Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings

The first book of the Belgariad.A magnificent epic set against a history of seven thousand years of the struggles of Gods and Kings and men - of strange lands and events - of fate and a prophecy that must be fulfilled!THE BELGARIADLong ago, so the Storyteller claimed, the evil God Torak sought dominion and drove men and Gods to war. But Belgarath the Sorcerer led men to reclaim the Orb that protected men of the West. So long as it lay at Riva, the prophecy went, men would be safe.But that was only a story, and Garion did not believe in magic dooms, even though the dark man without a shadow had haunted him for years.Brought up on a quiet farm by his Aunt Pol, how could he know that the Apostate planned to wake dread Torak, or that he would be led on a quest of unparalleled magic and danger by those he loved - but did not know?For a while his dreams of innocence were safe, untroubled by knowledge of his strange heritage. For a little while...THUS BEGINS BOOK ONE OF THE BELGARIAD

Really good writing, but too slow for my taste. This book is as slow as The Wheel of Time, but the plot seems to be weaker.

About half way into the book and here the following is all that happens:

A young boy goes out into a journey with his aunt and some old storyteller/vagrant guy, both of which may be more then what they appear to be. They are both fleeing from some people and looking for something as well. They are also keeping some secret about the boy's true identity.

It is implied that the people that are looking for the boy, which is a whole race of them (race as in Men of the West from LotR) are known to serve this dark lord of evil, but they live among everyone else as if that is not a problem.

Part one of this story was really kind of boring for me, a lot of it was the setup which is fine, but it just really lacked any real interest. I was able to instantly figure out who Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf was but I'm leaning more towards that being pretty obvious and not really a large mystery haha.

Part two caught more of my interest, the action started to pick up and the character building started to gain some momentum. Although this is another one of those old epic fantasy stories where there are a lot of made up foreign lands that after awhile all start to sound the same. So I won't lie when I say I did get some of the places confused after awhile.

There is a large cast of characters but the main group is pretty easy to follow.
Garion is an interesting kid and I'm looking forward to seeing his development in the series, I love how he has his moments when he back talks or challenges Aunt Pol, it's that little bit of realistic character building that I love. Aunt Pol is intriguing and I'm digging her character right now, I'm hoping to see some strong sorcery from her in the future!

It wasn't a super strong start to a series, but the later half did pull me in more and grab more of my curiosity, I have some questions I want answered so we shall see what happens next .