If you liked the first two books, you'll like this one. The quest of Garion, Belgarath, Polgara, and Co. continues. Along the way they drop off a few of their companions (including, tragically enough, Ce'Nedra), but they pick up a couple more--most memorably, an obsessive-compulsive Ulgo priest.

The result is a continuation of the same zany, somewhat exciting, and always comfortable adventures that occupied the first two books. Quite a bit more happens in this third book than in the second one, although it too suffers from the "wandering around looking for people" syndrome. In a way, the narrative so far reminds me of some of the D&D adventures I used to play with my brother: the overall plotline is clearly subservient to the joy of spending time with some (fictional) characters, and a lot of time is spent on seemingly random adventures where people have the opportunity to be funny, compassionate, heroic, or tragic.

So, I liked the book. It's not great, but then, the middle books of a series are almost always weaker. One thing is starting to bother me, though. Although I said that I liked the book's simplicity in terms of who is good and bad, it's beginning to get a little disturbing how willing the good guys are to kill Murgos and Angaraks in general. I like Hettag and Silk just fine, but it's still shocking whenever they make light of causing some Grolim to suffer a horrific death. I was especially bothered by how many times they seemed indifferent about causing the deaths of otherwise innocent Murgos: for instance, at one point Silk narrowly escapes capture, but when he finds out that the Murgos who were supposed to guard him have been flayed, he cracks some jokes and everybody just laughs. I suppose what's bothering me is the uncomfortable parallel between racism and the troupe's categorical hatred of Murgos. While I appreciate the clear black-and-white lines drawn by Eddings, an occasional good Murgo would be a welcome complication.

Copyright © 2001 Steven Wu