The Inheritance Cycle

I had already read Eragon some time ago, it wasn't exactly in my top ten favorites. I heard from a friend that the second book was better, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and use it for my English project. How bad could it be? Authors are bound to improve as they get more experience, right? As it turns out… wrong.

The basic plotline is that Eragon has to travel to the land of the elves to finish his training as a Rider while dealing with his new feelings for the elf Arya. The leader of the Varden, which is a resistance group against the Empire, has died and his daughter Nasuada takes his place, but she has to struggle to win the respect of her people. In the meantime, Eragon’s cousin Roran battles two monsters called the Ra’zac and leads his village to the Varden in order to rescue his fiancée from the Empire in a journey that later involves piracy and escaping a giant whirlpool of doom. It sounds interesting, doesn’t it? In the hands of a more skilled writer, it might have been. Instead, we are treated to a nearly seven hundred page cliché storm.

It took a long time to finish this book because so much of it seemed to be there because the author wanted to either show off the wonderful world he had created or give us another reason why the elves were the most wonderful people ever and therefore we should all be atheist vegetarian hippies. There were also little bits of description, scenes, and even entire chapters full of these things, infodumps, and other things that should have been edited out. These include being told how Nasuada is being attacked by the Empire's network of assassins. It is not strictly necessary, and it only makes the book drag more. Similar are the traveling chapters where we receive some small character development that may have been inserted later and in a better way than long dialogue. A more disturbing example is where we are told that elves have hairless groins. I will refrain from elaborating on that point. Sometimes, the description is inserted randomly where it has no relevance to what’s really going on. It’s distracting.

Throughout the book, it sounded as though Paolini wasn’t sure whether to write in Ye Olde English or just talk normally. The prose switches back and forth, including one instance where “thy” is used in the same sentence as “you” and “your”.

Also, the need to compose little poems and songs and write everything in those languages Paolini made up got old very fast. Some pages from Paolini's worldbuilding notes must have gotten mixed in with the manuscript. I applaud his dedication to his craft, but it is not necessary for the story, and simply bogs it down.

The characters drove me up the wall. We had plenty of meaningless extras, and the main characters were so irritating I wanted to find some way to reach into the book and smack them. A common technique to determine how well the author is writing the characters is to take away the names and see if you can tell who's speaking. Paolini failed this test. I couldn’t connect with the the characters and I have no sympathy for them. The one character with a hint of a complex personality, Murtagh, disappeared in the first chapter and reappeared in the last fifty pages as a new Rider, forced to serve the king through oaths in the language of magic. Does Eragon give him pity? Lament the loss of his friend and curse the king for destroying their relationship? No. Murtagh has just been revealed to be Eragon’s older brother and they are the sons of the Empire’s (now dead) right hand man, and Eragon declares that they don’t count as family because they’re evil. We don’t see any complex character development from this, just more angst.

Eragon himself is fascinating, but not in the way Paolini means him to be. Clearly, Eragon is supposed to be a hero, the savior of the land who will unite its people and lead it to a golden age of prosperity. Currently, we see a whiny man-child who is handed solutions to his problems on a silver platter. Your mentor died in the last book? You can go to his mentor, who is an elf and therefore infinitely superior and can give you even better training! Your brother and father are evil? Well, you never really knew them and you are pure of heart (cough), so they're not your real family! The ridiculously pretty and snooty elf you're mooning after turned you down? Uh oh, looks like she's actually falling for you! Did you get a cursed scar that randomly gives you seizures? A magical phenomenon that is never clearly explained in a logical manner can get rid of that for you! And while we're at it, let's make you pretty as an elf and just as strong. What is wrong with this is that although Eragon has conflicts, none of them are solved in a way that reveals his character or develops it in any way. And a whiny man-child he shall stay.

The sheer amount of logic failures in this book prompted me to use the tried-and-true therapy technique of banging my head on the nearest hard surface. A prime example is where the village of Carvahall builds a highly flammable barrier of logs and thorns around the town. The soldiers, instead of burning it, try dragging the logs away. Later, when the Ra’zac try to capture Roran, his fiancée Katrina manages to claw the soldiers’ faces so hard that enough blood was drawn to blind them. This would be plausible if said soldiers were strapped in a chair, at her mercy. This is not plausible because the soldiers are just standing there, capable of drawing their swords and decapitating her. The elves are strict vegetarians, and Eragon, after learning how to share the minds of animals, understands why the elves feel that the animals are their kin. Later, Eragon kills hundreds of fellow human beings in battle and hardly suffers.Addendum

I don’t care what happens unless the Varden and Eragon turn out to be evil and the “evil” king is just trying to do his job. Now, that would be interesting. However, I sincerely doubt that this what Paolini intended, but if that's what really happens, my respect for him will rise slightly.

THIS THREAD IS ONLY FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO SERIOUSLY DISCUSS THE BOOKS

Notice that I said bashing, not criticism.

This thread is not for debating