King of theMurgos, the second book of David Eddings’ sries The Mallorean, picks up where the previous volume ended. Garion and company are now on the trail of the mysterious figure known as Zandramas. They make a few stops in some of the already-established locales–including Tolnedra and Nyissa–before meeting Urgit, the new King of the Murgos. By the end of the novel, they are now the “guests’ of ‘Zakath, the Emperor of Mallorea, who seems to have his own plans for what will become of them.

As I noted in my review of the various entries of The Belgariad, there are times when Eddings tends to lean too heavily on the idea of cultural determinism, i.e. that certain groups of people will be guaranteed to act in certain ways, largely as a result of what racial group they happen to belong to. While this book doesn’t entirely undo that…