David Eddings Books

How low can this go? The Belgarion series was great, but the quality has dropped with each series. Is there ever any doubt that the heros will win? Not only do they have 4 "old" gods on their side, but 4 "new" gods, as well as an uber-god, who takes care of problems at the end of each book. The bad guys/gods get more and more cliche each time, and at no time did I feel anything could go wrong for the good guys.

The heroes are caricatures as well - the greatest archer (able to kill a buffalo at 200 yards with one arrow the first time he sees one), the greatest general ever, the most inventive man ever, the greatest sailor ever, and on and on. Thank goodness I bought thisu sed for 50 cents.

The third book of the Dreamers, Crystal Gorge, is actually worse than the dreadful second book; and that's a near impossible feat to accomplish.

The once interesting story of four Gods battling an evil being called the Vlagh is getting bland and horribly repetitious. What happens in this book is pretty much what happens in the other two previous installments of the Dreamers. The four Gods are nearly non-existent until the end of the book when all the sudden, they do everything--again. The human characters all talk in the ridiculous, overdone sarcasm that is boring and not funny in the slightest way (older David Eddings series/books were just not like this). The characters that are "hired" by the Gods do all the talking, but actually do absolutely nothing for the story--they only talk about building forts and about the weather while all they do is build and then abandon these forts when the Vlagh's servants attack. The story is about war, but there are no action sequences, and, in fact, there is very little mention about this war. The "good guys" always win while not losing any allies--even when the enemy gets smarter and stronger. There's too much dialog among characters that are ALL alike. Any difference among the characters that existed in the first book, The Elder Gods, is completely gone now. They all talk the same, try to be funny when they aren't even close to being funny, and they all say the same things even though they are from different parts of the world. Too much unnecessary italicizing, too.

This book is nothing new to this series. It starts the same, ends the same, but manages to get worse in the middle of it. Not to mention that the entire story is falling apart and is beginning to get confusing. The story mentions that the Gods are hiring Man to do the fighting because the Gods aren't allowed to kill anything. In the end, though, Man kills virtually nothing while a God (as in all three books, so far) kills off the vast majority of the enemy which leaves everything that is said and done throughout the book meaningless. Hopefully the fourth and final book of the Dreamers will bring this story to a good conclusion and explain everything. Nothing makes sense; and that's not a true David Eddings story.

This new collection of books by the Eddings team is not one of the best. It is filled with redundancies and seems just an attempt to fill space with words to sell books but with out substance.

Although I was thoroughly disappointed in this series so far I guess I just decided to make a donation to the Eddings Fund for Repetetive Storytelling when I purchased (translate: wasted my money on) this book. As I found out in Books I and II of this series this is just another version of a tale Eddings has told before with the same characters renamed. I am actually embarrassed for The Eddings as they have the audacity and lack of imagination to use almost exactly the same dialogue and phrasing for their characters and narration that were used in past Eddings series such as Belgariad/Malloreon and Elenium/Tamuli. I guess they are not too embarrassed to take a check from their publisher for this rehash of well worn, to say the least, material.
I cannot believe I spent a cent on this book after reading the first two. I am just addicted to Sci-Fi and Fantasy I guess, that is the only explanation. I will tell you this-The Buck(s) Stops Here. I will not, and I could not possibly recommend, that anyone purchase this book or any other in this series.
If you enjoy this type of light fantasy I would recommend some of Eddings earlier works such as those series mentioned above. They are not complicated and well developed like much of the fantasy works I enjoy more (i.e. George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, L.E. Modesitt Jr.), but they are light years superior to this series. I would describe The Dreamers as a "dumbed down" and simplified version of earlier Eddings works. Quite frankly, since those earlier works weren't that sophisticated anyway you can see where that leaves us-with kiddie books masquerading as fantasy literature.

I discovered David Eddings for the first time last year. I voraciously devoured The Belgariad and The Mallorean, and I was hungry for more.

I had heard a few things about The Dreamers series that did not bode well. For instance, it was reportedly childlike and the story-telling was stilted and uninteresting. These reports were not true. No: in fact, they came nowhere close to portraying the hideousness of the series.

As I patiently plowed through The Elder Gods and The Treasured One, I found myself overcome with horror. So many things in the series were similar to his first two series, which I had found enjoyable. Did I really enjoy reading such rot? How could I not have noticed it was this terrible? Finally, halfway through Crystal Gorge, I realized that it wasn't me. It was them. One could easily suspect that the book was written by a David Eddings imposter. The same jokes are retold again and again. You will hear many versions of the following repartee:
"Blah blah blah, wouldn't you say?"
"Not if I wanted to live, I wouldn't."
Funny the first time, but once you've heard it three times within a span of twenty pages, it gets a little old.

For every two pages of plot, there are 15 pages of rehashing and irrelevant side story which adds nothing to the depth of characters or enhances the storyline in any way.

For this review, I'll stay away from summarizing the plot. The back of the book covers the plot in almost about as much detail as the book itself.

Please, if you're new to David Eddings, don't read this series first. Don't read it at all, actually, unless you absolutely need to prove to yourself that this book is a startling and unwelcome departure from Eddings' usual writing style.

Tis book is horrible. I can't even get past the 1/4 of the book. A complete waste of money. I've been fantasy reading for about 30 years, and this is by far the worst thing I've ever read in print. Too bad I didn't come here first, but next time I'll check reviews before purchasing a fantasy novel. Loved the Belgariad series and all previous works. I can't believe they let this be published. David, you should be ashamed and give everyone a refund. This one is going in the recycling, I can't even give it away in good conscious.

I have to agree with the many negative reviews written here. Do not read this, even if you think you need to read the end of the series. You don't, you can probably guess the ending after reading book 2, and if you can't, whatever you imagine is better than what is in this book. I don't think I've seen a more disappointing, pointless, and uninteresting ending to a book in a long time, certainly not to an Eddings' book. I'm really hoping this gets re-written and re-released, soon, just to redeem the Eddings reputation for quality fantasy.

I can't recall the last time I've been so disappointed with a book, or a series for that matter. The first one was lighthearted and amusing, but the rest have been repetitive and boring, sloppily written, and overly populated with the same tired one-liners and cutesy dialogue. I don't think I've ever seen a writing gimmick nearly as annoying as all the italicized words cropping up in nearly every sentence of this book. Please, trust your readers to know what the emphasis is, and don't beat us over the head with it. The ending of this series was truly uninspired, and came across as nothing more than a cheap cop-out stolen from a cheesy Dallas season that got poor reviews even back then.

If it's true that Leigh has been secretly writing with David from the very beginning as the authors have tried to tell us, then why this downward spiral after making that public? Whatever these two are doing, it's not working. Please take some time to understand where you've gone wrong, and get back to the quality you used to write, whether as a team or individually.

I made the mistake of only bringing one series with me when I went on vacation to Mongolia, and this was it. I cannot believe anyone would give this book more than two stars and the four to five star people are just deluded. It was repetitive in the extreme, both with the jokes and the narration. As has been said by many on this review, the characters were all very much the same wise-cracking smart mouths and none of them mattered at all. It was deus-ex-machina material, and when I got to the ending, I literally felt like going out and killing a whole tribe of bad fantasy writers. These books were to be my only link to English literature whilst I was amongst the Mongol hordes, and I felt like someone had kicked me in the groin at the end of it. At least General Whatis and Queen Whoha were going to get a deus-ex-machina wedding (I think I vomited at that point). I feel bad about the talent level of David Eddings being reduced to this, and my condolences to him for his wife, but please do not do this to your readers. If you can't hack it, then take up gardening. Writing and automotive repair may not be your forte any more.

David Eddings has been rehashing the Belgariad every time he writes a series, he even pointed it out in the Mallorean with a couple of the characters asking 'why things seemed the same?'...because they were!

Those of you maligning Leigh Eddings should know that she was involved in all the novels.

I loved the Belagriad, enjoyed the Mallorean (started to feel a sense of being cheated during this series), got fed up of being treated to the same story with minor changes after the Elenium, and gave up on anything original from Eddings after the deja vu all over again of the Tamuli. If you want to read and enjoy Eddings, read the Belgariad, if you've read it then you pretty much have his others books covered already; you should move on to George RR Martin. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

I bought this book because I like David Eddings. I shouldn't have bought this. It was very slow and boring. I read the whole book hoping it was going to get better. I refuse to buy the second book.

If you like clever plots, actions, novelty, deep psychological background, surprises, you won't find it here. Read back the others series of the Eddings, you will have fun and thrills. Here, it 's shallow and repetition. When in the same book (the Second of the serie) you have three times the same plot, with a very small difference of point of view, and the same jokes, well, it's boring. The plot is one of PC game, Age of Empires, Civilization.
The foe : The BIG evil Vlagh, insectoids mama, who generates millions and millions of soldiers each week, and has the IQ of a lemming.
The gods :
4 gods who seems to discover humanity just before going to seep, and give 4 others gods ( the heroes) power to wrestle with the foes.
The heroes:
standard humans, who get along telling wise cracks and trying humor. One tactics against the insectoids, build forts, poison them, retreat, and once again, buil fort... at the end, a god finish the foe with pyrotechnics.
Do it four times, and you have four books.

If you know that you will be interrupt several times, and read it 30 pages a day, with a trepidating life around, you will forget that the Viking sergeant crack, was the same that the Indian ranger just said the chapter before.

I couldn't believe that David Eddings could write a book as bad as the reviews were saying, so I had to read it myself. I'm sorry to say that the reviews were spot on. This is bad by any fantasy novel standard, not just Eddings's. The dialogue is terrible, the repetition of exposition is maddening, and the majority of the thinly-developed characters all sound alike and are almost interchangeable in any particular conversation. The authors were already taking on a challenge by having the main characters be "gods" who are never in any danger and seem like they could brush away what few obstacles they face with a wave of their hand if they wanted to, but when you add the element of "dreamers" who foretell the future with nigh perfect accuracy, and the events in the story play out just as they're foretold... I mean, how do you create suspense or any sort of compelling story out of that? The book needed to be either thought-provoking or high comedy to work, and it's not anywhere close on either count. It just has no redeeming qualities, and I've never said that about any fantasy novel, let alone an Eddings novel.