David Eddings and The Elenium: The Diamond Throne

It has been a while since I read David Eddings.  I read his Belgariad series roughly 13-15 years ago.  I loved it and enjoyed it.  After I read Belgariad, there was a flowing stream of words in my head.  Reading improves writing; I discovered that firsthand when I read The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and that flowing stream of words was a clear sign that I could also write something awesome.  More recently although still several years - maybe seven - I read The Redemption of Althalus by Eddings, which disappointed me because both the characters and the style were flat and stereotyped.

As I said, reading improves writing.  For the past two years or so, I have been searching for more high quality fantasy.  I have been reading the series Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams.  A couple days ago, I decided to begin reading The Elenium by David Eddings.  The description is highly-detailed and very indepth.  The tense conversations between central protagonist Sparhawk and the antagonists reveal vivid characters and personalities.  A mere fifty pages into the book, I remember why I enjoyed David Eddings.

The book starts out:

It was raining.  A soft, silvery drizzle sifted down out of the night sky and wreathed around the blocky watchtowers of Cimmura, hissing in the torches on each side of the broad gate and making the stones of the road leading up to the city shiny and black.  A lone rider approached the city.  He was wrapped in a dark, heavey traveller's cloak and rode a tall, shaggy roan horse with flat, vicious eyes.  The traveller was a big man, a bigness of large, heavy bone and ropey tendon rather than of flesh.  His hair was coarse and black, and at some time his nose had been broken.
His name was Sparhawk, a man at least ten years older than he looked, who carried the erosion of his years not so much on his battered face as in a half-dozen or so minor infirmities and discomforts and in the several wide, purple scars upon his body, which always ached in damp weather.  Tonight, however, he felt his age and he wished only for a warm bed in an obscure inn which was his goal.

Such wonderful and awesome detail...  Right now, I consider it quite a shame that I must set it aside even temporarily.  My parents' bought me a stand-alone book whereas The Elenium is a triology.  I would read the stand-alone and return to the triology much quicker than if I did vice versa.  David Eddings will not be writing any more wonderful fantasies, but I hope everyone will continue to enjoy the high quality work that he has presented to the genre.