David Eddings has long been my favorite author. His talent for epic fantasy is amazing. His characters are well-developed and have a depth to them far beyond that of many other books. While their roles may be stereotypical (the young hero, the might sorcerer, etc etc), he gives to each of them a unique flavor.
While you will find similar characters in all of his books, they have enough individual idiosyncracies that they never feel dull, or simply copies of other characters.
His first jaunt into the world of fantasy (with only one novel published before that) was good enough to end up with 12 novels (starting with two 5-book arcs and two companion novels), and a companion book providing some of his notes and whatnot. His next story landed two trilogies. He followed that up with a single-volume novel (mostly to prove to himself that he could write a sweeping fantasy in just one book), and his latest is a four-book arc. He also published his second novel (written in the 1970s, not published until the 1990s), and a thriller in 2002.
This success is absolutely amazing. To end a career with 27 published novels is astounding.
In looking up a couple things for this entry, I discovered that I missed his passing in 2009. The industry truly lost a titan who was a master of the craft. Like many of his fans, his books had a profound effect on my life. I can still, 12 years later, remember the day I stumbled across him. I was at Barnes & Noble with my mom, just browsing through books. I kept a little notebook in my pocket when we went to bookstores to jot down books that caught my eye to look for later at the library. I stumbled across Polgara the Sorceress, and the cover caught my imagination, and the back-cover blurb clinched it for me. I checked it out later that week, and was caught instantly. I read it everywhere. At lunch, in class after finishing my work, at home. I devoured it in just a couple of days. After that, I moved on to his other books.
They still amaze me, and settling in to reread them is like reconnecting with an old friend. I reread Polgara, Belgarath, The Belgariad and the Mallorean once or twice a year, and typically all in a row. It always renews my sense of adventure, and helps put all the little problems in my life into perspective.
The worlds he created were well-developed, and spanned across continents, mapped out in great detail, and filled with a score of minor characters. Each country had its own geography, its own dress, its own customs.
Each book even went beyond simply providing an epic story, but probed at ideas much larger. The meaning of destiny, the meaning of religion, the meaning of time.
Of all of his books, Polgara the Sorceress has always been my favorite. Expanding on the already deep world of the Belgariad and the Mallorean, its two companion novels, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress take a step back and go through the events leading up to those books.
Polgara the Sorceress is, even on its own, a rich story spanning the three thousand years in which Polgara served the destiny that had been provided for. Her gentle pain at watching her friends and her family (except her father, Belgarath) grow old and die is heartbreaking. And throughout the story (which is told in the first person) you even get little quips and jabs made towards the characters of the Belgariad, providing humor throughout the story.
Eddings' books are funny, filled with adventure and memorable characters. Whenever I finished one of his series, there was always a kind of melencholy. Eddings draws you so completely into the world of these people that you become emotionally tied up in them, and saying goodbye, knowing that their stories are done, is sad. Even though the story is done, and Eddings ties up all the loose ends, he leaves his world moving forward, and I always sat back and wondered what happened to these characters as their lives progressed after the adventure and into the newly changed world.
If you haven't read one of his books yet, go and do so. You won't be disappointed.
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