Belgarath the Sorcerer

Product Information

For it's unique insights, for it's fascinating and novel character, and for the smoothness of the writing, this book remains an old friend that I find myself coming back to over and over again. To access your ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose. Likewise, I was rather surprised how often and how easily Belgarath was able to simply pop in on enemies such as Torak’s Disciple Ctuchik for a friendly chat, though this did give something of the idea of a chess game with prescribed moves and countermoves (even if the opposition always seemed to play it very badly). Beldin's commentary to Belgarath: "Did you know that an ordinary priest is powerless once he gets past the boundaries of his own country?

Probably more than a lot of the Eddings’ other books, Belgarath is written in a far breezier, upbeat tone, indeed on many occasions it reads almost like a light-hearted critique of fantasy tropes in general and The Belgariad in particular than an entirely serious tale in its own right. I was quite disappointed that even though we are told early in the novel that the light prophecy wins only half of the conflicts, we rarely if ever saw the good guys lose out, especially since as is also inevitable in much of Eddings’ work, the self-destructive tendency of the villains often makes them less than threatening. I hope that one of the other books will have the ending as this only covers the beginning and the middle. It should be noted that in Polgara the Sorceress, there is an entire section named after Geran, so it would appear that "Gared" has been, perhaps unintentionally, retconned to "Geran".Now none of these books I would put on my "I don't care if you don't like the genre, I highly recommend you read these books" list, but I would put them on my "If you enjoy fantasy books and want to enjoy some of the books which made this genre something special towards the end of the 20th century" list. Then I found this book (Belgarath the sorcerer) and was eager to read it, it's sort of an 'autobiography' which explains in detail his early life and the events which led up to The Belgariad. I'll get to that sooner or later, but what I might have found charming about the digressions this time, I just found irriating and "clever. I have so many memories of the time I spent reading David and Leigh Eddings’ books as a teenager that I was almost afraid to go back to them as an adult.

This is Belgarath's story from his beginnings as a boy thief, through his apprenticeship with the God Aldur to reach the status of sorcerer and right up to the birth of Garion (The Belgariad and The Mallorean series). You get to peek at the time before Garion and friends and even if the two books (Belgarath and Polgara) have some of the same "scenes" it only made me feel exited: "I remember this from the other book!

Indeed, it surprised me given how many countries in the real world have been turbulently formed from warring smaller kingdoms or splitting up of larger ones, how comparatively easily everyone except the Angarak’s actually got along, indeed most of the political conflicts in the book usually get resolved by Belgarath bullying the monarchs into doing what is best for the prophecy. Immersive, imaginative and rather amusing in places, I would recommend this to all lovers of epic fantasy. On the one hand, this can create some wonderfully engaging moments, such as when Belgarath details far more quirky and far less doom-laden retellings of the mythological events previously only heard in highly stylized versions as prologues to the main books of the series, along with some jaded complaints on the need of priests to over-dramatize a narrative.