The Empty Shelf Book Reviews

  Greetings! and welcome to the Empty Shelf. My name is Mike, and I’ll be your reader and reviewer today.  A few quick notes before we begin. I’ve decided to increase my spoilers a little. I’m trying not to give away any major plot points, but I feel like you’ll get a better sense of the books if I get a little more in depth, and you’ll be able to better determine if a particular work is right for you. I’m hoping to keep these to about 20 minutes a piece. No promises though. I can get a bit loquacious if I’m not careful.  So, let’s get to it. Today, we’re going to discuss Legend, by David Gemmell, first published in 1984. Now, Legend was technically the first novel in Gemmell’s Drenai series, which I will be reviewing more of in the future, but I’m going to do them all separately. Why, you ask? Well, they are part of a series, but with just a few exceptions, they all follow different characters. The Drenai Series comprises 11 books, and they are further broken down into...

  Hello, and welcome to the Empty Shelf. My name is Mike, and I’ll be your reader and reviewer today. A note to the reader, Some spoilers are ahead, so listen with caution. Today, we’re going to conclude our examination of the Belgariad universe with Belgarath the Sorcerer (1995), and Polgara the Sorceress (1997), both by David and Leigh Eddings. You’ll notice the byline has changed here. Mr. Eddings enlisted his wife’s help for most of this series, and finally decided to give her credit. (That’s per his explanation in the supplemental material “The Rivan Codex.”) By the way, I have no evidence whatsoever to support this, but I get the sense these were written more or less concurrently. If anyone knows, please drop me a line. I’m reviewing these as a duology, because that’s how they feel to me.  But, I’m going to give each book a rating, then average those ratings to get a category score. Then I’ll follow the standard rating protocol. There’s a framing device in use in both of...

     Hello, and welcome to the Empty Shelf. My name is Mike, and I’ll be your reader and reviewer today. Warning: some spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution. Today, we’re looking at The Malloreon by David Eddings, the sequel series to The Belgariad. Like its predecessor, it comprises five books, these published between 1987 and 1991: Guardians of the West, King of the Murgos, Demon Lord of Karanda, Sorceress of Darshiva, and The Seeress of Kell. These books continue Garion’s story and introduce a new cast of characters. I began reading The Belgariad in roughly 2003, so all these books were already long written by that time. After I finished The Belgariad, I did a little research and went back to that magical Inner Harbor B&N to purchase the next book. These books are slightly longer and more dense than their sister series, so they took me longer than a day to read…closer to 3 days each. And let’s bear in mind that I was reading all of this in my “downtime” between ...