JKR v. Eddings
Oct. 11th, 2005 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlock10 Reasons Why Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince Would Have Been Better If David Eddings Had Written It
1. The campyness of the HPverse would still be cute and campy, but the dramatic parts would be more dramatic.
2. The jokes would be funnier.
3. They both over-use adverbs, but Eddings makes better use of adjectives.
4. The Half Blood Prince would have turned out to be a character like Silk, and in two weeks he'd have the Order of the Phoenix running like a proper covert spy organization. Meaning more spying and less dying. And in three months he'd have recruited 3/4 of Voldemort's spies to work for the the Order instead. And in six months the Dark Lord would wake up one day to find all his financial assets had disappeared, all his magical items of power had been stolen down to the wand under his pillow at night, nearly every Death Eater had been bought off by the other side, and someone had tied his shoelaces together.
5. If Ginny were Ce'Nedra, she'd never put up with this Angel from Buffy season 3 shit. She'd call him on his idiocy and manipulate him into running in circles for daring to dismiss her.
6. Ginny would have a personality.
7. The mystery of HBP's identity would have been more interesting, and actually mattered to everything else that happened in the book.
8. Neville wouldn't have been forgotten about after being the most awesome character in book 5.
9. Luna would have had a an actual plot purpose instead of being forgotten about too.
10. Dumbledore would have had a more impressive end than waiting around for a Draco of all people to kill him.
EDIT: Half Blood Prince spoilers in comments, vague Belgariad/Mallorean spoilers too.
1. The campyness of the HPverse would still be cute and campy, but the dramatic parts would be more dramatic.
2. The jokes would be funnier.
3. They both over-use adverbs, but Eddings makes better use of adjectives.
4. The Half Blood Prince would have turned out to be a character like Silk, and in two weeks he'd have the Order of the Phoenix running like a proper covert spy organization. Meaning more spying and less dying. And in three months he'd have recruited 3/4 of Voldemort's spies to work for the the Order instead. And in six months the Dark Lord would wake up one day to find all his financial assets had disappeared, all his magical items of power had been stolen down to the wand under his pillow at night, nearly every Death Eater had been bought off by the other side, and someone had tied his shoelaces together.
5. If Ginny were Ce'Nedra, she'd never put up with this Angel from Buffy season 3 shit. She'd call him on his idiocy and manipulate him into running in circles for daring to dismiss her.
6. Ginny would have a personality.
7. The mystery of HBP's identity would have been more interesting, and actually mattered to everything else that happened in the book.
8. Neville wouldn't have been forgotten about after being the most awesome character in book 5.
9. Luna would have had a an actual plot purpose instead of being forgotten about too.
10. Dumbledore would have had a more impressive end than waiting around for a Draco of all people to kill him.
EDIT: Half Blood Prince spoilers in comments, vague Belgariad/Mallorean spoilers too.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 10:05 pm (UTC)*is kind of in love with Sparhawk, BTW*
no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 10:29 pm (UTC)Well, that's not really what you did either-- you just did the Mallorean plot with the HP names, not the HP plot as retouched by another author. But still I know what you're getting at. Actually, that was my problem with the Sparhawk books. I read the two Belgariad series first, and by the time I got around to the books with Sparhawk I was just tired of it. It felt exactly the same to me right down to the sentient glowy blue stone and god-like powers. And I liked the bloody battles less and the world he created less (I'm not so much into the heavy dark-ages style fantasy with religious themes and crusades) than in the other series.
So can't exactly say I share the love. :) But I should add that I *did* read all three of those books, which means I've read 15 books by Eddings, which all in all is a hell of a lot more than I plan to give JKR. She'll get me for HP 7 and if she ever writes again afterward I'll try that to see if she's gotten better by being freed from the constraints of her first series, but if it's just mediocre then chances are low that I'd commit myself to another 7-book series.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 03:23 am (UTC)Sometimes when I am bored I make lists in my head of plot/characterization points cannibalized from the Belgariad/Mallorean for the Elenium/Tamuli. I love both series but DAMN. I couldn't stand The Redemption of Althalus, though; an entire doubly cannibalized series stuffed into one book, with added pseudobestiality!
no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 06:13 am (UTC)the concept of the Anakha is fucking awesome
I remember thinking the name was pretty cool, along wiht the whole godly powers thing. Even if repetitive, godly powers can never really not be cool. Then when SW episode 1 came out I kept trying to remember if the name was the same as Anakin.
MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli
Date: 2005-10-12 06:30 am (UTC)The enormous appeal of Sparhawk-as-Anakha for me wasn't the whole godly powers thing, which honestly made him less interesting and much more Generic Hero than I liked. It was the idea that the gods fear Anakha because he's the one being whose actions can't be predicted by fate or destiny, which makes him a total wildcard/chaotic neutral, and the gods fear what they can't control. Unfortunately that didn't get a lot of play in the series, as the wacky godly powers got precedence.
The Belgariad/Mallorean is still the stronger series, but the Elenium/Tamuli gets love from me for having cranky old Sparhawk as the protagonist. And even though it cribs every plot and character element from the Belgariad, it sort of gets love from me for making the character elements really fucked up--only 'sort of' because, man, some of that stuff is REALLY REALLY MESSED UP. (Aphrael as Sparhawk's daughter and setting her sights on the queenship and Talen as prince consort? That is not happy. All the characters are like, "Oh, we love Aphrael 'cause she's so sweet and cute", but she's the scariest effing control freak goddess ever, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that that was never addressed seriously in the series.)
And since your icon reminds me, some Fruits Basket doujinshi, including a slightly Shigure/Rin one.
Re: MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli
Date: 2005-10-12 06:38 am (UTC)But I was totally okay with it when I was nine, which makes me kick myself in amusement when I react badly now to scary age differences in series. (Realistically scary age differences--I'm not counting, say, the vampire lovers on "Buffy", who look/act late 20s as they woo Buffy even if they're really in their 100s.)
Re: MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli
Date: 2005-10-12 07:01 am (UTC)It was the idea that the gods fear Anakha because he's the one being whose actions can't be predicted by fate or destiny, which makes him a total wildcard/chaotic neutral, and the gods fear what they can't control.
YES! YES! I was trying to remember what I had liked about it and THAT was it, not the godly powers. It was the idea of him being the only person in the world without a destiny.
(Though I owe you enormous thanks for the Ender's Game rec, 'cause that book was awesome.)
I'm glad you loved it. That book is in my top 4 favs (see also LOTR, Dark Tower, tHHGttG.) I rec it to everyone.
Someday you'll read the Dark Tower books, and I think you'll love them too.
Silk, I think, was my favorite Eddings character. I loved them all, but I think I loved Silk the most.
but she's the scariest effing control freak goddess ever, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that that was never addressed seriously in the series
That always left me unsettled too-- glad to know I wasn't the only reader who thought so. The whole thing seemed like some twisted violation somehow... though exactly a violation of what I don't know. Their privacy? Their destiny? Ehlana's right to control her own body?
I remember thinking I wouldn't be happy about it at all if it were me, but at the time I couldn't articulate why. Didn't have the words.
Re: MAJOR spoilers for the Elenium / Tamuli
Date: 2005-10-12 07:43 am (UTC)I was so jealous of Velvet ending up with Silk. But at the same time they were darling together, a snarky Boris and Natasha.
The whole thing seemed like some twisted violation somehow... though exactly a violation of what I don't know. Their privacy? Their destiny? Ehlana's right to control her own body?
Ehlana didn't work for me as a character in a lot of ways that were highlighted by this whole thing with Aphrael-as-her-daughter-Danae: either Ehlana's an incredibly emotionally fragile and delicate creature whose soul would be destroyed by the revelation that she could never naturally have children, in which case why the hell are you letting her run an entire country; or she's a strong and intelligent independent monarch, in which case why the hell are you keeping from her the state secret that there's a divine cuckoo in her nest? (And how stupid would she--and the rest of the court--have to be to not notice that Princess Danae is a different ethnicity from her parents?) It also pretty much burned me that the ability to have children was being presented as something without which Ehlana's life as a woman had no meaning. Ce'Nedra was a superficially flightier character, and I wasn't crazy about how she went crazy over her missing baby in the second series, but she's ultimately a much stronger personality than Ehlana.
I have this vision of Aphrael instating herself as eternal Goddess-Queen of Elenia, turning her royal soldiers to stamp out worship of the Elene God, and then using those forces combined with the Church Knights to conquer the world and rule forever--with Talen at her side as an eternally young consort who she regularly mindwipes to keep him docile and in love with her.
We're supposed to think Aphrael is cute, and when I'm reading I always do--but whenever I've got some space from the books she scares the hell out of me. She spends enough time with humans to be able to snark with them and adopt many of their practices, but she's not human and she's not trying to be, and she only believes in free will when it's serving her purposes. Give me the friendly but distant Santa-like gods from the Belgariad any day. Was anyone else annoyed that Eriond made the other gods go away at the end of The Seeress of Kell?
books
Date: 2005-10-12 08:01 am (UTC)I only read the one book, but I mostly remember the movie. Anyway, did you fangirl the one rat? The clevery charming one who was friends with Mrs. Bisby's late husband when they broke out of the lab? The one that was helping her and her family.
I wanted them to get together every time I watched the movie, even though they were two different species and stuff. Equal marriage rights for all rodents, I say!
We're supposed to think Aphrael is cute, and when I'm reading I always do--but whenever I've got some space from the books she scares the hell out of me.
Word.
Heh. Santa-like gods.
Was anyone else annoyed that Eriond made the other gods go away at the end of The Seeress of Kell?
I was disappointed. It seemed to be a move toward Christianity, like monotheism is the destiny of all cultures, and since at that point I was already a young atheist at heart (though not quite self-realized yet), it bothered me that all these fabulous diverse gods that had made this world I loved were being replaced by a single God who would make everything a little bit better through peace and love.
Though I liked the character himself. It's just I liked the other gods better story-wise.
dojinshi
Date: 2005-10-12 06:34 pm (UTC)I made the icon after deciding that recently volumes were making Shigure a complete pimpmeister instead of the horny loner hermit we all thought he was.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 06:16 am (UTC)Now that I think about it, I remember more being in love with the thief boy who was gonna be a knight and an emperor of thieves and then get trapped into marriage by the goddess child.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 06:42 am (UTC)When I'm re-reading the books and caught up in the story, I think it's cute that he's going to be trapped into marriage by the goddess child. When I have time between re-readings of the books to think about it, I want him to run like hell
even though there is nowhere he would be able to escape.no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 07:32 am (UTC)And they wouldn't let me watch R-rated movies. HAH! I read fantasy books and horror books that were plenty R-rated enough. And my parents would just let me wander willy-nilly around a library for hours. ::happy nostalgic sigh:: I'm going to let my kids do that. I'll make them book addicts then unleash them upon libraries to corrupt or teach themselves as they see fit.