The Diamond Throne

The Elenium, Book 1

By: David Eddings

Narrated by: Greg Abby

Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Sparhawk, the Pandion Knight and Queen's Champion, returns from a long spell of exile to find his native land overrun with evil and intrigue, and his young queen grievously ill. Indeed, Ehlana lies magically entombed within a block of crystal, doomed to die unless a cure can be found within a year.

But as Sparhawk and his allies - who include Sephrenia, the ageless sorceress, and Flute, the strange and powerful girl-child - seek to save Ehlana and the land, they discover that the evil is even greater and more pervasive than they had feared.

Listen to another gem in David Edding's Elenium series.

©1989 David Eddings (P)2008 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"[A] graceful, fluid style of storytelling." ( Publishers Weekly)
"[Eddings] draws once more on his particular strengths, combining heroic yet humorous characters with exotic settings and tangled politics to create a fast-moving fantasy that will appeal to his large readership." ( Library Journal)

Good book.

Not a bad book. A little slow for my likings. I don’t think I will listen to the last two books. But was good, just not for me.

great book, okay narrator

Edding's is one of my favorite authors and I really like the entire Elenium trilogy. This narrator is something of a wet blanket, though. At times you'd almost think you were listening to a text-to-talk computer program.

David Eddings does it again

Enjoyable characters and wonderful story. I really love the way David Eddings pulls you into his fantasy.

A classic; listen to it like you do Tolkien

All of Eddings' epic fantasy work is dated now. It seems clichéd and trite. It would never get published by today's standards. Thing is, though, this stuff became a cliché for a reason: these are powerful ingredients. Eddings uses them masterfully.

The worldbuilding here is perhaps not as immersive as his Belgariad/Mallorean series, but the story is more mature and revolves around a battered yet formidable knight instead of a Chosen One farm boy (this will be relevant to you if you, like me, are tired of the Chosen One trope).

The key to enjoying Tolkien is to use your classic ear, not your modern ear. Tolkien wouldn't get published today, either (hello, Tom Bombadil), and so many of his elements seem like clichés now, too (elves and dwarves, le sigh). If you listen to him like you do Jim Butcher, you'll get bored... but if you listen to him as a classic, an exemplar, you can see why his books are still being read. Same goes for Eddings.

An important note: Like most "classics," all of Eddings' works contain problematic racial profiling and gender roles. None are good for kids.

Love the book...not so much the narrator

Where does The Diamond Throne rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I have loved these books since I read them when they came out. I am a huge David Eddings fan. Though the plots now seem to lack a bit of depth now that I'm older, the characters and story are a lot of fun to spend time with.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

My only issue with this book is the narrator. His voice is fine overall, but he mispronounces things quite a lot. The names in the book are probably the most jarring as I have had them in my mind a certain way and with the exception of a few obvious ones, he doesn't pronounce them right. That, perhaps, can be forgiven since I'm not aware of any Eddings pronunciation guide, but he also puts the emphasis on the wrong syllable sometimes, and he pronounces a few key phrases and words incorrectly. (i.e. "ramshorn", which from the context of the story is clearly meant to be "rams horn" is pronounced "ram shorn"). I found this irritating, since it kept jerking me out of the story when he did it.

If you've never read the books, it probably won't be an issue for you.

A little hard for me to get into at first

I'm going to just cut to the chase and review the whole Elenium rather than just this first book. I read the books in print several times before listening to this audiobook and I had very specific ideas of how I wanted this series to be done and this fell short of that hope. It took me a long time in the book to get over the way that certain names were pronounced and I wasn't too thrilled with the narrator's female voices. I did think that the narrator did a decent job for the most part though once I got over that. I like the story overall, it is a solid epic fantasy series full of magic, gods, knights, and thieves and the characters are lovable if brutal and violent at times. They tend towards banter which I always enjoy. Once I got into the series I was captured by it and I did like the narrator for the Elenium far more than the narrator for the Tamuli.

Excellent Fantasy World

David Eddings always creates similar characters in completely new worlds. This is an excellent fantasy comfort novel. I always enjoy the worlds that David Eddings creates.

Potentially ok story ruined by poor narration

This is my first David Eddings book. Unfortunately, I don't think I can objectively critique the story because the narrator's accent and voice acting practically ruined the book for me. The performance was a bit over the top, and the voices didn't seem to match the characters at all. For example, I didn't expect a Pandion knight to sound like a 21st century cool dude.

Maybe Mr. Abbey is not a terrible reader, and for a different type of book he would have been ok. But for a fantasy novel with a medieval setting it was a very poor match. After listening to the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, with its excellent narrator, I expected something better than this.

If you are really interested in this series, I definitely recommend passing on the audiobook and getting the print version instead.

avoid narrator

narrator ruined a good book.
story and the books are standard edding, No big surprises

I love David Eddings but not this Audible version

I have read and listened to this book before many time. However I never listened to this version or this performer. This performer has very little inflection in his voice and cannot pronounce names and places properly. did this performer even read the books before recording? did he ask others how to pronounce names and places? this performer is horrible. dont give him any more work please. also, please redo these books with someone better. it should not be hard to find someone considering.