Exactly!Roland of Gilead wrote:Duchess, if you're read The Belgariad, then you've read everything Eddings has written. The rest is deja vu all over again.
Don't get me wrong; there are many authors worse than Eddings, who is at least capable of telling an entertaining story. The trouble is that he only has the one story to tell.
Some years ago, I found this lovely tidbit:
Just about says it all, I think.Andrea Leistra wrote:A David Eddings Series
Once upon a time there was a innocent farmboy (I realize whats-his-name in the Elenium wasn't LITERALLY a farmboy, but he acted like one). This farmboy thought he knew a lot. In encounters filled with heavy foreshadowing, he realized that he didn't know much of anything. So he set off with a beautiful dark-haired sorceress who liked tea on a great quest for a magic blue rock. They acquire a vast supporting cast of cliches, who serve only to crack jokes (not needed to round out the plot or defeat baddies, since all the baddies die without hurting anyone anyway). Along the way they fought several battles with huge numbers of stupid baddies who they managed to defeat against vast odds. At long last, they find the shiny blue rock that is almost omnipotent. Farmboy uses the shiny blue rock a few times and realizes, oh no, he isn't done yet. He has to go on ANOTHER quest, this time to defeat Ultimate Evil with the shiny blue rock. So he sets off again with his supporting cast of cliches and off they go to face possible destruction of the world, laughing all the way. They soon find Ultimate Evil who they easily defeat without a scratch and go off so farmboy can marry a beautiful princess, still laughing.
Congratulations! Now you, too, can write an Eddings series! Just substitute names and stretch this easy-to follow formula out to about 1200 pages. Repeat formula until rich.
But below this level, there are hundreds of writers who can't even write an amusing book once. Eddings isn't all that bad; he just isn't anything like as good as his fame would suggest.
