The Beer Garden

by David and Leigh Eddings
ISBN: 978-0-345-43586-6

If you liked the authors’ Belgariad and Malloreon — and share my love for background information — you’ll love this book. It covers geography, history, excerpts from the Holy Books, and all sorts of other fascinating details that don’t appear in the books, but are really nice to have available.

And it’s written with a good sense of humor. In describing the Arends, for instance (remember Sir Mandorallen?): “Arends are formal to the point of being socially incapacitated.”

It also includes some goodies on how the two series came to be written, and how the Codex came about — the world-building that, if a new universe is going to work, has to be done before the stories can even be properly started. I’d like to have seen things like the Mrin and Darine Codices. but “They aren’t here because they don’t exist.” Partly, it seems, because Lester del Rey wouldn’t agree to publish the Mrin Codex on a scroll, darn it! Though I can certainly understand why not.

Strongly recommended for Eddings fans!

I didn’t get any feedback here, so I went and asked the same question of the folks on Little Green Footballs, where I’m a fairly long-time, but not terribly active, Lizard. With only one exception — who thought a re-start would make it easier to become known a a review spot on the search engines — the recommendation was to hang onto the old name and notify readers of the change.

So let’s make it official. The Beer Garden is now a review blog, concentrating on science fiction and fantasy, but with other subjects appearing as they attract my interest. I can’t promise a schedule, since what I’ll have available to review depends on my budget, how often I can get to the bookstore up in Dover, and what the state library system gets. The Science Fiction Book Club fits in there as well!

Those restrictions mean my access to current books is more limited than I’d prefer, so I’ll welcome guest reviews as well, either in the comments or e-mailed to me to put in a front-page post.

Beer is on the house!