Indeed, I wouldn’t recommend it-we’ve cultivated a careful shorthand of allusions, Biblical and Shakespearean and otherwise, that to attempt to sever a book from other texts would leave it a mangled mess. It’s difficult if nigh impossible to read books in isolation from other texts. Modesitt, Jr., whose Recluce novels kept me company on many a rainy day as a teen, but now that I’m re-reading them, I’m finding more to criticize. And there’s nothing wrong with that, just as there’s nothing wrong with enjoying his novels. Indeed, he admits it: he writes to a formula. But as I read more fantasy and start to become more familiar with its tropes, I look back and realize that his novels aren’t exactly the best that fantasy has to offer. The thing is, it’s marvellous that fantasy like Eddings’ books exists, because it’s exactly the sort of thing that switched on my pre-adolescent brain. (I developed some nice upper body strength from lifting those tomes.)
I soon after started reading A Song of Ice and Fire. I read Papa Tolkien first, but it was the impressive heft of the first three Belgariad books in a single omnibus that ignited my Grade 7 mind with a thirst for more tales of wizards and magic and intrigue. I’ve mentioned, once in a while, how David Eddings’ Belgariad was my gateway into fantasy.
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