David Eddings

David Eddings was an American fantasy author whose Belgariad and Malloreon series, launched with Pawn of Prophecy in 1982, became two of the best-selling and most influential epic fantasy sagas of the 1980s, helping cement the multi-book quest-fantasy format as a commercial mainstay. Following the young farm boy Garion as he discovers his destiny as a prophesied hero, the two series (five and six volumes respectively) are known for their tight prose, banter-heavy dialogue, and a large, distinct ensemble cast that Eddings kept consistent across both series and the two follow-up prequel volumes. Eddings wrote virtually all of his later fantasy in close collaboration with his wife Leigh Eddings, who received formal co-author credit starting with the Elenium trilogy in 1989 after having contributed substantially, if less visibly, to the earlier Belgariad and Malloreon; the two continued co-writing together through the Tamuli trilogy, the standalone Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress, and their final joint project, the four-volume Dreamers series, completed in 2006. Their books are known for a formulaic but reliably comforting structure — a young protagonist, a colorful mentor, a quest across a richly mapped world — that made them a common entry point into epic fantasy for younger readers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Eddings died in 2009.