So, I used to love David Eddings. I thought his Belgariad series and Mallorean series were pretty awesome. Granted I was in high school at the time and not the discerning reader I am today. But I've reread them frequently since and they are still pretty fresh and intriguing--funny, and wry and interesting. HOWEVER--since then he's been doing nothing but recycling. This book is third in what is likely a series of 4. It's awful. It's the exact same lines and the exact same characters and the exact same jokes he's always used. And by now the plot is thin and transparant and the characters are tired and cliche. It's almost like there's no freshness at all--the "snappy" retorts the characters have for each other just seemed pulled from his toolchest of snappy retorts and actually don't fit the situation at all. There's too much set up and constant re-explaining: first the discussion of the battle plans in detail, then the battle, then the characters have to recount the battle to every other character they meet in detail. There's so much repetition of information. This plot could have been a few chapters of a still not very good book--instead it's stretched so thin there almost isn't any plot at all. I only read it because I have the first two and I like to have my sets complete--and I got it for 5$ on the bargain table. But seriously, don't read it. I'm sad to see an author I liked has fallen so far.
This review is for whole "The Dreamers" seriesIn sort: all four books are terrible. The characters are plain and easily forgotten (one which I can remember is a guy who was good at shooting a bow, his name was Longbow or probably something along the lines), there is cheating around every corner (Eddings was cheating a little bit more and more with every book, but in this one it's just too much), the writing style is terrible and feels like listening to two idiots talking between themselves. The book just doesn't provide any suspension to keep you interested in it. "We need a lot of gold to hire these soldiers, sure, I'm a god, I can make it with a blink of my eyes", "We need to get to the other part of the world or we lost, no problem, I'm a god and we are already here" and so on. And then eventually it gets a little bit interesting the book just takes it away "we are surrounded, the world is lost. Oh look the volcano erupted and killed all the baddies, we won.". And in the end you find out that all the story could have been written in few pages or sentences "The evil is upon the world, I'm the god I'm gonna go to the lair of evil, will the evil to stop, everyone is saved, the end".I don't accept that these books were written by David Eddings, I just tell to myself he had a contract for four books from a long time ago but at the moment all he wanted was to die.
What do You think about Crystal Gorge (2006)?
It was hard to accept, seeing as how I love the Belgariad and Mallorean so much, how much I hated this book and the entire series. All he does is recycle the same story lines and characters with different names. In this book, he couldn't even come up with a full plot, and just recycled one little part among several different character's PoV. The writing that was so fresh and witty in his first works has been reduced to a dry and boring formula. Mr. Eddings said a long time ago that people shouldn't write in the genres they love. Perhaps if had not formed that opinion, and loved his genre, he would have been able to see how this story and writing is simply unacceptable and a betrayal to all the fans that have stuck with him for so long.
—Suzanne
Under other circumstances, this could have been a three (or even four) star read. I would like to point out a few things that may influence your decision. You might like this book a lot more than me if:1) You are reading this in its intended place as the third book in this series2) You have not read any of David Eddings' other stories before3) You aren't constantly being kicked out of the story by the overt similarities between this series and his past works.A bit of BackgroundI first came acros
—Matthew Lang
Okay, what happened? There was a time (Belgariad, the Elenium) when the Eddings plots were fresh and new, when we loved their witty characters and felt included in their inside jokes and smug confidence; when we read them because they gave you that adventure movie feel like Indiana Jones. It's been a while since I read the first two, and they weren't really that great, but this one has begun the trend of extreme yuck. Not only are we down to recycled characters and lines from our better days, the writing doesn't even flow in any sort of enjoyable way; we keep jumping backwards and reading the same scenes from the perspective of another character. There doesn't seem to be a purpose to re-reading the scene as there generally wasn't any particularly new insight from the new perspective, and instead it starts to get confusing because even though the general conversation remains the same, the specific change. In fact, I'm not entirely sure about some of those conversations still; maybe they just have the same conversation over and over again and come to the same conclusion. Disappointing overall.
—Senda
