Belgarath the Sorcerer, By David Eddings

This is an odd sort of book, in that you could read it before or after the other books in the Belgariad universe. I mean, technically it comes after the Mallorean, but most of the book is concerned with being a prequel. It’s Belgarath’s life (in short: we don’t have all the time in the world) and mission to make sure the prophecies would meet, and that his would win. Doing so meant many many long years just making sure people married and had babies. And then making sure those people didn’t kill each other. We finally see the entire story of Poledra and the roots of Belgarath’s and Polgara’s enmity and love. We meet a lot of sorcerers that aren’t around anymore, and see more about those we know and love already. Beldin as always is priceless.

It’s written in a sort of semi-narrative style (it’s supposed to be Belgarath writing/dictating) full of Eddings-isms and bits of humor. Once in a while Belgarath stops his narration to ‘go off’ and search around his home for something that he remembered, or just to do something else for a while. I personally loved his short statements about what he studied in the years when nothing happened. He discovered the meaning of mountains, why stars fall, and studied grass for forty years or something like that. But he declines to give explanations for all of this, saying correctly that this would make the book much longer than it already is.

Although I enjoy it immensely, sometimes I think I see inconsistencies with the rest of the series. I can’t quite name them, but while I was reading I could swear that someone else did that, or weren’t they there when that happened, etc. I blame it on Eddings deciding on revisionist history: he wanted to change it to make this a cooler book. I can understand, but little things like that make my teeth itch. I hate inconsistencies. I hate them.

But all in all it was quite entertaining and enlightening. We get to see Belgarath’s checkered past, the start of it all, and the long years spent desperately trying to figure everything out. It reminds me just a tiny bit of the War of the Rings in the Silmarillion. Not in any way shape or form as detailed or well written, but in the sense of revealing previously unknown chunks of history that we haven’t heard about much before. So please don’t scream and shout that I think Eddings is on par with Tolkien. I like both, but please don’t put words in my mouth. Tolkien is just better (sorry Eddings). But for what I need right now, Eddings certainly does the trick. It’s an easy read, entertaining, witty, and nicely written enough. I seem to say that a lot, but it doesn’t stop being true just because I’m repetitive.