I picked up the first book of the Belgariad to reread. It's been ages. I used to read these in school.
It's kind of annoying. I find myself much less sympathetic to or interested in teenage boys now.
There's two standard fantasy book things that are rather irritating me. One, the treatment of really old characters, or long lengths of time in general, and two, the standard fantasy kingdoms setup.
In my experience, people change. Any given decade - any given five years - of a person will be quite different to the decades before. It's one area that Highlander put some effort into - Duncan MacLeod had a timeline, a definite progress through life. Methos only got a sketch in his background, but insofar as it defines edges we find that he could be, basically, anyone. It's great fun.
Belgarath? Hasn't changed in longer than Methos has been alive.
What kind of characterisation is that? Dude never has grown, never will grow. Just kind of exists. Blah!
And the same with Polgara. And it's even more annoying there.
And they totally take the cheap out on relationships and children and immortality. Pol was apparently celibate or something, had no getting marrieds ever. Belgarath was married once and then had lots of... hanging around in taverns, but apparently only ever produced two children. This keeps it all very tidy. Sure, he had to deal with one child being mortal, and yeah it's a Thing, but mostly it's not going to happen again. No relationships, no children... no existing until the Mythic catches up.
Extreme Blah.
And the lengths of time casually tossed around when they're describing Fantasy Kingdom History... It makes me wonder if the writer ever studied actual history. I mean ever ever. I mean, history is a hell of a lot more active than the pat little created the world story.
And then there's the thing where you can tell what a person is like by where they live. That makes me shudder all over. It's so blatantly racist. You can tell where someone is from by looking at them, and where they're from determines everything from their morals to their preferred methods. It's *creepy*. And it's also godawful boring. He's invented a dozen different characters and then just called them countries. What the hell use is that? Made of yuck and boredom.
And the really sad part is both these things happen in other books too. Really big numbers and cliche countries.
There's travel books where every country is a metaphor and a moral lesson.
If this is trying to be one of them it's not very good at it.
Mostly I'm hoping the series gets better as it goes along. Which books tend to do. But it means it's real easy to get put off by the first book.
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