View original postView original postWell I mostly loathe Egwene but she does come off a lot more real then Ce'Nedra, and she gets the shit kicked out of her regularly before losing her lover and going out in a blaze of glory. She's a bitch but she's very human. Moraine-> Polgara and Elayne -> Ce'nedra seem better comparisons and while RJ does a less than wonderful job with either of them they do come off better.
View original postThe thing with Egwene - at times, fortunately not all the time - is that she seems very strongly Mary Sue in the original sense of being a character who the author wants to be so great and perfect and better than the others, which just irritates readers. Especially in that infamous prisoner in the WT sequence, which seemed intended not only to convince the WT and Elaida of how superb Egwene was, but also the countless readers who had indicated their dislike for her.
Yeah Egwene's WT time was all kinds of weird. It's one of those occasions not too rare in books, but usually absent from RJ's, where a protagonist alleged master-strategy is basically proven wise because the author proclaimed it so, and made it so, rather than it actually making any sense.
View original postSo I consider her more "Mary Sue" than any of Eddings' characters - Polgara has a certain "practically perfect in every way" aspect to her, true, but she's modest and far from showy about it (except, again, in her own series, where her impetuosity and resentful temper make her rounded enough). But yes, obviously the comparisons you make make far more sense in terms of roles and characters. And yes, RJ does do a better job - I too have too many fond memories of Eddings to attack him too hard, and still enjoy rereads if not as much anymore as I once did, but his characterization is not too great even by the standards of Robert Jordan or other contemporary epic fantasy writers.
I have to admit that's probably accurate, Polgara is a justified Sue because she isn't an 16 year old girl suddenly catapulted to power and in her own book nobody is sitting around singing her praises when she's young just giving her a certain amount of extra respect that makes sense for the daughter-apprentice of an ancient and legendary badass.
I also have fond memories of the series and the fun thing about Eddings is that he's a great re-read. I don't know why, but the series is just good.
View original postThere's a certain similarity to the pair of them, though, when you start thinking about it, in terms of how they characterize women and gender relations - the old-fashioned aspect of it, the notions of women being almost an alien species who conspire to confuse men, and men being pretty much helpless once a woman gets them in her sights, that sort of thing.
It's got a distinct Men are from Mars Women from Venus take on things, which at times is irritating but then anything not this-minute modern tends to be. On of my other big favorites, and simultaneous to when I was first reading Eddings, was Anne McCaffrey and her take on feminism includes the heroine being slapped and shaken by the hero regularly. The 'women can't be understood' approach is fairly reasonable for a male author to use its just a queer one when your wife of many years is the co-author. So is the almost endless series of May-December romances which are younger gal to older guy except for two exceptions where the women never age, Sephrenia-Vanion and Polgara-Durnik. I can't help but feel the Brotherhood of Sorcerers suicides might have come off better if one of them fell in love with a mortal women who died of old age or something.
View original postView original postPolgara has her irritating qualities but she's not as bad until it gets rubbed in your nose with Sephrenia-clone and she fits the behavior of what you'd expect from the ancient super-sorceress, she's mor ejustified s a Mary-Sue, my biggest objection to her is that she never goes MIA Gandalf or Allanon style to let characters grow or develop without her there to help and overshadow. At least Belgarath gets a long phase of not being there in Queen of Sorcery followed by being weak and presumably powerless in Book 4.
View original postTrue. As a protagonist, Belgarion really doesn't do much on his own - most of the time he has either Polgara or Belgarath, or a lot of the time both of them, to guide his hand. And even when neither is there, like with the Zakath scenes, he still has the Orb. And the Prophecies.
I'll give Eddings some credit for having Garion blunder around in Guardians of the West for a while unrestrained by Prophecy or ancient relatives. Those are some of his better scenes, bringing a pair of Armies to heel then getting chewed out by Belgarath over his pyrotechnics.
View original postI thought the attempts to balance Sephrenia worked out alright, actually, though admittedly it's mostly in the Tamuli - with the racial tensions issues and the greater emphasis on her not being without mistakes in her love life. In the Elenium, it's only really Aphrael who cuts her down to size once or twice.
Yeah I tend to forget about the Tamuli, even in Domes she's gets kicked around a bit and it's probably the biggest plot point of Shining Ones. The problem is that by then she's not the wise and mysterious keeper of dangerous arcana anymore but more of side note to a God-killer and his divine daughter, and the gods have been made rather mundane by that point. It's a habit of Eddings to overpower his main characters and keep writing them even afterwards till it loses it's mystery factor and becomes rather cheesy.
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