Line #75 Creator/DavidEddings


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/david_eddings.jpg]]
2	->''"Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don’t have calluses on your soul, this isn’t for you. Take up knitting instead."''[[note]]Eddings advice to aspiring writers[[/note]]
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4	David Carroll Eddings (July 7, 1931 – June 2, 2009) was a modern American author who specialized in archetypical epic tales. All of his work was written jointly with his wife, Leigh Eddings, but she only started to receive co-author credit on works published from 1995 on.
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6	Both David and Leigh served prison time for child abuse in the early 1970s, having been found guilty of abusing their two adopted children. (The children were consequently removed from the Eddings' custody.) The trial and conviction ended Eddings' former career as a college professor, but incredibly, although the conviction was extensively covered in the local South Dakota press at the time, the story was never resurrected during the Eddings' long joint writing career -- even though both continued to use their real names as authors and in their personal lives.
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8	After their prison sentences ended, The Eddingses turned to fiction to make ends meet. After a series of flopped one-shot modern-day adventure novels published in the 1970s, Eddings was inspired by seeing a copy of ''The Lord of the Rings'' at the grocery store he worked to turn his attention to fantasy. Most of the books Eddings wrote (from the 1980s on) were HighFantasy {{Doorstopper}}s, and were part of a long series (some of which were in [[TheVerse the same universe]]). They were also StrictlyFormula, {{Troperiffic}}, and were decidedly Love-them-or-hate-them.[[note]]If you’re wondering how a pair of convicted child abusers became acclaimed and beloved fantasy authors, the Eddings child abuse convictions did not become widespread knowledge until 2020, due to only being reported on by local newspapers that were not archived online until years after they’d both died.[[/note]]
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10	There was also [[DeadpanSnarker snark]]. Lots and lots and lots of snark. Snark which was often used to [[LampshadeHanging hang lampshades]].
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12	Eddings saw history as cyclic, and so he was willing to recycle plot arcs in his series. ''The Malloreon'' has a similar structure to ''The Belgariad'', for instance (which is even used as a major ''plot point'').
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14	Most, if not all, of his books were co-written with his wife, Leigh, though only the latest gave her shared credit (due to ExecutiveMeddling - his publisher figured that boys wouldn't want to read a fantasy-book with a girl's name on the cover.) This is probably one of the main reasons for the abundancy of strong female characters, who are outspoken and fierce enough to make you wonder how those medieval societies manage to maintain their male-dominated status quo...
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16	Leigh Eddings died in February 2007 and David Eddings in June of 2009. Both had been dead several years before their child abuse convictions resurfaced.
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18	Not to be confused with [[VideoGame/{{Borderlands}} Claptrap's]] voice actor.
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20	[[folder:Works]]
21	!!''The Belgariad'' 'Verse
22	* ''The Belgariad''
23	** ''Pawn of Prophecy''
24	** ''Queen of Sorcery''
25	** ''Magician's Gambit''
26	** ''Castle of Wizardry''
27	** ''Enchanters' End Game''
28	* ''The Malloreon''
29	** ''Guardians of the West''
30	** ''King of the Murgos''
31	** ''Demon Lord of Karanda''
32	** ''Sorceress of Darshiva''
33	** ''Seeress of Kell''
34	* ''Belgarath the Sorcerer'' (the first prequel)
35	* ''Polgara the Sorceress'' (the second prequel)
36	* ''The Rivan Codex'' (a collection of essays, notes and background material giving insight into how the series was created. {{Troperiffic}}.)
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38	!!''The Elenium''' 'Verse
39	* ''The Elenium''
40	** ''The Diamond Throne''
41	** ''The Ruby Knight''
42	** ''The Sapphire Rose''
43	* ''The Tamuli''
44	** ''Domes of Fire''
45	** ''The Shining Ones''
46	** ''The Hidden City''
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48	!!''The Dreamers'' 'Verse
49	* ''The Elder Gods''
50	* ''The Treasured One''
51	* ''Crystal Gorge''
52	* ''The Younger Gods''
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54	!!Other books
55	* ''The Redemption of Althalus'' - a single volume fantasy novel.
56	* ''The Losers'' (please note that this is not a HighFantasy novel and is more of a Randite propaganda piece. It's about a cripple looking for some SliceOfLife, dealing Peer Pressure, etc.)
57	* ''High Hunt'' (Another modern story, his first published novel)
58	* ''Regina's Song'' (Another modern story about a murder mystery, an AngstySurvivingTwin, some {{plot twist}}s here and there)
59	[[/folder]]
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61	----
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63	!!Works by David Eddings with their own pages include:
64	[[index]]
65	* ''Literature/TheBelgariad'' and sequels
66	* ''Literature/TheElenium'' and sequels
67	* ''Literature/TheRedemptionOfAlthalus''
68	[[/index]]
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70	!!Other works by David Eddings contain examples of:
71	* AdaptiveAbility: The Vlagh and its creatures in ''Dreamers''. They adapted to every trick the protagonists use in the previous battles... only to have them devise more. They also forage the battlefield for dropped weapons. Eventually they evolved to the point they had [[spoiler:eight arms on some of the creatures... each carrying four bows]]. This caused the protagonists some anxiety. [[spoiler:At least until they saw the creatures using the bows...as maces.]]
72	* AlwaysIdenticalTwins: In ''Regina's Song'', Regina and her sister were so identical even their parents couldn't tell them apart, and when one of the sisters is murdered only the surviving sister knows for sure which it was.
73	* AngstySurvivingTwin: The plot driver in ''Regina's Song''.
74	* AuthorVocabularyCalendar: Eddings had an obscurely peculiar fascination with the words "obscure," "peculiar," and "fascination." Also "prosaic", "trifle", and especially "blandly". We thought we noticed you noticing.
75	** Don't forget "unmitigated", particularly modifying the word "ass". (The pack animal, of course.)
76	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: In ''Regina's Song'', the Seattle Slasher killed her victims by stabbing them with a syringe of curare to paralyze them, and then slowly carved them to pieces with a linoleum knife. While singing. When she finally tracked down [[spoiler:the man who killed her sister]], she slices him with the knife about eighty times. The coroner wasn't sure of the exact count, as some of the cuts were very close together -- especially around the groin. He was still alive when she cut his throat at the end.
77	* DeusExMachina: Done to death in the Dreamers series. By the third book the cast has since figured out that their job is just to slow the Vlagh's invasion down until the next one occurs to wipe out the enemy army. And at the end of the final book an extra one occurs to make the ultimate victory happen decades in the past, meaning the entire series never happened.
78	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Before the Belgariad, he wrote more down-to-earth stories with mundane problems and lots of unfiltered swearing at the top.
79	* HiveCasteSystem: In ''The Dreamers'' quartet, the original workers and warriors are joined by humanoid bugs capable of semi-independent thought. Eventually this causes problems for the species as contrary points of view need to be dealt with for the first time.
80	* HiveQueen: In ''The Dreamers'' quartet, the enemies are poisonous bugs in widely divergent forms who are controlled by a queen. The queen becomes more human as the books progress.
81	* MasterArcher: The ''Dreamers'' series takes this to its LogicalExtreme with Longbow, an archer who has literally never missed a shot in his life. He began as a simple hunter, but wins great renown as a warrior in the international army assembled by the Elder Gods.
82	* MixAndMatchCritters: In ''The Dreamers'' series, That-Called-the-Vlagh (or just The Vlagh) is a giant female insect who creates thousands and thousands of eggs, and whenever she sees a characteristic she likes, she mixes and matches animals with the characteristics she likes, with bizarre (but very, very, deadly) results.
83	* TheOldGods: ''The Dreamers'' has the original male and female creative powers embodied as [[spoiler:the peasant couple Ara and Omago]].
84	* PalsWithJesus: In ''The Dreamers'', the four gods of the country tend to pal around and be on first name terms with some of their subjects.
85	* PosthumousCharacter: The dead twin in ''Regina's Song''.
86	* RapeAndRevenge: In ''Regina's Song'', a girl is raped and murdered, [[spoiler:inspiring her identical twin to hunt down and messily murder sexual predators in her search for the man responsible]].
87	* ResetButton: ''The Dreamers'' series ends with a massive Reset Button, using time travel to negate the existence of the BigBad and thus negate absolutely everything that occurred in the previous novels.
88	* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: In ''Regina's Song'', the Seattle Slasher is killing off sexual predators in a hunt for one in particular who [[spoiler:raped and murdered her twin sister]].
89	* SeparatedByACommonLanguage: In ''Regina's Song'', when the ensemble students are accosted by the media, they respond by [[FunWithForeignLanguages making random statements in various languages]]. The protagonist (an English teacher) recites the opening stanza of ''Literature/{{Beowulf}}'' in [[UsefulNotes/HistoryOfEnglish West Saxon]].
90	* SerialKiller: ''Regina's Song'' has the Seattle Slasher, a killer who paralyzes sexual predators with a syringe of curare and then carves them to pieces with a linoleum knife. [[spoiler:She was a Mission/Revenge type, targeting sex offenders because one of them raped and murdered her twin sister, and ultimately seeking out and killing the specific rapist responsible for that act.]]
91	* TheStoryThatNeverWas: The fourth ''Dreamers'' book has a DeusExMachina that one-ups the {{Physical God}}s already present as viewpoint characters: the two {{amnesiac\|God}} [[TheOldGods Old Gods]] remember their powers, effortlessly neutralize the BigBad, and make their victory retroactive so the plot of the series never happened. {{Lampshade\|Hanging}}d, even, when they make a passing comment on all the CharacterDevelopment that they unmade.
92	* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: ''Regina's Song'' features not one, but two double-paragraph plot summaries on its back blurb. Both of them, in trying to be mysterious, blatantly state who the killer is and to some extent, what happens after we discover that fact.
93	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: The world was denied another Eddings novel, ''Hunseeker’s Ascent'' (about mountain climbing), when Eddings abandoned it halfway through writing it and burned it, later saying it was "a piece of tripe so bad it even bored me."
94	* WorthlessYellowRocks: In ''The Dreamers'', the four gods hire armies with gold, except for Aracia. Queen Trenicia of the Isle of Akalla won't accept gold--she refers to it as 'yellow lead'--and took gems as payment instead.

Context Creator / DavidEddings