It was raining again.
The young student peered out the window, the skies overcast with gray clouds tracing rivers from the sky, soaking the earth until dirt paths became muddy trails. A journey of two thousand leagues has culminated in a new home, new languages and cultures, a new life. It’s been three long years by the turning of the seasons, but despite the repeated lessons and earnest effort, the student’s progress has only barely kept up.
He wearily followed the waves of raindrops dripping from the roof, and sighed. His nearby friend, somewhat indifferent to the inclement weather, returned to the tome in front of him.
And that’s how I was introduced to high fantasy fiction by my friend. It was the early 90s, and we had immigrated from Hong Kong to Vancouver, Canada. I spent my first 3 years in my Canadian elementary school in English Second Language (ESL) supplemental classes to catch up to my more fluent classmates, with some success in accelerating language proficiency, but starting from a massive vocabulary and cultural deficit. My parents’ insistence on frequent trips to the library honed an appreciation for reading1 as a tool for familiarizing language, but I eventually ran out of Choose Your Own Adventure books and formulaic Hardy Boys mystery novels. I welcomed something else that had a little more depth, just enough to push the boundaries a bit in vocabulary and theme while remaining accessible to a preteen frame of mind2.
It so happened that a friend was reading a thick book titled Pawn of Prophecy. After borrowing his copy to read through a few pages of the first chapter, I was hooked enough to scour my local libraries for the book. I found out that the author was David Eddings, and that volume was the first of a two-part set—the Belgariad and the Malloreon series—that spanned 10 books in total across 4,000+ pages. The books introduced teenage me to an entire genre of fantasy novels, eventually leading to the likes of Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time and even A Song of Ice and Fire3 in subsequent years; that sense of adventure and the fantastical won me over.
I decided to reread 2 series of books again recently. Now that I’m not struggling to understand the prose and have seen what other high fantasy books have to offer, I think the books still serve as a welcome introduction to fantasy, but are held back by an overreliance on tropes and genre clichés that make it less interesting for experienced readers, for instance in comparison to some of the aforementioned literature. That’s not to say it’s a bad read at all; the chapters flow naturally, the story never gets too bogged down in minutiae, and it features a big cast of characters and a fleshed-out world ripe for exploration.
But if Tolkien set the standard for what a fantasy story should include, the Belgariad + Malloreon isn’t looking to innovate much beyond that foundation. We have good vs. evil; the fate of the world decided by one chosen by prophecy4; magic and therefore wizards and sorceresses; ancient artifacts; monsters and dragons and demons; kings and queens and knights; pseudo-archaic ye old English speech along with bits and pieces of made-up languages; the good guys in the west exploring far and exotic lands to the south and east. Hell, of this list of 20+ popular fantasy tropes, I think the books hit on every single one—some of them twice over since the two series follow a very similar narrative structure5.
Maybe an apt modern comparison for the Belgariad and its sequel is that they’re like middle-of-the-road Marvel movies: competent and fun to experience, comforting on rainy days, but not looking to break new ground. That said, I still have a fondness for the books, likely due to nostalgia and their role in my literary maturation. But, even recognizing some of its weaknesses, I’d still recommend these books to young readers who are exploring new genres, new types of writing and styles, to help figure out what types of stories they enjoy. It’s hard to go wrong with the classic hero’s journey, draped with adventure and magic.
A habit that I’ve tried hard to pass on to my kids.↩
I tried to get my son to get into the books a couple months back, but I think he’s more excited about hard science fiction and didn’t take to it.↩
The series that eventually adapted to TV as Game of Thrones.↩
To be fair, the Belgariad does feature multiple, sometimes conflicting prophecies central to the plot and makes that part of the story much more nuanced.↩
Credit to where it’s due; the Malloreon does explain this and even uses it as a plot point, but calling it out doesn’t excuse the repetition.↩
