Read All The Books Aaaaaah! discussion

Here I'll be picking up where I left off on the Discord group with my running commentary on my read-through of this.

58%: Surprisingly enough, Garion actually raised the issue to Polgara and Belgarath that they should have told him what to expect, and, you know, maybe give him a little education on how to fulfill kingly duties. They gave him a big non-answer: "You're adaptable, Garion."

They were also sitting right there when he gave Ce'Nedra the amulet that they told him to give her, without telling him that it would be a kind of magic leash, and when she sees what happens she becomes furious at Garion, and doesn't believe his protest that he didn't know what was going on, and they don't say a single word to back him up! Just let him take the blame.

So much of these books is people not telling each other important things.

that drives me crazy when the plot issues can all be resolved via communication. that happens a lot in real life too and i wanna smack my face off the wall

I think they may have maxed out their failure to communicate skills. I was settling in, expecting we'd be in Riva for a while, since he was just recently crowned and then had an official betrothal ceremony with Ce'Nedra, and then they were in war talks planning a war that they expected to take years...but then Garion's voice in his head tells him that they can skip the war if he just goes after the Child of Darkness himself, so he talks to Belgarath and Silk and they decide to just slip out without telling anyone and travel cross-country again, just the three of them! They're going to be gone for months, at least, leaving Riva without a king, and Ce'Nedra without a fiancé. And I don't think Garion even told his friend Lelldorin that he can stop looking for the assassin, because he found him himself.

that's just a waste of resources at this point. fools

Before they snuck away for their secret mission:

Belgarath: "We have things to do and we can't afford to spend the whole night on correspondence."
Silk: "We are in a hurry, aren't we?"

After they snuck away:

Silk: "It will take a lot longer to go through the fens."
Belgarath: "We aren't in all that great a hurry."

make up ur minds

Well, they had a cute little episode in the fens, and I'm glad they had it. There's a witch who lives there and she wanted Belgarath to give her "fenling" friends (these little animals of near-human intelligence) the ability to speak so that humans wouldn't hunt them after she dies and she can't protect them anymore, and Belgarath does it, raising the status of a whole species. It's just annoying that Eddings can't keep focused in one place for any length of time before sending the characters off to some new place.

After the fens, they get sort-of arrested in Drasnia and taken before the queen, who says there's an order out for anyone who sees them to catch them and send them back to Riva, so it looks like we're going to have some drama and then nope! Belgarath talks her out of it. And Silk's mother happens to be there, and they make a big deal about how much it pains him to talk to her because she was blinded and disfigured in a plague and he has to play along with everyone's deception that she's not disfigured because she was always proud of her looks. But his talk with his mom happens offscreen and then immediately they're on the road again. Build-up for nothing.

Belgarath teaches Garion how to shapeshift into a wolf.

Silk: "But where do the clothes go? And what about the magic sword, and the Orb of Aldur he was carrying?"

Belgarath: "I dunno lol!"

aww can i have a fenling?

did he actually say "I dunno lol!" ?? cuz lol

Nah, he actually said:
"It's kind of hard to explain, actually. Beldin tried to work out exactly where the clothes were once. He seems to think he's got the answer, but I never understood the whole theory."

So we don't get an actual answer, so that kind of translates to "I dunno lol!" 😄

love it

The fenlings are cute and happy! There's this little scene where one gives flowers to another:

She pointed to where Poppi still slept, her delicate forepaws open like little hands. Tupik, moving stealthily, crept back into the house, carrying a handful of dew-drenched swamp flowers. With precise care, he placed them about the slumbering Poppi and gently laid the last one in her open hand. Then, with an oddly patient expression, he sat on his haunches to watch her awakening.

Poppi stirred, stretched, and yawned. She brought the flower to her little black nose and sniffed at it, looking affectionately at the expectant Tupik. She made a happy little chirping sound, and then she and Tupik scampered off together for a morning swim in the cool water of the swamp.

Polgara's reaction when she finds out Belgarath and the others are gone is hilarious. She just starts cursing and blowing things up one by one. Makes me think Eddings had Tim the Enchanter in mind, who just blows things up for no apparent reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZJZK...

the fenlings would make me uwu in a video game

Before I started this book, I had read somewhere that this book would primarily concern Ce'Nedra's preparations for war. I guess whoever said that must have started reading about 85% in, because that's when she realised she had a legitimate claim to lead the war effort in Garion's absence. She's gotten the council of kings to honour the terms in the betrothal agreement even though she's not officially married to Garion yet. They think she'll just be a figurehead, "playing queen", but she's gotten a set of royal armour and a sword made for her now. It's the set shown in this cover art:


Seeing the cover reminds me about the title, though. Where is this "castle of wizardry"? Their own castle, since there are several wizards in it, doing wizardry sometimes? Or is it where Garion and the others are headed? I guess I'll find out soon enough. The book's getting close to being over.

that's my brother doing a book report

The Mouse on the Motorcycle is about a mouse on a motorcycle. He really loves to ride his motorcycle, even though he is a mouse. I thought it was really funny because the mouse rode a motorcycle.

I think the only thing I remember about the Mouse and the Motorcycle is that he made the motorcycle move by making the sound of a motorcycle with his mouth. But I could even be misremembering that.

Time for Ce'Nedra's stirring speech to inspire the people to join the war effort!

And then as if her anger with this one rude young man had suddenly burst a dam within her, Ce'Nedra began to speak. She spoke to them directly, not with the studied phrases she had rehearsed, but with words that came from her heart. The longer she spoke, the more impassioned she became. She pleaded; she cajoled -- and finally she commanded. She would never remember exactly what she said, but she would never forget how she felt as she said it.

So David Eddings doesn't actually write a stirring speech, he just tells us that she gave one.

I'll be finished with this tomorrow for sure. So many possibilities for what's next! Still one more book left in this series, though, and I still have a few other series in progress, so I don't want to start any new fantasy series until I wrap some of these other ones up.

a smart plan

"Are you--? I mean can you still--?"

"Everything seems to work the same as always, Pol," he assured her.

Should you really be asking your father about that, Polgara?

Well, it wasn't a cliffhanger ending, because cliffhangers end on a tense, exciting situation that leaves you burning with curiosity to find out how the characters get out of it. This just ends with Ce'Nedra gathering what I assume is the last batch of soldiers for her army. Last we heard of Garion was several chapters ago, also with no cliffhanger, and I guess it's a surprise that there was no final check-in with him before this book ended. We're clearly meant to go straight on ahead to the final book in the series, but it's unusual to have neither a solid end-of-book resolution nor a cliffhanger.

Anyway, I'll get to the next book, but not immediately. Maybe a couple of standalones first, and then I'll wrap this series up.

I loved the Belgariad a lot, as well as the two books which give the back-stories of Belgarath and Polgara. I didn't like the Malloreon series nearly as much.

It's definitely the kind of fantasy I get in the mood for sometimes. I'm not sure if I'll go on to the Malloreon, but I do also have Belgarath the Sorcerer and The Redemption of Althalus on my shelf in hardback, waiting to be read. I'll probably go for the latter first, but after I've sampled other series first. 🙂