I enjoyed this more than the first. It felt more...nuanced, or something. It helped me better understand why I loved these so much as a teenager. But for all that I'm enjoying these books again, I'm never for a moment forgetting that I'm reading them. They're never pulling me so far into the story that I live it with the characters. It's more like a satire of the classic quest, I guess.In every classic fantasy quest the hero (it's almost always a hero, he who will become High King) travels the land and meets representatives of all the people over the course of the quest. The Black Cauldron and the Riddle Master books (and many others) do that, and it feels natural; both the need for the travels and the budding hero's reactions to what he encounters. In the Belgariad, the travels feel forced, like we can see the hand moving the pieces around the board. And Garion's reactions...what? It's not that his reactions are predictable, exactly, as the whole story is predictable once you know the formula. But they feel OTT or manipulated in some way. Less natural, certainly.I think another reason I only read these once, as compared to the many, many times I've reread the Dark Cauldron, Riddle Master, and Earthsea books (as just three examples) is that each book feels like an installment rather than a complete story unto itself. While I've always been very eager to start the next book in each of those series, I've also always ended each one with a sense of completion. The Belgariad, in contrast, feels like a chapter ending rather than a book ending, except suddenly there are no more pages to turn without starting the next book. I find myself ambivalent about starting the third.