David Edding's The Hidden City

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God, what can I say about this book? This is the third volume in the second trilogy based upon the character Sparhawk and the jewel/god Bhelliom. All promises of talent, plot, or redemption of characters suggested in the first two books are viciously dashed in this third.
In this volume, Sparhawk sets out to find his kidnapped wife, the beautiful and 20-year-old queen (Sparhawk is 40 at least), from the clutches of the one redeemable character. The "villan" from this series is inspired by his unrequited love for Sparhawk's preistest friend. Sparhawk sets out for pure revenge and is simply a creul and evil character. All the "good" guys in this series develop into evil monsters. Granted, ours' is an age where the hero is not the one with impecible morals, but the one who gets the job done. However, these characters revel in their actions and try to expand the pain and suffering of their victims for their own gross desires.
At the last, this book has promise within the writing, but even this gets butchered. Eddings has a difinitive style and obviously knows how to write, but instead devolves to the talentless pulp that makes up this book. During boring situations, Eddings will interject with a character trying to be humorous. It could be that Eddings is emulating Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar with odd humor, but Eddings isn't funny. The lines detract from the story itself, reveal nothing about the characters, and make the boring scenes last longer. This is a bad book. It is the sad and pathetic end to a sad and pathetic attempt at a fantasy trilogy.