes it to the extreme, in a way-- there is really nothing at all of consequence in these stories outside of the two prophecies and Torak. We get this in Tolkien as well, of course, but Tolkien's world seems a bit more diverse and open ended, even though he certainly pulled it all together around a grand narrative of conflict with a Dark Lord, first Melkor then Sauron. I think some people would disagree and find Tolkien's work a bit more oppressively "closed" (as I'm putting it) than Eddings', but this is how it feels to me.

I have to admit that Eddings' world also potentially encourages a rather excessive "us vs them" attitude-- not that other groups' perspectives are not sympathetically considered, but the whole emphasis on the merchants of the Murgos as undercover spies throughout the rest of the world, the fact that trusting them is a grave mistake because as a race they are inherently opposed to the goals of the "West" (gack!), is obviously problematic in the post 9-11 world (or even in the context of immigration in the US-- or Europe). Most likely the situation in Eddings' book stems from the semantics of the Cold War, conscious or unconscious. In any case, I don't think Eddings was really proposing such a world view-- it seems to me that he was just taking some of the stereotypes of the high fantasy genre and pushing them to their limits, with some twists. One I get past the (overt?) oversimplification of the "real world", I think it's an interesting way, especially in something for younger readers, to explore political/anthropological themes (taken broadly)-- in other words, it deals with differences between communities in a way both blunt and subtle. Hm, not sure I'm explaining that well.

But that said, the whole East vs West thing is just a bit too much at times, at least once you're out of the story and can be objective again-- I mean, they even get their RUGS from Mallorea! Just a touch too much Orientalism. I suppose there could be some element of satire to all this, but I don't think I really see that here. (less)

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Jan 11, 2009 Teri rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Teri by: Mike

Shelves: series-belgariad

GENRE: Fantasy (a few wield Magic), Young Adult (Note: contains sword fighting, mortal peril, sexual references, but no sex.) Action sequences.

A hero's journey (although I read an interview with the author who said he definitely tried to put some twists on the formula). A unique boy aged from 6-14 in the first book, travels with a group to find a stolen magical item.

SETTING: Alternate world. Humans only. Medieval level technology.

PACE: Slow (Not as slow as, say, the Hobbit, but represents the sl...more

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Dec 26, 2008 Deb rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, fantasy-sf

I re-read the Belgariad and the Mallorean every few years, and having a book with the first three novels bound together was simply perfect for the long hours of waiting & busing that the piles of snow has doomed my city to.

The sole failing Eddings has as an author is that after reading his first series (The Belgariad), you notice that every high fantasy novel of his & Leigh's written after that contains the exact same plot.

No joke. After the twin series set of the Belgariad & Mallor...more

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About David Eddings

David Eddings is an American author who has written several best-selling series of epic fantasy novels. David Eddings' wife, Leigh Eddings, is uncredited as co-author on many of his early books, but he has lately acknowledged that she contributed to them all.

David Eddings' first books (which were general fiction) sold moderately well. He later switched to writing epic fantasy, a field in which he...more

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Enchanters' End Game (The Belgariad, #5)

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“Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again .... Now's the time to be alive-- to see it happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure.” — 3 people liked it

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