Review: Enchanters' End Game, by David Eddings

[Russ Allbery]

Enchanters' End Game
by David Eddings

Series:    The Belgariad #5
Publisher: Del Rey
Copyright: December 1984
Printing:  February 1990
ISBN:      0-345-33871-5
Format:    Mass market
Pages:     372

And, finally, the conclusion towards which everything has been heading,
and the events for which Castle of Wizardry was the preparation. (This
is therefore obviously not the place to start with this series.) Does
it live up to all the foreshadowing and provide a satisfactory
conclusion? I'd say mostly. The theology is a bit thin, but Eddings
does a solid job of bringing all the plot threads together and giving
each of the large cast a moment to shine.

Enchanters' End Game (I have always been weirdly annoyed by that clunky
apostrophe) starts with more of Garion and Belgarath, and, similar to
the end of Castle of Wizardry, this feels like them rolling on the
random encounter table. There is a fairly important bit with Nadraks at
the start, but the remaining detour to the north is a mostly unrelated
bit of world-building. Before this re-read, I didn't remember how
extensive the Nadrak parts of this story were; in retrospect, I realize
a lot of what I was remembering is in the Mallorean instead. I'll
therefore save my commentary on Nadrak gender roles for an eventual
Mallorean re-read, since there's quite a lot to dig through and much of
it is based on information not available here.

After this section, though, the story leaves Garion, Belgarath, and
Silk for nearly the entire book, returning to them only for the climax.
Most of this book is about Ce'Nedra, the queens and kings of the west,
and what they're doing while Garion and his small party are carrying
the Ring into Mordor— er, you know what I mean.

And this long section is surprisingly good. We first get to see the
various queens of the west doing extremely well managing the kingdoms
while the kings are away (see my previous note about how Eddings does
examine his stereotypes), albeit partly by mercilessly exploiting the
sexism of their societies. The story then picks up with Ce'Nedra and
company, including all of the rest of Garion's band, being their snarky
and varied selves. There are some fairly satisfying set pieces, some
battle tactics, some magical tactics, and a good bit of snarking and
interplay between characters who feel like old friends by this point
(mostly because of Eddings's simple, broad-strokes characterization).

And Ce'Nedra is surprisingly good here. I would say that she's grown up
after the events of the last book, but sadly she reverts to being awful
in the aftermath. But for the main section of the book, partly because
she's busy with other things, she's a reasonable character who
experiences some actual consequences and some real remorse from one bad
decision she makes. She's even admirable in how she handles events
leading up to the climax of the book.

Eddings does a good job showing every character in their best light,
putting quite a lot of suspense (and some dramatic rescues) into this
final volume, and providing a final battle that's moderately
interesting. I'm not sure I entirely bought the theological
ramifications of the conclusion (the bits with Polgara do not support
thinking about too deeply), but the voice in Garion's head continues to
be one of the better characters of the series. And Errand is a delight.

After the climax, the aftermath sadly returns to Eddings's weird war
between the sexes presentation of all gender relationships in this
series, and it left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. (There is
absolutely no way that some of these relationships would survive in
reality.) Eddings portrays nearly every woman as a manipulative
schemer, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil, and there is just
so much gender stereotyping throughout this book for both women and
men. You can tell he's trying with the queens, but women are still only
allowed to be successful at politics and war within a very specific
frame. Even Polgara gets a bit of the gender stereotyping, although she
remains mostly an exception (and one aspect of the ending is much
better than it could have been).

Ah well. One does not (or at least probably should not) read this
series without being aware that it has some flaws. But it has a strange
charm as well, mostly from its irreverence. The dry wise-cracking of
these characters rings more true to me than the epic seriousness of a
lot of fantasy. This is how people behave under stress, and this is how
quirky people who know each other extremely well interact. It also
keeps one turning the pages quite effectively. I stayed up for several
late nights finishing it, and was never tempted to put it down and stop
reading.

This is not great literature, but it's still fun. It wouldn't sustain
regular re-reading for me, but a re-read after twenty years or so was
pretty much exactly the experience I was hoping for: an unchallenging,
optimistic story with amusing characters and a guaranteed happy ending.
There's a place for that.

Followed, in a series sense, by the Mallorean, the first book of which
is The Guardians of the West. But this is a strictly optional
continuation; the Belgariad comes to a definite end here.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Reviewed: 2017-01-14

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>