It’s definitely something that existing fans of the serieses will get far more out of than someone new to the world, because it’s about spending more time in the world and filling in blanks. Eddings manages pace very well--speeding through centuries in a paragraph, and then spending whole chapters on the events of a few weeks--without leaving the reader dizzy from wondering what just happened. Belgarath the Sorcerer" is the story of one man's love--for his god, for his wife, for his "brothers", for his daughters, and for people.

I believe these readers are simply close minded, but it would be easier to convince them that fantasy has integrety if books like Belgarath didn't exist. The concept of a character that has seen humanity drag itself up from the mud, and been at the forefront of every mythical and historical event in memory, never fails to fascinate me.A hugely entertaining work of great daring, wit, grandeur and excitement that confirms the role of Belgarath the Sorcerer as one of the mightiest fantasy creations of the century. The plot is clear and you can live through all the centuries without feeling things going too fast, slow or complicated. I recently tried it again, and hated it for how shallow, unrealistic and purely useless the book was, and when I decided to review it wanted to put 1 star. It's told from the first-person perspective of the mighty Belgarath, which is a tricky enterprise in and of itself. And yet, whether bullying monarchs, fencing with foes, sparring with his brothers or passing adroit remarks on the series as a whole, Belgarath is still a huge amount of fun to spend time with, albeit that things did seem to drag towards the book’s final section and I began to feel that even Belgarath’s Bonomi got a bit stale over 27 hours, particularly because character introductions, political moves and resolutions started to seem far more cursory towards the book’s latter half almost as if the authors were slightly running out of steam.

The sad truth of the matter is that David and Leigh Eddings had been stretching my patience for a while. Set in the same universe as the Eddings' The Belgariad and The Malloreon, it is a prequel to the other series, although the framework story is set after the events of The Malloreon. David Eddings' wife, Leigh Eddings, was an uncredited co-author on many of his early books, but he had later acknowledged that she contributed to them all. The relationship between this endlessly snarky father and daughter is my favourite in the entire series, so getting to see this play out from the very beginning was a treat. books but it is worth reading them just to truly appreciate this one (not that they aren’t fun on their own).

I can easily imagine him being able to do this as this book only touches on so many little stories without elaborating a great deal. Of all the disciples, it seemed that Belgarath was closest to Aldur, being the first disciple and the first to love him. The other part of the problem is that when the writing isn't a tedious rehash of expostion from the first ten books, it's gimmicky fourth-wall-breaking stunt writing. Born in Spokane, Washington, and raised in the Puget Sound area north of Seattle, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, in 1954, and a master of arts degree from the University of Washington in 1961.

The core of the book is in the form of Belgarath's memoirs starting with his becoming an outcast from his village and becoming first disciple of the god Aldur and ending with the birth of Belgarion—a span of about seven thousand years. This both occurred on a smaller character basis (Belgarath was surprisingly ready to give his favourite daughter to marry the Rivan king), and on a far wider political basis. This means the book is peppered with little asides, aspersions, comments to and about other characters or nations, as well as the old sorcerer’s musings on the workings of the world and indeed the future events of the series.Often throughout the book when I found my attention flagging at yet another rather self-important sermon by Belgarath on how stupid his opponents were, I found myself caught by a sudden character moment, an odd insight or a small touch of description, like the tragic history and motive of the Nyissan queen who was behind the assassination of the Rivan king’s family. Then again, since Eddings mostly has these gender differences employed in comical ways and usually not to the detriment of his characters (fortunately there are no damsels here), I found myself able to overlook the more irritating parts reasonably well, and take the comments mostly in the spirit in which they were meant, i.