The Elder Gods
(The Dreamers, Book 1)
By David & Leigh Eddings

      We now live in a Tolkeinesque world. Epic fantasy is the current vogue, vast magical worlds, heroes and villains, and frequent battles between good and evil. The new popularity of the Lord of the Rings (LOR) film trilogy has brought hordes of fantasy non-readers into the fold, and LOR books are now being read for the first time by a new audience raised on MTV and nothing more challenging than Freddie vs. Jason. There is a good reason for this.

      LOR is filled with more than action scenes: it contains a fantasy realm full of characters that readers/filmgoers care about. Would the new films be as successful if the audience didn’t care about Frodo and Sam? In fact, there was a reported high stress level in the film audience before the release of the last film in the trilogy, due to severe worries about the fate of several characters. Would Frodo make it out alive? What about his companions, and the various warriors, kings, and wizards?

     It is exactly this factor that is lacking in The Elder Gods. Certainly, the Eddings have displayed a great effort in the creation of yet another fantasy world filled with the typical kings, gods, and mortals, each with varied aims and talents, who all must interact until a final and deciding battle between (see above) good and evil. This large work, if nothing else, must be applauded. But the narrative simply did not draw me in.

      In addition, the authors’ style seemed a bit over-trivialized, to the point of being obsessive. Detail after minute detail is explained, listed, cataloged, and explored. Characters, who inevitably lacked any emotional depth, retold the “story so far” to each other, over and over, until it became tedious and somewhat abrasive. I found myself beginning to skim; that is almost always a bad sign.

      A positive note: the story revolves around four children, called Dreamers, who might be able to foretell the outcome of future battles with the Ultimate Bad-Guy of the story (he is king of and controls an area called The Wasteland). The concept is interesting, to a point, but each Dreamer needs an influx of humanity to make the reader care enough to spend $26.00 and plow through four hundred and four pages. Something to think about before buying any of the following titles in this projected four-volume series.