My thoughts on the Bel-Mal can basically be summed up in three words:

Eddings. Loves. Archetypes.

Take a look at the geography (always a special interest of mine). We know Eddings started with a map, and that's fine, though his* obsession with checking off literally every country on it can be a bit jarring once you notice it**.

*I'm using 'his' for simplicity here. It has never been clear to me how much input Leigh had in either the books she was credited for or the ones she wasn't.

**This is a commonality across the Bel-Mal, the Sparhawk books, Althalus, and the Dreamers series. It's least noticable in the Elenium, for reasons I shall come to.

But how those countries are made... in the real world, most countries*** are basically the same apart from the language. The differences between, say, Napoleonic France and Washington's America are very few - the people there spent their time in pretty much the same ways. Differences only really crop up in countries in crisis - revolutions, for instance.

***'Most countries at the same stage of development and under the same circumstances'. You can tell the difference between a sub-Saharan African nation and modern Spain, but throw Spain a decades-long famine and take away all its money, and the differences fade away.

Fantasy worlds aren't like that. Their countries have specialties, and don't really cross-pollinate them. Rohan in Middle-earth has its Riders; Gondor has its stone cities (to the point that various other nations refer to them as Stone-Lands). If Tolkien wrote modern England, it would be divided very neatly between rural farms and villages, and cities where everyone wears bowler hats.

Eddings goes beyond this. His nations aren't just specialised - they're archetypes. They pick their trait, and they stick to it right down the line. This is fine when the defining trait is 'infrastructure', or something else vague (Tolnedra); it's much more blatant when you run into Drasnia ('spies'), Nyissa ('snakes'), or - Aldur preserve us - Mishrac ac Thull ('being a slave').****

****Yes, this last is because the western Angaraks were split by their roles in Angarak society - but frankly, the other nations are just as specialised.

This is why the Grand Tour style of writing is so blatant in Eddings - every one of his series' is like that. It's least obvious in the Malloreon (where all the archetype nations are masked to an extent under 'being evil') and the Elenium (which drifts back towards specialisation, though the sequel series, the Tamuli, embraces the archetypes in spades), but it's still there.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing! It lets both author and reader latch onto those traits, so that you can immediately go 'aha, florid medieval speech - this must be an Arend'. But... let me put it this way: if Eddings wrote modern America, the flag would be an eagle, which would be the most common bird, and nobody would have a job because they'd all be out watching the eagles. And the nation anthem would just be 'Freedom - eagles - freedom - eagles' over and over until you pass out (from freedom!).

His characters have the same tendency. Silk is a sneak. Barak is a Viking. Ce'Nedra is... shrill. They pick up minor character traits that purport to round them out, but they remain very, very tightly focussed on their one-word, or at least one-line, characters.

And again, this isn't necessarily bad. I have a post in the works about ways to design (and stick to) characters, and 'pick a couple of traits and stick with them' is one of them. My Agent Kaitlyn is a bubbly wannabe-Hobbit; she doesn't need much more than that to stay IC. But... it's a bit much when it spans ten books.

How do I feel about the Bel-Mal? I adore it. I own all 13 books, and have read even the Tolnedra section of the Rivan Codex end to end (Nedra help me). I'm quite sad that we don't have more from the very, very early days - before Polgara was born, when Belgarath and his brothers hung out with Aldur - but I'm very pleased to have the series. Once I've finished rereading the Tamuli, I'll be back into Bel-Mal.

Though I do wish the Eddingses didn't have such an obsession with marrying every single character off. Hands up who remembers the name of Beldin's wife!

hS

Your sympathetic!=moral point definitely holds for, say, Althalus (the fact that the book is entitled The Redemption of Althalus says what it thinks about his initial moral state). But in the Elenium, the protagonist and most of his chums are Church Knights - literally warrior monks. (This is also the only series I've read where they spend half a book trying to ensure the right guy gets elected pope; it's an odd series.) I think my problem is that everyone is super fine with the whole rape and murder thing. The literal knight in shining armour? Fine with it. The idealistic young queen? Fine with it. The eventual fantasy Pope? Absolutely fine with it.

Literally the only people who suggest that being a criminal might be considered a bad thing are the criminals themselves.

hS