Product DescriptionRaphael, a golden-boy quarterback, falls prey to his evil college roommate who manipulates him into a wild affair with an older woman and causes a car crash that cripples and emasculates him. 40,000 first printing.From Publishers WeeklyStepping out of the fantasy genre, bestselling author Eddings (the Belgariad and Malloreon series) fashions a searing indictment of the social-welfare system in this sometimes compelling but unfortunately didactic novel about society's down-and-outers. During his first year at Oregon's Reed College, Raphael Taylor, a promising student and athlete, is introduced to the fast life by his roommate, wealthy debauchee Damon Flood. Trying to flee Flood's controlling personality, an inebriated Raphael crashes his car and loses a leg as a result of his injuries. After months of frustrating rehabilitation efforts and group meetings led by self-serving social workers, Raphael flees to Spokane, Wash., to try to construct a new life. Settling down in a poor neighborhood, he observes--without joining them--the people he calls losers, who exist from one self-inflicted crisis to the next. Then Damon arrives, precipitating death and destruction, but also providing the possibility of salvation for Raphael and the woman he has come to love. Eddings's condemnation of social workers as incompetent often stretches credibility. With its plot and characters barely fleshed out, the only slightly suspenseful narrative maintains a simplistic, fable-like quality that patronizes its audience.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.From the Inside Flapor was a golden boy--blond, handsome, charming, a gifted athlete and a serious student, an angel in every way. Damon Flood was a scoundrel--a smooth, smilling, cynical devil, as devious and corrupt as Raphael was open and innocent. The day Raphael met Damon was the day he began his mysterious fall from grace. And the golden boy fell very fast and very far....From Kirkus ReviewsA rare mainstream outing (High Hunt, 1973) from bestselling fantasist Eddings: an often disconcerting scrutiny of people seemingly fated to end up on life's scrapheap. Young Raphael Taylor has it all: he's handsome, charming, a gifted athlete and serious student--until he becomes entangled with cynical, affable, devious Damon Flood, a fellow student with some sort of secret agenda. Damon introduces Raphael to the seductive Isabel, an older woman who comes dangerously close to consuming Raphael utterly--until Raphael perceives his peril, tries to extricate himself by getting aggressively drunk, and winds up the victim of a horrible accident: he loses his leg and his manhood. Later, trying to shake free of the smothering social-workers whom Raphael regards as little better than parasites, he finds himself in a rooftop apartment in a seedy back-street in Spokane, from where he observes the wretched lives of his neighbors: the alcoholics, petty criminals, obsessives, and welfare defendants he calls the ``losers.'' And, still bedeviled by them himself, Raphael continues to blame the social-workers for perpetuating the entire miserable sequence. He finds a job and becomes friendly with fellow worker Denise, a beautiful woman with a withered arm. Then Flood shows up, pretending amicability but seemingly intent on Raphael's destruction. Yet, gradually, despite himself, Flood begins to identify with the losers and to adopt their lifestyle, falling in with a blustering, second-rate biker gang; and when the gang goes to war with a rival gang, Flood, now packing a pistol, self- destructs. Only then does Raphael, rehabilitated at last, commit himself to Denise and unravel the bizarre impulses behind Flood's need to destroy Raphael. Offbeat, intriguing, sometimes compelling work (though social- workers will probably find some of the opinions expressed here downright offensive). For non-fans of Eddings's fantasies, to which this bears not the slightest resemblance: an unexp