I’ve said that I’m trying to do Fantasy Friday in order of when I read the book/series. The last post in this series had a book from when I was 11. We now fast forward to when I was 14. There were Fantasy books in the intervening years, but I don’t own any of the books that I read during that time. So we’re now entering the last four years of my high school reading (1992 – 1995). The order of these is going to be unreliable, as I was reading books thick and fast. I was required to come straight home from school every day and spend hours in my room doing my homework. Only, I didn’t have hours of homework to do, so I devoured all the books I could get my hands on instead.

I found Diamond Throne by David Eddings on the bookshelf at home. No one knows how it came into the house – possibly my sister, but she hadn’t read it. It sounded interesting on the back cover, so read it I did. Then promptly visiting the local library to get the next two books in The Elenium trilogy. To this day, it’s my favourite Eddings series, and a few years ago, I decided to get my own copies, and of course reread them.

I enjoyed these just as much as the first time. Sure there are plenty of better stories, and better prose, out there, but these were enjoyable, and interesting. Maybe some of it is nostalgia, but I can still see me rereading them again some time in the future. This series is an easy read, and provided me with a much needed escape into another world that I needed at that time in my life.

As this is a series, I’ll just give you the blurb for book 1. If you haven’t read this series, I do recommend you pick them up. Sparhawk is a great character. Though the child god often outshines him.

After a long exile, Pandion Knight Sparhawk returns to his native land to find his young queen grievously ill.

Ehlana has been poisoned and will die unless a cure can be found within a year. The life force of twelve of her sworn knights is all that sustains her; but one knight will be lost within the passing of each month if the antidote remains a mystery.

To save his queen, his comrades, and the stability of the kingdom, Sparhawk begins the search for the cure, only to discover a greater and more pervasive evil than he could ever have imagined.

There is a follow-up trilogy The Tamuli. As is common with Eddings, the second trilogy follows similar ideas to the first, but I still enjoyed it. And when I went to get my copies of The Elenium off my shelf, I saw that I had only got around to buying the first book. Pity, as books were much cheaper in the UK where I was living when I was picking up my own copies of these. So given I only have the one book in my possession, I’m adding The Tamuli into this post too. Even though it is technically a second series.