Excellent high fantasy trilogy, even if the third book does devolve into a political numbers game for quite a few chapters. ( )

I think the Elenium is a bit better than the Malloreon & Belgariad. Reminds me a bit of Katherine Kurtz' Deryni series (Medieval-style knight-adventurers on quests & such...) ( )

An old favorite. It's not really perfect, but it's given me pleasure over the years through many re-reads. ( )

I finally gave in and traded my used hardcovers for this single-volume version just to save some shelf space, but I've read these books probably a dozen times each - so this is a very jaded review. (And they get four stars out of pure nostalgia, and also because they're almost as addictive as the Belgariad, but if I were just encountering them now I'd probably give them three.

There's not much point in addressing them as individual volumes, because it's basically one long adventure. And it's an entertaining adventure - let me start by establishing that. The Elenium is focused on Sparhawk, who is a 40ish knight with a hell of a lot of experience (in contrast to the Belgariad, which is a pure bildungsroman.) Sparhawk is essentially a good, honest, honorable guy, but he's also ruthless and willing to look first in his scabbard for the solution to his problems. This is mitigated in large part because the series is essentially an ensemble piece, and the various stock characters he surrounds himself with (Dumb but Good-Hearted Best Friend, Wise Older Companion, Beautiful and Mysterious Enchantress, Cocky Young Thief, etc etc) balance out the various encounters.

I like these books, don't get me wrong - they're fast-paced and fun and the election sequence in the third book involves some of the most readable political shenanigans I've come across in fantasy - but they're far from perfect. Eddings doesn't have a ton of range in either his characters or his dialogue, and while this is not the same as the Belgariad at all (mostly in that it's an R-rated series - lots of blood and guts and even some sex, or at least the implication of sex) it's particularly jarring when he re-uses lines of dialogue. It really highlights his limitations.

And the worldbuilding is just sloppy. Sloppy! The Bhelliom (the magic jewel they spend the first two books questing for) changes origin and powers every fifty pages. It's evil! It's True Neutral! It's the force that created the world! It's too dangerous even to look at, although it was displayed on a hat that kings wore for centuries! We must destroy it! We should probably destroy it although it might blow up! We might have to destroy it even though it will probably take out a few mountain ranges when it goes! Sparhawk can touch it because he has the rings! Sparhawk can touch it because he was destined to! No one else can touch it, except those inconvenient kings and the Troll and a goddess and possibly the hundreds of people who've been searching for it for millennia!

The Mysterious Enchantress has different powers depending on the situation, Berit is an apprentice knight then an novice then an apprentice then a novice and then, finally, is "promoted to a rank seldom used by the militant orders," an apprentice knight. And in the most obvious and laughable example, at the end of the first book, Sparhawk "for the first time in his life, contemplated the deliberate murder of an unarmed man." Except that in the very first chapter, we see him picking up some wire to use to strangle a drunkard when he comes out to pick up some more wine.

I don't think these issues totally detract from the entertainment value of the books, but they do stick out to me after all these rereads, and I don't have the patience - or maybe the obliviousness - I did when I was 15. The trilogy pretty much reads like Eddings sat down one day, started at the beginning, and shipped each chapter off without ever reading it again. Which is fine, I guess, but I hold my epic fantasy to higher standards nowadays. ( )