The Belgariad by David Eddings consists of five books; Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician’s Gambit, Castle of Wizardry, and Enchanters’ End Game. This is just one five book series out of two that make up the base of work Eddings put together for his created universe. The second five-book series is called The Malloreon. I’ll be reading and reviewing that as well in the future. Then there are some supplementary texts. There are two prequels based on two central characters entitled Belgar

The Belgariad by David Eddings consists of five books; Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician’s Gambit, Castle of Wizardry, and Enchanters’ End Game. This is just one five book series out of two that make up the base of work Eddings put together for his created universe. The second five-book series is called The Malloreon. I’ll be reading and reviewing that as well in the future. Then there are some supplementary texts. There are two prequels based on two central characters entitled Belgarath the Sorcerer, and Polgara the Sorceress. Then there is also a book entitled The Rivan Codex which is a kind of behind the scenes book to how Eddings and his wife put the whole thing together. I just wanted to let you know that if you picked up Pawn of Prophecy and thought it sounded interesting, here’s what you’re getting yourself into. There is a lot of content to read - which can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. Let me explain.



I made the choice after finishing the first book that I was going to wait until I finished the whole first series to write a review. The reason why was because 1) I went through the book so quickly, and 2) I didn’t feel like I had read enough to write a review on. The first book didn’t have a sense of completeness to it. Rather than each book being a solid and complete story in and of itself, I realized that this series was more like one story being told over the course of five books. I don’t really care for that, but I wasn’t going to quit reading the series because of it. A lot of series do that, so if I refused to read every series that does, I’d be left with even less potential reading material. It’s just a pet peeve of mine that I feel like each book in a series should be able to stand on its own as well as be part of the whole, and this series didn’t hold up to that standard.



Then I ran into a snag. I was getting the audiobook versions of the books on loan from my library’s e-library service. I went through books 1-3 super fast. Then, when it came time to read book 4, I had to wait 127 days for it to be available. That really put a damper on things. Also, in the downtime, I started two other series. One of which is another completed series, but the other one only has the first book published. This is all on top of the fact that my memory already sucks. So, I may not get into specifics with this review. For that, I apologize. I will do my best though to give you a general overview with my spoiler-free review and hope it suffices. However, I will probably end up doing a review for each book in the Malloreon to try and avoid something similar to this from happening again.



Now that I’m really getting into my review of The Belgariad, let me just say that had I read this when I was a kid - I would have absolutely loved it. I told my wife that after reading the first book. The problem with that is simply that these books are not children’s books. There are themes and scenes that are more adult oriented that let me know for certain that these are absolutely not children’s books, yet I felt like the quality of writing was what I would expect from a children’s book. That would not have stopped me from reading these books as a kid, but it would mean that as a kid I would not have been the intended audience. I felt this was an important distinction to make. As soon as I began reading this series, and lasting all the way through it, all I could think as a writer was that this is a perfect example of what we’re always being told NOT to do. Everything was a trope. Everything felt cliche. Everything was entirely predictable. It got annoying quick.



That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the series though. I allowed myself to enjoy it, in spite of all that. Like I said, I realized that if I read this as a kid, before I had come to expect certain things from writing, I would have absolutely loved it. So, I tried to let myself love it now. The story is interesting and had me hooked, regardless of how “tropey” it was. The characters are diverse and relatable - some are even lovable. The setting spanned over a large continent that was interesting and different. The plot was pretty standard, good vs evil, light vs dark. Everything was preordained - except for how it would end because that could go one of two ways.

There are plenty of subplots going on as well, but they’re all rather obvious as well. The group that was assembled was pretty typical with each character representing something similar to what you’d expect from a class in DnD. They are part of the party because “the prophecy” says they must be, and of course their purpose is revealed through key moments where only they could get the group out of their current situation. It’s all just SO cliche. But, it was a fun ride. Even though each book didn’t stand apart on its own very well, the series as a whole did wrap up the story nicely, all the while setting up the continuation of events that are sure to follow in The Malloreon. I think that if you’ve read a lot of stories/series similar to this one (meaning, very cliche and very tropey), then you may be too jaded to let yourself enjoy this one. I haven’t read a lot of them, so I was able to let myself enjoy this series despite all its faults. I just had to remember that tropes became tropes because they work. That’s why they’re so prevalent. We are just challenged as writers today to come up with new ways to use the tropes so that they seem fresh and interesting. At the time, I’m sure this was fresh and interesting. It just seems so overused and cliche now because so many other people copied him and authors like him.



One of my other major complaints about this series was how I felt like it could have been done in fewer books. I think with more editing, a lot of useless stuff could have been cut, other things could have been moved around, and it could probably have been honed down into a trilogy. After doing a little research though, I found out that this was largely due to Eddings’ publishers. They were very clear and rigid in what they wanted Eddings to do because it was what they thought would sell the best. They wanted x amount of volumes, with roughly x amount of words, in about x amount of time. Another peeve of mine was the title of the last book in the series (because there are no enchanters in the books) but come to find out that was due to the publishers too. The title Eddings wanted to use was a lot better in my opinion, but they felt it was too many words to look good on the cover. I think that these things were errors on the publishers part, but the series seems to have been rather successful and has quite the fan following even still, so maybe they were right.



The last thing I wish to point out is the lack of character progression. The supporting characters don’t change, and it could be argued that they don’t need to. They are who they are, and that’s who they needed to be due to the prophecy, so if they changed they would no longer be who the prophecy needed. Fine. My main issue is with the protagonist. Garion really doesn’t change through the whole series. Honestly, if he’s still the same in The Malloreon, I’m going to be really hard pressed to get through it. The kid is numb. You would think that after the shit he’s been through, he might have smartened up a bit. I would at least expect him to have a hardened exterior - at least a little bit! Something. I just wish there would have been something. I have a hard time believing that the events Garion has gone through wouldn’t have changed him more than they did. I guess that I will kind of understand if the real shift in his character comes out in The Malloreon, but I think we should have at least started to see it in these books. No matter how I try and defend it in my head to play devil’s advocate, I just can’t come up with anything good. I think this is a huge fault in the series. It doesn’t make it unreadable, but I just wish it was done better.



All in all, I rate this series with 4 stars. I acknowledge that this series has its faults, but I still found it enjoyable to read on the whole, and I think you might too. If you’re too jaded by other stories similarly as tropey, you may not be able to let yourself enjoy this one, but I think you should try. Even though I got annoyed by certain things, and stayed annoyed by them throughout the series because they kept occurring, I wouldn’t say that these books were hard for me to get through. Quite the contrary: I flew through them. So I say give ‘em a read and let me know what you think. Cheers!

