RIP David Eddings
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009Eddings-bashing might be fashionable – hell, I did it myself just recently – but he was a very good, very successful fantasy writer. His work may have been formulaic (though he did ring the changes on his tropes), but there’s a reason that a lot of it is a cliche. It’s because he made those ideas so popular, and without him Robert Jordan – to name only one – wouldn’t have had anything to subvert or comment on. He used to say he never read in the field, because it would ruin what he was working on himself, but the field damn well read him.
And furthermore, his work is always intensely readable. He wasn’t a great stylist, or even a particularly “good” writer, but his sense of character and pacing is good and his worlds are boldly sketched. And in particular – which I think is part of the secret of his success – he’s very, very good at writing fantasies of political agency and fantasies of home & family.
Edit: I’ve been reminded that I forgot Leigh, his wife and co-author. She contributed just as much to all of the books as he did, and it was a Good Day for fantasy when her name started appearing on the covers too. She died two years ago, sadly.