| The Belgariad by David Eddings | ||
| 1 | Pawn of Prophecy | |
| 2 | Queen of Sorcery | |
| 3 | Magician's Gambit | |
| 4 | Castle of Wizardry | |
| 5 | Enchanters' End Game | |
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Lee's Review:
I didn’t enjoy this series as much as I thought I was going to. It has the standard fantasy plot where Garion, a young boy who works in the kitchen, is destined for greatness and is suppose to defeat a great evil being after learning how to use his newly emerging powers. What I didn’t like about the story was the pacing. It starts off ok with him beginning to develop his powers but then he doesn’t progress much and in the last book instead of him learning to use his abilities it just has them taking a really long time traveling to the final meeting place. Along the way they get off on a number of tangents that didn’t seem to help the story in anyway but to prolong the book until the ultimate battle. I was also hoping that the main character would grow up to the point where his Aunt Pol wouldn’t need to constantly correct his behavior. Either that or maybe her character just rubbed me the wrong way. The start of the series was good and I thought it had a lot of potential to be a really good story but didn’t turn out the way I had imagined. This is one of those cases where as I was reading the series I was thinking of ways I would imagine the plot would go and when it didn’t I was disappointed.
Veronica's Review:
This series had so many characters; it was hard to find one I didn’t like. The author didn’t develop them all as much as he did the main characters. Unfortunately, the lack of character development did not allow me to share the experiences of the lesser characters. This story has a few main characters trying to save the world with the help of a lot of “helper” characters. The “helper” characters were very diverse in shape, strength, and ideology. The main character, Garion, a young boy, grows into his role of responsibility and talent under the guidance of his elders. As young boys do, he tests his limitations and tries to help beyond his experience. He slowly builds the strength of his power and believes himself capable of equality with his elders. The series was adequate.