Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108908 in Books
• Published on: 1996-07-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 839 pages

Synopsis
The story of Belgarath, the great sorcerer learned in the Will and the Word on whom the fate of the world depends. This is his own account of the struggle that went before "The Belgariad" and "The Malloreon". Only one man could tell of those near-forgotten times. That man is known as the Old Wolf.

Customer Reviews

Addictive
Other than Tolkein and a brief affair with Pratchett, my only foray into fantasy reading. Addictive - be careful there's a large set and you'll have to read them all.

The true heir to the Belgariad & Malloreon
To tell you the truth I hadn't intended to read this book. I picked it up having bought it many years before when I was deriving immense enjoyment from the Belgariad and Malloreon series and with only the intention of scanning through the first few lines to remind me of what this author and his imagined land were all about, I opened `Belgarath the Sorcerer' and turned to page one. But before I knew it I had been drawn in, but not by the fascinating origins of Belgarath the Sorcerer, at least not immediately, but instead quite cleverly by events that followed on from the ending to the Malloreon series with Garion, Durnik and Belgarath enjoying each others company in the Vale and contemplating all that brought them there.

I admit- quite a bit of what I'd read & absorbed in those two series had escaped my memory in the intervening years, but very soon I realised that I recalled enough to know that this beginning was an addition to the ending of the `Seeress of Kell' that I would have given my eye-teeth to read those handful of years ago. So to sum things up- it begins brilliantly and only gets better...it's a fantastic story in fact and while it is peppered with the Eddings witticisms and habitually over-used phrases that I grew to loathe in his `Elenium' and `Tamuli' series (be nice / I guess / old boy / sort of) those small annoyances are almost a part of its charm. A little more disappointing is the glossing over of moments when main characters are at their most vulnerable and interesting (such as when secondary characters perish)- but Eddings never seems inclined to dwell on those, favouring instead to dive headlong into the next conflict with the Child of Dark and his evil disciples ordained by infuriatingly-cryptic prophecy.

It's a long book, but it doesn't ever feel that way, such is the terrific pace that the author sets and while it is slightly derivative, it's nonetheless absolutely engrossing throughout and if like me you thought yourself immune to this type of somewhat formulaic story-telling then prepare yourself to be totally blown away!

Banal
This, like all of Eddings' other work, is so predictable I hate that I could have wrote it. In fact, I could have wrote his entire works and now been as rich as he is if I didn't feel I have some obligation to write something that couldn't have been written by a linguistically talented [...].

It's sort of entertaining. In a manner of speaking. If you can get over the shallow characters and unoffending storyline then it is something that is entertaining. It is like a soap in a way. You could put the book down after reading half, pick it up two years later, and still know whats going on. Eddings spoon feeds you the story. And the story is his best.

The book itself provides an interesting account of the life of Belgarath, which is only interesting if you enjoyed the Belgariad, which everyone will because its so plastic that it's like a fairy tale in its complexity.

Read this. You probably will. But I implore you reader to seek out more challenging and well thought through works such as Robin Hobb, Tad Williams and Steven Erikson. You will not be disppointed (provided you can understand them).