The Malloreon [1] Guardians of the West (1987)

After a three year break, David Eddings returned with a sequel to The Belgariad, another five volume series entitled The Malloreon.  It picks up a number of years after the death of Torak, and follows our heroes as prophecy forces them on another quest, this time to the continent of Mallorea on the other side of the world.  In my opinion, this series is much better than The Belgariad for a few reasons.

The books are a bit more expansive (Eddings said in a forward to the omnibus that size restrictions were relaxed this time around) and the lands we explore are a lot more interesting (and realistic) than the disparate Angarak and Western kingdoms.  Garion is an adult and the problems he faces are more interesting to me as a reader and less cliche (i.e. this series is not about some orphan finding out he's a king / sorcerer).  Also, the quest here is more compelling than what happened in The Belgariad, which had two separate quests, really (recovering the Orb and fighting Torak).

The map / kingdom section will be missing this blog post, as there are no new maps or lands explored in this volume.  But they will resume for the next, King of the Murgos, when our heroes venture down into previously uncharted portions of Cthol Murgos.

I don't have a lot to say about this book, other than a handful of gripes.

Before you continue:

• This is part 6 of my The Belgariad and The Malloreon retrospective
• See this blog post for an overview of the retrospective
• These blogs are most effective with your own re-read of both series
• Warning: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BOTH SERIES

History Repeats Itself

The first section of this book is very similar to the beginning of Pawn of Prophecy, the first volume of The Belgariad.  You will notice more similarities as you go through this series... one, because Eddings is somewhat formulaic and his quest-centric series all feature the same general pattern and types of characters; two, because in this world the meetings between Dark and Light repeat over and over, so we should expect some similarities each time.  How convenient.

Credit sonofamortician

Instead of Garion, we start with Errand and follow him during his childhood with Polgara and Durnik in the Vale of Aldur.  Errand is a special child and the way Eddings begins this series, it should be perfectly obvious that Errand is destined for something special.  Almost as special as what Garion did in slaying the god Torak.  Instead of slaying a god, though, we'll make a new one (the god that should have been in the first place) to fix the "cosmic error" that happen millions of years ago.

At least we don't have the same exact party of characters as we did last time.  Cyradis, the Seeress of Kell, who appears at the end of the book to instruct Garion on what he needs to do, tells some familiar characters to butt out of the quest.  Namely Barak, Hettar, Mandorallen and Lelldorin.  Though I don't mind these characters (except Lelldorin, who is useless, as I've stated before), I'm totally cool with this decision, because otherwise the series would be too similar to The Belgariad.

So you'll notice similarities here and there in the storyline as you go through the series, but I'm not complaining - this is what Eddings does best...

The Quest is Best

It should be obvious after reading this book that Eddings excels when the storyline is focused on a quest.  Figuring out the riddles of prophecy, the mystery of new lands, meeting new people... these are the things he writes well.  This entire book is consumed with non-quest activities.  It's all set up for the rest of the series, and some of it is necessary, but as a whole it's rather dull.  It's the same problem that plagued the end of The Belgariad, where half of Enchanter's End Game focused on the battle at Thull Mardu, which wasn't half as exciting as what Garion was doing.

So while I like this series better overall, it doesn't really start out that well.  It doesn't get interesting until about halfway through, when Geran is kidnapped by Zandramas, but even then it bogs down again with side trips to Jarviksholm and Rheon to deal with the resurgent Bear Cult (a massive red herring).  It's only in the last few chapters, when we learn what Garion & Co. are really supposed to be doing, that it gets interesting... and then it ends.

If I had been reading the series when this book came out, I probably would have been upset with it.  Much like I got upset during books 8-10 in The Wheel of Time, when the narrative slowed way down.  Thankfully Eddings was almost done with The Malloreon when I got involved.

The Cover

The covers for this series are similar to the ones from The Belgariad, showing maps and silhouettes behind some characters, but this time they were done by Edwin Herder.  There's a bit more on him floating around the internet (compared to Laurence Schwinger, who did the Belgariad covers), and you can learn more about him here and here.  Suffice to say, he's done a lot of work for book covers, magazines, movie posters and advertising.

For this book, we have characters standing and looking at something above them.  I've never been quite sure who the character on the left is (I always think Lelldorin, but I doubt that's him), but the others are Errand, Ce'Nedra and perhaps Garion or Mandorallen (shrug)?  What they are looking at, who knows.  A map of Aloria in the background and silhouette of a wolf round out the cover.  A rather boring cover, if you ask me, but I do like the character art style, it has a photo-realistic quality to it that Schwinger's didn't have.

Stating the Obvious

One thing I noticed in this book more than in The Belgariad, was how so many characters state the obvious.  Particularly when they are discussing some battle strategy.  Garion starts pacing and "thinking furiously" and offers up a suggestion that is obvious to even the dumbest person, and all the other Alorn kings are like, "very good."  It's laughable considering the battle plans they come up with.

Of course, none of the battles are all that interesting anyway, since they have sorcerers to do things like destroy gates or saturate the ground beneath walls to undermine their foundations... they all become one-sided and none of our heroes ever get hurt.  Although this time we are guaranteed a true death, as Cyradis mentions at the end of the book.  No Durnik with Two Lives - one of our heroes will die for real before all is said and done.  The one who dies is not obvious at first... when I first read the series I never guessed who it would be.

The Birds and the Bees

I know this series is generally geared toward young adults and casual readers, but the way Eddings treats sex and childbirth here is both amusing and ridiculous, even for that demographic.  Of course, most fantasy back in the day was pretty tame, with little sex or violence.  Stephen R. Donaldson was the most R-rated I found in the early days, but that was nothing compared to the fantasy of today, like Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.

First we have the "sex scene."  Eight years pass and there is no heir to the Rivan Throne.  Brand suggests that Ce'Nedra is barren and Garion vehemently denies it.  Then why isn't there an heir?  Garion is puzzled... as if he doesn't know what sex is... as if they haven't been having sex AT ALL.  IN OVER 8 YEARS OF MARRIAGE.  And we, as readers, are supposed to believe this?  That Garion didn't even know what to do?

Credit hellowithcheese

It really is laughable and completely unrealistic, but I get it.  However, it gets worse, when Ce'Nedra gives birth to Geran.  Garion suddenly regresses into a Neanderthal and can only speak monosyllabic words.  He becomes so vapid that he even attempts to smash a chair to create more wood for the fire.  I don't like the way Eddings wrote this section... it makes Garion seem so childish when we've started to accept him as an adult.

Side note: I've never liked the name Geran for the child.  That seems to be another fantasy cliche... name your child after the parent you never knew...

Why Can't You Just…?

Yet another thing that bothers me in this book is the way sorcery is shrugged off as a solution, outside of battle.  At one point, on the way to Rheon to destroy Ulfgar and the Bear Cult, Ce'Nedra gets impatient and asks Garion to use sorcery to help find their baby, and he says there are limits.  She bitterly responds, "What good is it, then?"

I have to ask the same thing.  Why don't the sorcerers just fly off on their own, search for Zandramas and get Geran back without having to travel across two continents?  It seems silly to stubbornly stick to prophecy when you have the means to fix the problem much quicker.  They have all this power, but hardly use it.

It reminds me of that age-old question regarding The Lord of the Rings... why didn't the Eagles just fly Frodo and the Ring to Mt. Doom?  As you can see in the link it's been analyzed quite thoroughly over the years.  But really, it boils down to two things: it's a simple plot-hole and the story wouldn't be as interesting.

So in the case of The Malloreon, they have to stay within the confines of prophecy, otherwise we don't have much of a story.  Seems a bit silly when you really think about it, but that's what happens in fantasy sometimes.  It's still entertaining, though - enough to suspend your disbelief.

And speaking of the plot holes, I've always wondered why Zandramas chose to travel east with Geran after she stole him, rather than just sailing west from Riva and quickly arriving at the Mallorean continent from the other direction.  I guess that wouldn't be an interesting story either...

Next:

The Malloreon
Book 2 - King of the Murgos

Previous:

The Belgariad
Book 5 - Enchanter's End Game
Book 4 - Castle of Wizardry
Book 3 - Magician's Gambit
Book 2 - Queen of Sorcery
Book 1 - Pawn of Prophecy

The Hope of Memory [Update 9] A Recent Break

Just a quick update on The Hope of Memory, since I haven't posted on it for almost 2 months.  I took a two week break on Wilders, as I just needed to get away from it for a while.  Also, I've been working on iPad app, so that has taken up a bit of my time.  And doing a bunch of reading (like video games, I always have a backlog to plow through).  I started writing on the book again the other day, though.

Currently on my 9th yellow notepad, Chapter 27.  Close to around 160K words, I estimate... so I'm definitely going to go over my goal of 180K, considering that I had 11 more chapters planned.  However, some of the later ones will be shorter.  And I will do a lot of trimming when it comes to the second draft.  As soon as this draft is done, I'm moving back to finalize the first book, The Distant.

I plan to release that on Amazon only, and enroll in the KDP Select program (that's the lending library thing for Amazon Prime members).  I believe the book has to be exclusive on Amazon to enroll if you are an Indie writer / publisher.  At least I wasn't able to enroll Bonebearer because of that (since it's also on B&N).

I also want to make a print version... will look into Amazon's CreateSpace for that.  Just need to make a decent cover.  If anyone is interested in doing 3 fantasy / sci-fi covers for super cheap or nothing (either way, part of the payment would be what little exposure I have now), please post here or contact me.  I am open to anything, as long as it looks cool.

Vampires & Witches: Hijacked by Taltos

Most people who have been engaged in popular culture or fiction at some level during the last 20 years are probably familiar with Anne Rice and one or two of her "gothic horror/fiction" novels, notably The Vampire Chronicles, that revolve around vampires.  She also wrote a trilogy regarding witches, called Lives of the Mayfair Witches, whose characters eventually crossed over into The Vampire Chronicles.  And if you lump in the two "outrigger" New Tales of the Vampires novels she did, you end up with fifteen novels total regarding the supernatural world of vampires and witches.

After many years of putting it off, I finally finished the last few novels in this multiple series amalgam, and much like the Chung Kuo review / commentary I did a few months ago, the ending left me a bit dissatisfied and bewildered, and I felt compelled to say something about these works as a result.

Please note that this post contains spoilers for all books in the three series listed above.  If you plan on reading all of them and don't want anything spoiled for you, stop reading now and come back when you've finished.  There will not be another warning.

If you've already read it or just don't care, read on.

The Background

First, a little background.  I discovered Anne Rice sometime in high school, probably around 1992.  I don't remember how I found her works, but I quickly devoured everything that was out at the time, which was only the first three in The Vampire Chronicles and the first book in Lives of the Mayfair Witches, entitled The Witching Hour.

I was blown away by these books, particularly The Witching Hour.  Anne Rice essentially set the standard for vampires in modern fiction, and I loved how realistic everything was, how the characters were tormented and struggling with their immortality and the fact they had to kill to survive, how they coped over the years.  I loved the vampire history that Rice presented, how it actually explained the vampires' origin (a malevolent spirit infesting the blood) and how it melded with the modern world without being too cheesy.  The thought of Lestat, the main vampire character throughout the series, being a modern-day rock star didn't sit with me well at first, but Rice made it work and I became a fan.

The infamous New Orleans First Street house Anne Rice used to live in,
used for the setting of The Witching Hour.

And then there was The Witching Hour.  I haven't read all of Rice's works, but I've read most, and I think this is by far her finest novel.  The rich and eerie history of the Mayfair family made for a 1,000 page page-turner with a shocking, cliffhanger ending.  I couldn't wait for the next book in the series.

I got heavily into both series after that.  I re-read them.  A few more came out and then the movie adaptation of the first vampire novel, Interview With the Vampire, staring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, opened and Anne Rice was a common household name.  I went to that movie on opening night in college and loved it.  A couple of years later, in 1997, I visited New Orleans over spring break with my older brother and sister-in-law, saw some of the landmarks mentioned in the series, took a guided "ghost and vampire" tour at night, and even stopped by Anne Rice's house on First Street to see it for myself.

Ebb and Flow

After college my interest in her books came and went like the tide... I would read old and new in chunks, then take a break for a year or two before picking it back up again.  I was severely disappointed in how the Mayfair Witches trilogy played out (more on that later), but continued to enjoy The Vampire Chronicles, though it did not seem like they were heading anywhere, the series reduced to individual memoirs with Lestat taking a backseat.  I figured she'd leave it open-ended and write a book from time to time.  I mean, how do you end a series about immortals?

Soon, however, she introduced the Mayfairs into the vampire storyline, starting with Merrick in 2000.  It seemed inevitable since both series involved The Talamasca.  I wasn't that thrilled with the book, though.  I got the rest of the books as they came out, but stopped after reading 2001's Blood and Gold (the 13th overall in the combined series) and watching the 2002 film Queen of the Damned (which unsuccessfully mashed together the books The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned).  That movie sucked, they butchered the story and Stuart Townsend wasn't half as good as Tom Cruise in the role of Lestat.  Rice has pretty much disowned that movie, from what I've read.

So I took a break and the last two books sat there.  I figured I would get to them in a year, perhaps.

Wrong.  I didn't read them until now, eight years later.  They've been sitting on my bookshelves, untouched that entire time.  I know it's eight years because I keep track of the dates for every book I buy (see my 2011 Media Consumption post to see how dorky I am) and my database says I bought the last volume, Blood Canticle, on 10/2/2004.  And it's definitely old... the top edge of the pages has yellowed over time.

So in trying to get through my incessant backlog, I finally read the last two books.  I had to read synopses of the earlier books in preparation because I hadn't touched them in years.  I wasn't sure what I was in for.  I knew Rice had left New Orleans after the death of her husband in 2002, and that she had rejoined the Church and had written fictionalized accounts of Jesus Christ.  But not much else, as I had lost interest in her after she stopped the vampire and witch novels.

The Books

Now, altogether I'm talking about fifteen books technically broken into three different series.  However, due to the crossover towards the end of The Vampire Chronicles, and the fact that two separate New Tales of the Vampires books are really no different than the other memoirs in the main sequence (and that Rice had seemingly given up on that grouping), they are part of the same world and should be read together, in my opinion.  The later entries in the Chronicles will definitely make more sense if you've read the Mayfair Witches.

The best order to read them, of course, is the order they were published in.  The italic abbreviations are the series and volume.  I also categorize them into three types: Lestat, Witches and Memoir.  The letter(s) in brackets represent those.  Some books are more than one.

Here are all fifteen:

1. Interview With the Vampire (1976) - tVC 1 [L, M]
2. The Vampire Lestat (1985) - tVC 2 [L, M]
3. The Queen of the Damned (1988) - tVC 3 [L]
4. The Witching Hour (1990) - LotMW 1 [W]
5. The Tale of the Body Thief (1992) - tVC 4 [L]
6. Lasher (1993) - LotMW 2 [W]
7. Taltos (1994) - LotMW 3 [W]
8. Memnoch the Devil (1995) - tVC 5 [L]
9. Pandora (1998) - NTotV 1 [M]
10. The Vampire Armand (1998) - tVC 6 [M]
11. Vittorio, the Vampire (1999) - NTotV 2 [M]
12. Merrick (2000) - tVC 7 [L, W]
13. Blood and Gold (2001) - tVC 8 [M]
14. Blackwood Farm (2002) - tVC 9 [L, W, M]
15. Blood Canticle (2003) - tVC 10 [L, W]

Lestat is undoubtedly the central character.  It's more about him than anyone else, and Anne Rice eventually went post-modern, having Lestat publish the earlier volumes in The Vampire Chronicles within the series itself, for the world to read as fiction and newer vampires to learn from.

Now, I think it's obvious that as the popularity of the series rose (particularly with the Tom Cruise movie in 1994), Rice focused solely on vampires and rode the wave of success.  Whether this burned her out, or she tired of it due to her husband's death in 2002 and rushed it (she finished the last volume, Blood Canticle, just two months before he died), or ran out of ideas and just came up with a quick way to "resolve" both series and fulfill contractual obligations at the same time... I don't know.  And it doesn't really matter.  What matters is that two series that started out fantastic and strong, were mashed together and died with a whimper.

My Anne Rice books.  Yes, two are missing.  Read on to find out why.
I also lost the dust jacket for The Vampire Armand, that's why it's
open to the title page in the pic.

The Beginning of the End

So... why don't I like the ending?  How did it die out?

First, as I mentioned before, there probably shouldn't have been a definitive ending to either series.  The vampires are immortal.  That series is a mish-mash of various stories and memoirs.  For something like that you just leave it open-ended.  Maybe you come back to it, maybe you don't.  The witches continue to be witches in the modern day, but perhaps use their powers for "good," like Rowan Mayfair does with the Mayfair Medical Center (or so we believe at first).  But the fact that the last book, Blood Canticle, actually says "THE END" with a date, when none of the other books do, makes it clear Rice was ending it all.

Second, I just have one word:

Taltos.

Oh Anne... why did you have to go there?

The introduction of the Taltos in Lasher (Book 2 of the Mayfair Witches), essentially ruined everything for me.  Everything.  Rice went from a fantastic book about witches (The Witching Hour) and turned it into some story about this ancient race of beings that are roughly 7 feet tall, are born aware, grow to human size soon after birth, live for thousands of years, etc etc. It's obviously inspired by the táltos of Hungarian mythology.

With the books Lasher and Taltos, however, what made The Witching Hour so awesome (the Mayfair family history) was mostly thrown out the window. Lasher the Mayfair Ghost becomes Lasher the Taltos (instead of just a human), he's obsessed with perpetuating his race (he dies instead) and the third book in that series, Taltos, focusing on more Taltos births by the Mayfairs, was horrible.  The surviving Taltos disappear at the end and it's left unresolved.  I hated it and the direction Rice had gone.

In fact, Lasher upset me so much that I ended up donating it to the public library.  I never bought Taltos, I merely borrowed it from a friend when it came out, and I'm glad I didn't waste any money on it.  So that's why both are missing from my book picture above.

The Crossover

I figured, okay, the Mayfair Witches was ruined, but I still had The Witching Hour, a fantastic book I'd gladly read again without bothering to read the sequels.  And The Vampire Chronicles were still decent.  I enjoyed the different memoirs that Rice was doing, focusing on familiar characters like Armand, Pandora and Marius, as well as some new ones like Vittorio and later in Blackwood Farm, Tarquin Blackwood.  At least she hadn't screwed that up, right?

Wrong.  Rice introduced the Mayfairs into the vampire storyline in Merrick, where the eponymous, outcast quadroon of a Mayfair becomes a vampire.  Which ends up ultimately being pointless since she abruptly kills herself a few years later at the end of Blackwood Farm, which I thought was a pretty good novel, especially that late in the series.

I personally think Rice writes best when the story involves a personal or family history.  Each one of those she has done has been quite engrossing.  The best books in these series are memoirs / histories.  The others, set in modern times, are weaker overall.  Rice has mentioned that she had trouble getting her ideas about the world down when writing through normal human characters, but had better success once she turned to non-humans.  This equates to past vs. present as well, it seems to me.

Blood Canticle

So as I mentioned, I liked Blackwood Farm, the penultimate novel in the series.  It was well done and interesting, had a good main character (Tarquin "Quinn" Blackwood) and a nice twist to the end which I didn't see coming.  While I didn't find the way Quinn interacted with his family and black house staff all that believable (maybe it's just because I wasn't raised in the South), I liked everything else.  It ends on a slight cliffhanger and I moved immediately into the last novel, Blood Canticle.

I guess the cover is okay...

This book has gotten panned in many reviews, and I'm going to have to add my voice to theirs.  It's not very good and is a far cry from the classic Rice novels.  Lestat is obsessed with becoming a saint now and just doesn't act like he used to.  This book is a mess, and reminds me of how Chung Kuo originally ended.  So like that blog post, here's a rundown of how ridiculous this book gets.

1: Anne Rice chastises her readership
This is the first novel since 1995's Memnoch the Devil to be narrated by Lestat.  And the very beginning is him chastising you, the reader, for not liking his last book, Memnoch.  I liked that book, but a lot of others didn't.  And I suppose it's in character... but it felt petty to me.  It reminded me of the movie Lady in the Water, when after taking a lot of criticism for his last few movies, writer / director M. Night Shyamalan cast himself as a character who's written works which will someday "change the world" and where a film critic in the movie meets a violent end.

2: Mona Mayfair becomes a vampire
Stop turning everyone into a vampire, Rice!  Lestat does this for Quinn, and everyone's lives are turned upside down.  Mona was near death, but now they have to find a way to explain to the persistent Mayfairs (Rowan and Michael) how she miraculously recovered.  Lestat has blown their cover, and Quinn is mostly to blame since he can't let go of his mortal life.  It's an interesting storyline, one that makes Blackwood Farm interesting, but here it just turns into a mess and precipitates all that comes later.

3: Lestat falls in love with Rowan Mayfair
This just feels wrong to me.  Why did this need to happen?  If you've read both series you know how weird this seems.  Rowan has gone to hell and back through the Mayfair Witches, and throwing all this vampire stuff on top of that is overkill.  Besides, I don't really like Rowan all that much after the events of The Witching Hour.

4: Drug runners in the Caribbean
Mona, now that she's a vampire, wants to find out what happened to her Taltos baby, named Morrigan.  Rowan and Michael tried to find her and Ash Templeton (the older Taltos who ran off with her at the end of Taltos) but eventually gave up.  Of course Maharet knows and tells Lestat via email, and within minutes they are off to the Caribbean island where the Taltos have hidden themselves - only to find it occupied by South American drug runners and the remaining Taltos captured.  Lestat and Co. just go through and kill all the drug runners in an extended action sequence featuring Matrix-style telekinesis and pyrokinesis that feels out of place.

5: The Taltos' efforts were POINTLESS
The ultimate insult is when you find out what happened to Ash, Morrigan and their Taltos children.  The children rebel, kill the parents, and fight amongst themselves.  Lasher spent hundreds of years manipulating the Mayfair's lineage so that he could be reborn in a Taltos to restart the race - and they failed.  They were not meant for this time, and cannot survive it in great numbers.  So all this crap was for nothing.  THEY FAILED.  And both series were ruined.

6: It's anticlimactic
Huh?  This sprawling saga about vampires and witches "ends" like this?  Usually when you end something, there's some kind of resolution.  The only resolution you get here is for the ill-begotten Taltos storyline that should have never been introduced in the first place, and the resolution isn't even any good!

The End?

So... the series came to a somewhat ignominious end (at least for me).  I am not happy with it.  I understood why Chung Kuo ended as it did.  I don't understand why Rice ended with Blood Canticle.  It's just not a good book or idea compared to the earlier entries.

But is it truly the end of the series for Rice?  In recent years she has left the Catholic Church (again) and turned back to some supernatural fiction with The Wolf Gift (her take on werewolves) and the Songs of the Seraphim series (about an assassin).

There's also something new she's working on called Born for Atlantis, which according to this November 2011 interview on The Daily Beast, is about:

"...several immortals sent to the planet during the time of Atlantis and it tells the story of what happened.  They're now still alive in the modern age and they're facing a crisis."

I don't know about you, but I would be surprised if this new book didn't feature Tommy Blackwood (from Blackwood Farm, Quinn's nephew) somehow, since he says many times that he wants to search for Atlantis when he gets older.  Could Rice tie this back into the Vampire Chronicles somehow?

She also mentions in the interview that she's working on something involving aliens.  Now, I've always thought that she should expand the Vampire Chronicles to the future somehow.  Enough with the books set in modern times or past memoirs.  Take it further.

Restart the series by jumping ahead a few hundred years.  What would Lestat be like he future?  Quinn after a few hundred years of vampire life?  Would they still be able to hide from society like they can now?  I don't think anyone has done a good take on vampires in the future yet (if anyone has any recommendations, I'm all ears).  The only decent part of Blood Canticle was the possibility of Rowan and her medical clinic getting a sample of Lestat's blood to analyze.  What would happen should modern day scientists understand vampirism on a scientific level?

So who else had this book as a kid?

Will we ever know?  Rice isn't known for science fiction, but she is planning the "alien" thing, and she's got good enough chops for fantasy and historical fiction - so she could pull it off.  You don't have to be technical or necessarily understand certain technologies in order to write an engrossing story set in the future or in space.

I can only hope she returns to the vampires at some point, which would turn the crappy ending into just another crappy middle book we can ignore.  But unlike Chung Kuo, there won't be a "remastering" of the end.  We're stuck with it.

Damn you, Taltos!  *shakes fist*

Next:

[Books 16-17] Prince Lestat and Two New Vampire Books