Goodbye, David Eddings

By Lisa Fary

I was reading in the car on a family road trip to New Jersey when David Eddings let loose the big, shocking reveal in The Shining Ones.  I drew in a sharp breath and exclaimed, “Holy $h!t!”

Mom turned around in the passenger seat.

“Finally! It’s been killing me waiting for you to get there!” she said. “So, what do you think?”

She had already read the book and had been hovering around me, asking me what page I was on, what was happening, what was going on with Sephrenia, and generally being annoying. If there was ever such a thing as a backseat reader, it was Mom.

After ripping through all of Terry Brooks’ books and most of Stephen Lawhead’s, I was looking for a new series to draw me in, a new world to get lost in. Nothing on the shelf was doing it. I tried the Wheel of Time, but was hindered by turning to the glossary every five minutes. I tried Lord of the Rings, but was bored by the history textbook feel of the thing (still am).

On what seemed like the hundredth time I scanned the bookshelf in the living room, I found The Diamond Throne by David Eddings in a stack at the back of the top shelf, where I could only reach while standing on a chair dragged in from the dining room.

“Is this any good?” I asked.

“Yes. Read it,” she said. “You’re going to love that!”

I did. I tore through The Diamond Throne and the other books in The Elenium, then hit The Tamuli, chattering with Mom after each one, leading up to the scene in the car.

I loved those books so much and have lost count of how many times I’ve read them over the years. I swiped Mom’s copies when I went to college, and again when I went to AmeriCorps. Later, in Tucson, I scoured every used bookstore in the city because I couldn’t afford to buy them new, but wanted them right then.  My reality then sucked and I wanted to be in that world again, where everything was familiar and where I knew how things worked.

Eddings’ books would go unread sometimes for years at a time as I found other books I loved, and read books that were maybe more challenging, more important. But, eventually I always come back to David Eddings because reading his books is like coming home, his characters old friends.

Now, he’s gone. He passed away last week at the age of 77. I’m going to miss seeing what he comes up with.

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.

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• Fantasy author Eddings dies at 77 (news.bbc.co.uk)
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