Product Description

A fabulous brand new Eddings standalone fantasy, set in an entirely new magical world. Burglar, armed robber and sometime murderer, our hero Althalus is commissioned to steal a book from the House at the End of the World by a mysterious cloaked stranger named Ghend. At the House at the End of the World, he finds a talking cat! in the same room as the book Ghend described. What he can't find once he's in the house is the door by which he entered. Only 2467 years and an ice age later does Althalus re-emerge with the cat, Emmy. He's read the book written by the god Deiwos, whose evil brother Daeva is trying to unmake the world. Emmy is in fact their sister and she's setting out to save the world with Althalus to help her. No easy task. First there is a quest to unearth the magical knife that will enable Emmy to assemble her band of essential helpers: Eliar (young soldier), Andine (leader of a small country), Bheid (black-robed priest), Gher (ten-year old orphan), Leitha (telepath/witch). Battles follow against Gelta the Queen of Night and the armies of Daeva involving many devious manoeuvres in and out of the House where Doors can be opened to any place at any time. Daeva has his Doors, too. When Daeva can't win through battle, he tries revolution. When Dweia (Emmy) can't win any other way, Althalus will persuade her to lie, cheat and steal -- reciprocating the lessons in truth, justice and morality Emmy has been giving him for some while. The existence of the world hangs in the balance and love cannot be guaranteed to triumph in this glorious epic fantasy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55938 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 928 pages

Customer Reviews

Deja-Vu?
Well...what can be said, not bad but not great either.Being an Eddings fan and having read the Belgariad, Mallorean Elenium and Tamuli series I wondered what direction this book would go especially as it is condensed into one novel.Unfortunatly I found myself constantly remembering characters from Eddings previous books and it seems as if all that has been changed is the characters names i.e Flute-Emmy Sparhawk-Althalus, Andine-Ehlana etc etc. If, however, you have not read any of David Eddings books before then this would probably be a good one to start on as it will seem like a fresh and innovative story. Being an Eddings fan however I will still buy his books when they come out but i feel that if he is to remain as popular as he is he need to try and put some fresh ideas into their novels to keep old and new fans alike entertained.

Ugh!
As a long-time Eddings fan I have to admit that I was severely disappointed in their latest book. The plot is minimal, the characters are flat and under-developed and most of them are in any case only a rehash of characters from the previous books.

I own all the Eddings' books published to date, but after this one, I will think twice before buying the next one. I definitely do not recommend Althalus to anyone, especially not newcomers to the Eddings genre.

Althalus - Unredeemed
It's a while since I've read any of David Eddings' work; I thoroughly enjoyed the Belgariad series when it was first published all that time ago,and I was looking forward to getting stuck in to LoA.I was, however, vastly disappointed with this book. A tome of over 900 pages, the writing style seems to me to change considerably after the first 100 or so pages. We move from an initial burst of "storytelling" - upon which the advertising type on the back of the book appears to be based - to what seems to amount to 90% dialogue. The sheer amount of chit-chatty direct speech dialogue and lack of descriptive elements wore me out, and I felt on a number of occasions that if this fantasy got any lighter I'd blow away. Most of the humour of the book is done through the chatty remarks made by the characters who manage to keep up their constant battery of witticisms at every moment, regardless of however life-threatening. The book appears to want to be an epic fantasy saga and a comedy at the same time but unfortunately - for me - manages to be neither. It's a bit cheesy, in fact. Anyway, I will try to balance my review by highlighting a good point. This, I thought, was the overal concept and idea of the story particularly as it began to unfold - I was even intrigued right there at the beginning - but I rapidly became bored, and unfortunately for me, Althalus and his whole story remain yet to be redeemed.