Redemption of Althalus

     This book starts with the adventures of a thief having a run of bad luck. Unfortunately, even when he reaches the place he calls home, things don’t really go right for him. He gets roped into stealing a book from an unoccupied house. Sadly for him, the house isn’t quite as unoccupied as he’s been told. It contains a goddess masquerading as a cat. As the story progresses, they recruit a group of people to help combat the forces of the goddess’s brother, who are trying to unmake the world. Over the course of two years, the group fights the enemy generals one by one and leads their group to victory.

     I really enjoy this book. This is the last of the good Eddings fantasy novels. The Dreamers series that Eddings’ wrote after this book pretty much took the plot from this one, made slight changes to the main characters and stretched it into three books. Despite the length of it, much of the “traveling” is left out. All the scenes have some kind of significance to them. There’s a lot of recap time with the various forces and army commanders about what everyone else is doing and the fact they are working for deities is an open secret. Taking this book by its parts, this is substandard. The plot is typical, the characters act like every other character in every other fantasy novel, and the villains are unintelligent. Although something about the way David and Leigh Eddings put together the story still makes it an entertaining read and my second favorite of their novels. Maybe it’s that despite all the clichés, there’s more humanity in the characters and situations than many of the new books that are coming out now. I can relate to the girl who wants to hurt her father’s murderer, the thief who misses his friends of the past, the chronically hungry teenager even. This novel is very representative of their other works and it’s a good choice if you don’t want to commit to a 6-10 book series purchase but want to try them out.