This is pretty much a typical Eddings book.
Which is to say the prose is pedestrian (but could be worse), the plot is pretty much the same as all his other books, the dialogue is repetitive and rather clunky in places, and the stereotypes....Oh my, the stereotypes.
The female characters are universally condescending, controlling and manipulative and this is shown as a good thing. And all of them, without exception, up to and including any goddesses present, want, more than anything else in the world, to get married and have many, many children. Now I realise that many women do want this, and fair play to them, but it's not as universal as Eddings depicts it by a long way. And the way the male characters are depicted isn't really any better - they're mostly shown as basically little boys in adult bodies, who need a manipulative woman to make them behave.
And then there's the way that entire nations are depicted as having the same basic personality. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's racist, as they're fictional nations and there's no mention of what colour any of them are, as far as I can tell, but it feels decidedly dodgy to me.
Now, by this point, you may well be asking why, if I feel this way about Eddings' books, I'm continuing to read them. I really wish I knew. It's like fast food, I think - I know it's bad for me, I know it's not going to be anything like as nice as the adverts, but sometimes I simply can't resist it.....
