sawyl | Sorceress of Darshiva (Reply)

Having reached the fourth of David Eddings Malloreon series with Sorceress of Darshiva, I feel like I'm beginning to close in on the end. Which is just as well, because I've always found Sorceress a bit of a slog: although there are some enjoyable moments, there's far too much padding and too many bits that never really catch fire for me. But enough complaining; it's time to get on with the rest of the review.

Rather than start with the plot proper, the book opens with a series of flashes of events elsewhere in the world: the Alorn Kings, led by Queen Porenn of Drasnia, making diplomatic overtures to King Urgit of Cthol Murgos; Urgit telling Agachak, the grolim Hierarch of Rak Urga, to push off; and Emperor Zakath musing on the whereabouts of Garion and friends following their disappearance from Mal Zeth. Garion, it turns out, is following Zandramas' trail to the Melcene Islands. Here Belgarath finds a unedited copy of the Ashabine Oracles in the hands of a rather inept alchemist, they discover another former resting place of the Sardion, this time in the University of Melcene's museum of comparative theology, and they discover Zandramas' reason for travelling to the islands: to recruit Archduke Otrath, a distant relative of the emperor, who she can crown as a king of the Angaraks to fulfil one of the prerequisites for the final meeting.

The Island of Melcene feels a bit like the Shire with added capitalism. The land is very English, with neat field boundaries and pruned oaks and foxes imported to allow the well-to-do to hunt them, the great university has more than hint of Oxbridge about it, while the unquestioned existence of the apparently immortal Senji reminds me of the similarly long-lived Professor Chronotis in Douglas Adams Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective — although I suspect this is more convergence than cross-fertilisation. The comic encounter with the drunken wife of Archduke Otrath is fun because it shows Silk truly off balance whilst allowing Beldin to show his charming and compassionate side.

Following the trail back to the Mallorean continent and the principality of Peldane, the party finds themselves caught between the armies of Urvon and Zandramas, with the former wanting to usurp the latter's position as Child of Dark. The two grolims are more evenly matched than expected: where Urvon is supported by the demon lord Nahaz, Zandramas has called upon the aid of the demon lord Morja; but where Urvon is dependent on regular troops, Zandramas has sent her underling Naradas to recruit a force of elephant calvary which promise to turn the tide of battle. Trying to slip past these two mighty armies, Garion and friends are forced to repair a sunken barge in order to slip across the River Magan into Darshiva under the cover of the omnipresent fog. During the crossing, they are recaptured by General Atesca and brought back to Emperor Zakath's base camp.

For some reason, this part of the journey doesn't really grab me and I struggle to differentiate Peldane from Darshiva. I'm also not very taken with fights, although I suppose Garion does battle a dragon — actually Zandramas in her other form — but still, it all comes as a bit of relief when Atesca finally picks them up and takes them away to somewhere more interesting.

After an initial bout of hostility, Garion and Zakath bury the hatchet when the Emperor learns from Cyradis that he must join the party and travel to Kell. Despite the resistance of Atesca and Brador, the Mallorean Chief of Intelligence, Zakath hits the road and the group have an enjoyable time travelling through the relatively empty province of Darshiva. Whilst scouting in his wolf shape, Garion encounters female wolf with a starving pup and persuades the others to add them to the party. In order to accomodate them, Silk steals a small carriage and swindles a fleeing shopkeeper out of enough groceries to keep the wolves going until they're able to hunt again. Travelling by carriage, Ce'Nedra is able to concentrate on using Beldaran's amulet, given to her on her betrothal, which allows her to listen in to conversations at great distance and means, in this case, that she is able to relay the battle plans of the two armies. Sneaking round the two forces the company begin to ascend into the Dalsian mountains, only for the book to end with a final dramatic encounter with the demon lord Nahaz.

This last section seems a lot more satisfactory than its predecessor. The situation with Zakath is nicely handled and builds on the tension established between the emperor and the seeress during his poisoning back in Demon Lord of Karanda. The situation with the shopkeeper and the cabriolet are suitably comic, as are some of the bits where Garion attempts to explain his wife to the she-wolf. The situation with the amulet reminds me of nothing quite so much as the episode in CS Lewis' The Horse and His Boy, when the Hermit of the Southern Marches uses his reflecting pool to recount the events of the great battle for Anvard to Aravis, Hwin and Bree; but I'm not sure whether this is conscious or not. The book ends on a fine note, not least because it allows Durnik an opportunity for a spot of character development — always a bit tricky, given that his primary distinguishing characteristics are practicality, omni-competence, and quiet stolidity.

When I started the book, I noticed that I'd given it a less than stellar mark on LibraryThing when I last read it and I couldn't quite remember why. Having finished it, I think I now know: the slog that is the middle section. But I suppose the book does its job, pushing things on to their inevitable conclusion, even if I'm not particularly wild about it. (I as a side note: I think it's the only book I own to have featured on Good Show Sir. And rightly so: the half-naked silver wolf-woman on the cover of my Bantam edition doesn't bare any real relation to the plot.