GUARDIANS OF THE WEST

Eddings' hard-over debut is the first of a new sword & sorcery series and a sequel to his five-part paperback Belgariad. Faithful readers will recall that, at the end of the Belgariad, King Garion, armed with the prophetic Orb of Aldur, slew the evil god Torak. And so everyone settled down to live happily ever after, right? Wrong. After several idyllic years, marred only by a marital tiff or two, Garion and the boy Errand (he is beginning to display strange new powers of sorcery) are contacted by the Orb and told to "Beware Zandramas!" Who or what is Zandramas? Nobody knows, but evidently it's bad news, since several of Garion's prophetic books hint at evils still to come. Eventually, after much ballyhoo, Zandramas emerges as a mysterious, evil sorcerer of vast power; he instructs his minions, fanatic Bear-cultists, to kidnap Garion's infant son. Thus, things are shaping up for another prolonged struggle among men, kings, sorcerers, gods, evildoers, Orbs, and whatnots, with—you guessed it—the fate of the universe at stake. All this is shamelessly padded out to 460 pages with recaps, explanations, reminders, hints, Boy Scout-ish doings, cute domestic scenes, and gosh-wow dialogue. Lots of huffing-puffing stage-setting, then, but of real substance there is none.