The Tamuli Omnibus

David Eddings' fantasy career began with Pawn of Prophecy in 1982, opening his massive Belgariad sequence. This omnibus collects the 1992-4 Tamuli trilogy: Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones and The Hidden City, totting up to 1,429 pages of slick storytelling. Following from the Elenium trio (1989-91), this takes hardbitten knight Sparhawk, his feisty queen and wife and various companions--including a terminally cute Child Goddess--to the hard-pressed Tamul Empire. Here a revolutionary movement is reanimating ancient warriors and horrors, while treason runs riot in the civil service, and at least one of this world's many gods is secretly behind it all.

Sparhawk must recover that all-powerful talisman the Bhelliom, which at the end of the Elenium was hurled into the depths of the sea. Quirky political manoeuvres and plausible battles abound. Eddings is a fluent storyteller whose humour, banter and unfaltering narrative flow conjure entertainment from highly familiar plot devices. The sense of danger is muted, though: spear-carriers may perish in their thousands while villains are sentenced to burn eternally, but major goodies bounce back from fatal injuries (even a stab in the heart) thanks to epic mercy dashes and healing magic. This is cheerful comfort reading and is a long, and undemanding, enjoyable fantasy. --David Langford

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Unintentionally hilarious, forsooth - Rated
I really really loved the Belgariad - when I was thirteen. I read it three times back-to-back in the way that a thirteen-year-old will do. The level of humour, the lack of complexity to the plot, the vague comfortableness of it suited me down to the ground - when I was thirteen. I think the fact that it was a "heroic" saga with a massive cast fighting a huge war against supposedly appalling odds but strangely enough not one single central character died (or rather, had the decency to stay dead for more than a couple of pages) was very appealing to a thirteen-year-old.

Unfortunately, I read the Tamuli at the ripe old age of thirty five.

The good thing(s) first. These books are a guilty pleasure, in the way that reading absolute trash can be a pleasure. I read them on a beach on holiday where nobody could recognise me. This is the correct place to read them. They are consistently unintentionally hilarious. The prose is so cack-handed, the conversations so universally dreadful that I was chuckling to myself throughout, often laughing out loud. It's as if Eddings is putting together a beautifully observed pastiche of all the cliches, bad dialogue and utter nonsense that befouls the fantasy genre.
Sadly, he isn't. This is the real McCoy. It's dire.

Every single one of his characters, whether a child Goddess, or a hardened knight, or a sneaky thief, or a king, or whatever, is EXACTLY the same. They all speak the same, with the same clunky turns of phrase, and every single one cracks the same weak two or three very smug, very teenage jokes again and again and AGAIN until you either laugh at how terrible it all is or hurl the book against a wall. I kept on telling my wife that I was desperate for a bloody great meteorite to hit the party and kill a few of them randomly to stir it up a bit, if only to stop the "here's a smug final comment indicating how incredibly tough/clever/sneaky/beautiful I am" converations. All of these characters sound like amiable but slightly irritating teenagers.

It's hilarious to "enjoy" the ruminations of supposedly brilliant warriors whose logical insights and tactical acuity are pretty much those of your average thirteen-year-old. Machiavelli this certainly isn't (although Machiavelli is probably a place name that Eddings has shoved somewhere on one of his silly heroic maps).

I giggled wildly at the recitations of supposedly mesmerisingly exciting legends that sounded like the plot to an episode of He Man.

I was a slightly unsettled at the lack of empathy in some of Eddings' scenes (towards the beginning there's an odd scene with a bunch of sad people stuck in a house in the back side of nowhere, who've all grown to hate each other, and Eddings condemns them flatly without so much as a trace of empathy for what could have made them so miserable and angry - again, rather a teenage perspective).

His "plot" involves a troop of people walking from place to place to have near-identical smug conversations with identikit fantasy stereotypes.

But hey nonny, my liege, it's not worth getting cross about how bad it all is. For those who like this sort of thing, this is exactly the sort of thing that they will like.

My tip of Eddings is that if he really wants to embrace the market for teenage boys he should try a crossover series called "Porn of Prophecy". That could be great.

In the name of the Church and the holy mother..... - Rated
I have read this title as its seperate paperbacks and have now bought the omnibus edition as a valued addition to my library. I have to say Eddings is NOT david gemmell, the plotlines are not devious or dark, twisting or suprising. that said, his characters are amusing, whitty, humorous, cute and involving. However the use of the Bhelliom, similarities with the Saphire rose, diamond throne and the earlier elenium titles does guide you along the plot a little before you read. Thats the downside and thats why i couldnt give 5 stars. The redeeming factors, and something Eddings manages better than most is the utilisation of familiarity in the characters. I really like the character Sparhawk, his wife the queen and Talen the thief. The goddess though i find tiresome, REALLY tiresome! All in all though i really like Eddings but will state simply that if you want a enjoyable read then hes the author for you, however if you want an intelligent read within the Genre then he's a weak second to David Gemmell.....Happy reading.

I waited a long time for this and was diasappointed - Rated
This was the first Eddings book I bought. When I read the synopsis for this book I thought that it sounded great. Zombies, ghouls, gods etc. made me want to buy it immediately. After I bought it and was waiting delivery I found out that it would be a good idea to read the Bhelliom trilogy first, as many of the characters from it are in the Tamuli etc. I kept the Tamuli, patiently, on my shelf and began reading the Bhelliom, probably the best books I have ever read. Then came the day when I opened up the Tamuli trilogy...only to be severly let down. I waited a good few months for this book and was very disappointed. The first book is really just about a very long walk. What really annoyed me about this was the fact that when a character suggested a good plan etc. another would say it couldn't be done. Then, later in the book, the original plan was executed as they had 'conveniently' found a way around it. This happens often. It also seemed very fairytale-like too and Eddings was running out of ideas fast. What I thought was funny was when a character said something along the lines of being 'Carte Blanc'. To my knowledge this is French. I don't think France exits in Eddings' world so how do they know how to speak its language? It might have been an ok book if the Bhelliom wasn't so great, maybe I set my sights to high, but I did find myself becoming bored with it a almost had to force myself to finish it.

Average - Rated
First Eddings book I have read and till the last book was VERY disappointed. The characters were too good to be true and general descriptions about characters built no good imagery in my mind. The general information on the surroundings was also weak in building up images of where the characters were. The main strength to this book was the plot and story, it was both interesting and gripping. I was tempting to bin this after the first novel but read on and was glad I finished it, the last book I couldn't put down. However the wit and silly modern day English comments made by these imaginary characters troubled me throughout and the author would do well to spend more time on bringing the characters use of language in line with their supposed time rather than improving their wit.

Overall worth a look if you have exhausted all the Gemmel novels, but generally weak.

A fine piece of storytelling - Rated
Contrary to the unjustified opinions of some reviews of this series of books, I believe this sequel to the Elenium is a strong example of Edding's powerful fantasy fiction.

Firstly - don't read this if you haven't read the Elenium! Of course you are going to find it difficult to engage with the characters if you enter the series after all the exposition has been accomplished. Also, as a sequel, you have to expect that the "bad guys" are going to be somewhat less straightforward than those of the first series, who were unsurprisingly defeated at the end of the Elenium.

Next - don't complain about it being similar (okay, very similar) to the Elenium/Belgariad/Mallorean. From the blurb you can tell that it's going to be about a quest (fairly standard for fantasy fiction) to rid the world of evil (sound familiar to anyone?). There are only a certain number of ways to accomplish this, namely by killing the evil involved. The real strength of Edding's writing is in the detail and dialogue of the story, not necessarily the unpredictable plotline.

One of the problems with The Tamuli is that when Eddings and his wife were creating the world, it was done so in a much shorter time than that of the Belgariad. This has led to a lack of depth in some areas, but by no means is it a superficial world. The cultures are all developed beyond those you will find in many books, there's no use of typical "monster" sterotypes, since the Trolls and Ogres of this world have been portrayed as more intelligent than most.

To those who find the characters to be "dull" or "unimaginative" I say that the range of different personalities is enough to keep most people interested. The presence of Aphrael throughout is somewhat irritating I'll admit - the Child-Goddess takes a lot of the threat elements in any fight situations.

The inclusion of political elements in this book pushes it above the more recent works of the Eddings, namely The Redemption of Althalus and the Dreamers, where the more adult themes are removed due to the more primitive societies in which the books are set. The Tamuli encourages the reader to see a conflict across all layers of the Daresian continent, and one that engulfs all citizens of the world of the Elenium and Tamuli.

The climax to the series is fulfilling, whilst perhaps lacking the emotional resonance of the Mallorean, which is to be expected as it is the culmination of only six books, rather than ten.

In conclusion, if you're new to Eddings, read the Belgariad first. It's still his best work. If you've read that, and the Mallorean, then read the Elenium! Again, that is a superior example of storytelling. Only then should you tackle this series of novels.