The Shining Ones

[sawyl]

Over the weekend I finished The Shining Ones, the middle novel in David Eddings' Tamuli trilogy, which features the great pivotal event that changes the focus of the current series and alters the significance of events in The Elenium trilogy. Consequently, it's not possible to talk about the events of the novel without including spoilers for both series. You have been warned!

Despite having foiled recent attempts to overthrow Sarabian, the Tamul Emperor, Sparhawk has decided that reinforcements are needed. Consequently Patriarch Emban is dispatched back to Chyrellos on the Eosian continent to summon the rest of the Church Knights, while Sparhawk and his party, aided on their way by an unusual ship provided for them by the Goddess Aphrael, retrieve Bhelliom, the all-powerful sapphire rose, from the sea where they threw it after death of the Elder God Azash. Gradually getting to know the power of the stone, Sparhawk uses it to teleport his party from one part of the Tamul Empire to another, greatly increasing his enemy's confusion. Travelling to Cygnesca in the centre of the country, he meets a diplomat — actually the brother of Foreign Minister Oscagne — who decides to accompany the group. With Itagne along to provide background information, Sparhawk and company encounter a group of Delphae — the titular Shining Ones — who offer to assist them in their fight against the Cyrgai. Unfortunately, the situation is greatly complicated by Sephrenia's vehement hatred of the Delphae and everything to do with them.

The opening suffers from a few problems, not least of which is Aphrael's impossible ship — strongly implied to be a hydrofoil brought from another world and crewed by aliens — which, having told the knights not to ask too many questions, the Goddess then proceeds to hangs a lantern on every question they ask which seems to approach the truth. The episode is probably intended to be comic and the ship is probably an allusion to a specific vessel from somewhere else — although I'm not sure where! — but the whole thing feels slightly jarring, not least because the alien world of the strange ship is never mentioned again. I'm also troubled by Sparhawk's sudden ability to teleport, which comes across as nothing quite so much as an author abandoning his constraints because he finds them boring, and which requires special pleading to explain why it can't be used for Convenient Plot Reasons. Delphaeus presents an opportunity for a spot of bucolic indulgence and anachronistic dialogue, complete with Eddings' characteristic thees and thous. Normally I'd complain about this, but frankly it's a relief not to have to put up with Caalador's horrible country bumpkin accent — imagine a very, very bad attempt to do comedy West Country.

Meanwhile, back in the capital of Matherion, Ehlana and Emperor Sarabian are taking steps against the Interior Ministry. Having imprisoned Minister Kolata during the coup, the pair realise that they can use the ministry's files to track down every dodgy operative in the empire. In order to disguise their goal from the other conspirators, they devise a new filing system which they implement by moving all the papers out on the lawns of the imperial compound. When this fails to pay off, Stragen, Caalador and Ehlana's Atan bodyguard Mirtai, break into the ministry at night to search for secret rooms. By the time Sparhawk returns accompanied by Xanetia of the Delphae, the Queen and the Emperor are almost ready to stage their counter coup when Xanetia's telepathic abilities reveal a spy in their inner circle: Zalasta of Styricum is an agent of Cyrgon and their principal opponent. With Sephrenia still furious at the presence of Xanetia, Sparhawk and Ehlana come up with a clever way to force Zalasta into the open without having to rely on the Delphaeic woman's word.

With Xanetia's revelation and Zalasta's unmasking before the Imperial Council, the book promptly goes into full on explaining mode, dedicating quite some time to explaining how Zalasta seems to have been behind every bad thing that has happened in the last three hundred years. Not only is he, along with a small band of renegade Styrics, responsible for the current troubles, but he was also responsible for the cloud that haunted Sparhawk on his way to face Azash in Zemoch and the Dawn Men they were forced to fight while travelling through no-time. The shadow that haunted Sparhawk and Ehlana, first in The Sapphire Rose and later in Domes of Fire, wasn't an aspect of the troll gods or of Azash as they'd thought at the time, but an aspect of a spell of Zalasta's, made visible by the power of Bhelliom's rings. (This last definitely stretches the continuity: in Sapphire Rose Sparhawk confidently claims that the shadow is the result of a small group working together. At it's most charitable, this could be read as being Zalasta and his band of outcasts, but it feels like a bit of cheat because one of the ground rules of this sort of epic fantasy novel is that you're supposed to be able to trust the character's mystical assertions).

With the central climax out of the way Aphrael dedicates herself to tidying up the various characters' relationships: Kalten and Alean decide to settle down; Melidere manoeuvres Stragen into marriage via an offer he can't refuse; and Vanion and Sephrenia finally get back together. With that all sorted the plot picks up again, firstly with a plot to deal with Interior Ministry's remaining agents, and secondly with a plan to deal with the entire herd of trolls, who seem to be determined to demolish northern Atan down its bedrock. With the help of Bhelliom, Sparhawk creates a vast escarpment across the cape and, with the help of five thousand Church Knights recently arrived from Eosia and a few legions of Atans, sets about taking the god Cyrgon's trollish allies away from him.

The character development section is treated as light relief after the big revelations and all the heavy exposition, with Aphrael manipulating events and acting as the author's proxy — and Eddings is self-aware enough to flag this up by having Sparhawk tell Aphrael that she spends far too much time meddling with things that would sort themselves out perfectly well if she were to leave them alone. The mass murder of the Interior Ministry's double agents is deftly handled via a series of short cameos, each showing an individual professional assassin at work; although I find Sarabian's hand-wringing and Oscagne's worries about legality a bit odd, considering the Emperor's previous comment that he could have his Prime Minister executed simply for having the wrong haircut.