Pawn of Prophecy- David Eddings

Long ago, the evil God Torak fought a war to obtain an object of immense power – the Orb of Aldur. But Torak was defeated and the Orb reclaimed by Belgarath, the sorcerer.

Garion, a young farm lad, loves the story when he first hears it from the old storyteller. But it has nothing to do with him. Or does it? For the stories also tell of a prophecy that must be fulfilled – a destiny handed down through the generations. And Torak is stirring again…

Oh my. Where to start with this one? Well for starters, this was first published in 1983. I was born two years later and it has taken me up untill now to read. How poor am I for never being introduced to Eddings in my earlier years? I believe I could’ve loved this. Yet I read it as a fullgrown man (only growing I can still do is fat…). This should not cloud my judgement over a book of Epic Fantacy, I have read enough to know what normaly happens with those.

Pawn of Prophecy started out great. The history lesson made me exited for what was coming. It was going to be a war with gods and magical items and stuff, yet our hero starts out a snotty nosed orphan boy who pays a blonde blue eyed girl, I believe them to be 11 by this stage, sweets for kisses in a barn. Realy? When I was 11 I didn’t even know my dick was so important (not that it is important now or anything) as to make up a whole story with it (again, dicks werent featured in this book, my problem was with how quick the boy grew up).

There is an obvious importance to the child, seeing as we see most of the book through his eyes, but instead the people that were supposed to protect him decided to pull a Dumbledore (for those of you who do not know Harry Potter, pulling a Dumbledore means that if you know something is important to battle a impossible enemy and that enemy can only be beaten by a certain child, then drop that child of by people that can cover him with so much ignorance and sugar coating shit, that when said shit happens to hit the fan, you take a whole half page to stop the story and explain what it is that needs to be done.) Then you go and stop the book right there, in the middle of things just turning exiting again. I was literaly by page 30 or so wating for the truth to come out so the story could progress, instead I had to sit through 314 more pages to get to the explanaition that I already saw.

Another thing that got to me was paragraphs… I know I am no epic writer and all but you cant have the story go: “….and they went up to the room. (imagine there was a long banquet scene and stuff happened before they went up to their room, then instead of putting a paragraph, just continue:) “Dawn broke clear and crispy….”. For me, a page break is important from time to time, it is how I plan when to take a break, you know, go for a leak, imagine them sleeping a bit before the story goes on, but no, the story continues like it wants to get to the end just like me.

I am sorry, if this does all sound negative it probly is. I remember on many occasions telling my wife that nothing was happening, that things seemed to be drawn out to the frustration of both me and the protagonist, that things were boring, etc. I get why tho, this was book one in The Belgaraid series, maybe book two will speed us up, who knows? I only own book one and two so if two goes the same way I won’t be continueing or even make an effort to try find out what happened.

One thing I will say is that this has been on my shelves for quite a while now, maybe I shouldve picked them up in an earlier stage. Maybe my mind just realy doesn’t want to know Y.A books or understand them. I gave this book a 3 out of 5 on GR and was so glad I could finaly finish it when I did. It will be recomended to fans of both Eddings and those who follow Y.A fantacy. I read this for my OWLs readathon under Divination, because it features prophecies of some kind. What exactly that prophecy is, I will hopefully learn in Queen of Sorcery. Hold thumbs for me please.🤞

This is as much as I can say for the first book in The Belgaraid.

Hope you all have a great day.