as_sporkive | Brisinger Spork: Part 57: Shadows of Doom (Reply)

gharial posting in antishurtugal_reborn, 2018-10-21 19:46

Brisinger Spork: Part 57: Shadows of Doom

Lucky me. I get to spork both the most important chapter in the novel (the introduction of the Eldunari plot point) and the climax. Let’s delve right in (title sucks, but I'm not going to harp on that point).

The story opens with Eragon acting like a massive dick to some elves. And that’s not our antishirt bias, Arya even calls him out on it, but Eragon doesn’t have time to justify himself or argue because suddenly we’re switching to Glaedr’s pov as he flies of Gil’Ead. There doesn’t seem to be any express reason Glaedr is sharing his pov with Eragon. He makes no direct reference to Eragon in his mind, but he must be doing it consciously because Arya is just as close to his Eldunari and she’s not experiencing these flashes. It’s not like Eragon has any intrinsic link to Glaedr either like he does Saphira, he’s just the guy that happens to have Glaedr’s Eldunari nearby.
And because we’re once again looking through the eyes of a dragon, we of course get the tilde~dragon~language. We’ve complained about this at length before. It just doesn’t work stylishly, consistently or even linguistically. All it serves to do is make the dragons look less intelligent. There will be so many examples of it not working in this chapter, I won’t even bother naming them. Just assume every Glaedr scene comes with cringe.

Language aside, the meat of the paragraph is to introduce the idea that Eragon and Saphira are sharing Glaedr’s pov. He just flies over Gil’Ead, paying unnecessary attention to the elves before spotting Thorn. We do get one interesting piece of characterisation out of Gleader as he regrets having to fight Murtagh and Thorn; and blames Galbatorix for the result of things. We talk often about how the reason for fighting and hating Galbatorix is pretty flimsy justified in the series, but I can totally buy Glaedr’s hatred. He’s the who’s had his entire species genocided by Galbatorix. And it wasn’t just a matter of fighting enemies in battle, Galbatorix went above and beyond by wiping out the wild dragons too. That’s a legitimate gripe, even if Galbatorix has reformed and regrets wiping them out in the first place.

Back to Eragon and Saphira, they’re infiltrating the main tower to find Lady Lorana, the woman in charge of the city. There’s some lines about Eragon being conscience of Arya leaning against him as they fly on Saphira. I legit can’t tell if that’s actually subtle writing about Eragon’s attraction to her or just the typical over explaining that infests the series. After some fluff they arrive and we get this paragraph.

Together, they descended the stairs, making every effort to be quiet. The next room in the tower was much larger than the last; the ceiling was over thirty feet high, and from it hung a lantern with faceted panes of glass. A yellow flame burned inside. Hundreds of oil paintings covered the walls: portraits of bearded men in ornate robes and expressionless women sitting amid children with sharp, flat teeth; gloomy, windswept seascapes depicting the drowning of sailors; and scenes of battle, where humans slaughtered bands of grotesque Urgals. A row of tall wooden shutters set within the northern wall opened onto a balcony with a stone balustrade. Opposite the window, near the far wall, was a collection of small round tables littered with scrolls, three padded chairs, and two oversized brass urns filled with bouquets of dried flowers. A stout, grayhaired woman garbed in a lavender dress sat in one of the chairs. She bore a strong resemblance to several of the men in the paintings. A silver diadem adorned with jade and topaz rested upon her head.

This scene just…well baffles me. I have no idea what Paolini was thinking when he was writing it. He goes into so much detail about these pictures that all show disconcerting or disturbing imagery. My best guess is that it’s to built atmosphere for the introduction of Lady Lorana, especially since it notes she looks like some of the people in the pictures, but Lorana isn’t a villain at all. So…just…why? What kind of emotion or feeling is he trying to convey here and for what purpose?

Aside for Lorana, those three magicians are in the room attempting to turn an unmentioned fourth person into a shade, purely because we need a final boss to top off the novel (Eragon of course jumps to mind rape to deal with them, but these mages have some temporary plot armour). Lorana actually proves to be a somewhat interesting character. She’s bound in oaths to Galbatorix and would join the Varden if she could. It shows that the Varden have some support amongst the nobility, though he exact motivations or reasoning for having this stance is, predictably, completely unexplained (though some of the King’s Magicians trying to summon a Shade that will likely wipe out everyone in her city is probably a good motivator). I like the old woman who’s found herself caught in between this war, unfortunately her unique perspective on the matter is entirely unexplored, I don’t she’s even once mentioned in the next book, leaving her desire to help the Varden less of a fresh perspective for someone on the other side and more just postulating that the Varden are completely faultless and the obvious good guys.
We flash back to Glaedr fighting Thorn. This is obviously the real climax of the novel. The entirety of Eragon’s screen time is filler as basically nothing of note happens to him in this battle. He’s also lying flat on his back when we go back to him which raises some serious questions about why this flash sidewards is happening. Either A) As I mentioned before, Glaedr is doing it intentionally or B) It’s just a natural side effect of having an Eldunari close. If it’s intentional, then Glaedr is massively irresponsible or actually trying to engineer Eragon’s death. Eragon is in the middle of a battle, a slight distraction could be costly, let alone repeated flashes that render him completely unconscious. If it’s just what happens with Eldunari, then it makes them a massive liability for anyone to have around (at least if it’s the Eldunari of a living dragon) while people were stated to have rather casually traded Eldunari around back in the day.

While Glaedr is fighting Thorn, Eragon, Arya and Saphira try to cut through the plot armour on the unnamed mages trying to summon a shade. Saphira manages to kill one of them which I think is her only on screen kill in the entire series. Like, sure, she mows that hordes of soldiers in the fight scenes, but I think this is the only actual character we see her defeat. Granted it’s an unnamed mage without even a single line of dialogue, but well, small victories, we can pretend Saphira contributes something for all of half a second (note, she does kill the Lethbraka off screen, who are also unnamed and are about as relevant as these three mages).

Rather hilariously the shade starts to get summoned and Eragon proceed to shit bricks at the prospect of fighting something that can actually kill him. He immediately calls out and tries to find his elven guards that he ditched at the start of the chapter. We can be sure that this experience will be the start of some character development for Eragon as he learns to humble himself and consider the positions of others.

[Caption: Film poster for 'It's a Joke, son!']
We go back to the Glaedr fight. I’m going to go overboard with quotes here because there’s some interesting stuff to comment on that requires full context.

Where is he? Glaedr wondered. He swung his head, looking for Thorn. The little-red-shrike-dragon had fled high above Gil’ead, higher than any bird normally flew, where the air was thin and one’s breath water-smoked. “Glaedr, behind us!” Oromis shouted. Glaedr twisted, but he was too slow. The red dragon crashed into his right shoulder, knocking him tumbling.

Eh…how in seven hells could Thorn attack Glaedr from behind when Glaedr just spotted him flying high up above? Glaedr must have immediately stopped paying attention upon spotting Thorn and turned his back to his enemy. Either that or Murtagh summoned an illusion of Thorn and attacked from below, which isn’t conveyed at all if that’s the case and would be way too intelligent for any character in this series, even though we’ve seen it’s functionally possible to do.

Glaedr grabs Thorn and Murtagh and Oromis start sword fighting even though Glaedr is roughly the size of Smaug (at minimum). Glaedr is also biting Thorn’s hind leg during this grapple, which makes me very confused as to where Murtagh is sitting, as I can’t imagine any way for him to engage in combat with Oromis without jumping onto Glaedr. Here is how my peerless art skills attempt to depict the confrontation.

[Caption: Line visualisation of the scenario.]
That’s me legitimately trying to get Murtagh and Oromis as physically close to each other as possible while still having Glaedr biting Thorns hind leg. There’s just no way to maneuver the situation without making Glaedr’s a snake or giving Thron mantis shaped legs.

The clanging of metal ceased, and Murtagh shouted, “Curse you for not showing yourself sooner! Curse you! You could have helped us! You could have—” Murtagh seemed to choke on his tongue for a moment.

We’ve got to question here, what does Murtagh mean? Does he mean himself and Thorn and their enslavement to Galbatorix? Or does he mean the empire and its glorious vision of a peaceful world? Because remember back in Eldest, Murtagh might not like being Galbatorix’s slave, but he actually does agree with Galbatorix’s desires for the world. I recall the line because Murtagh mentioned Galby’s sexy way of speaking (paraphrased).

Glaedr grunted as an unseen force brought their fall to an abrupt halt, nearly shaking him loose from Thorn’s leg, and then lifted the four of them up through the sky, higher and higher, until the broken-anthill-city was only a faint blotch below and even Glaedr had difficulty breathing in the rarefied air.

I actually like this one. Galbatorix takes control and demonstrates for the first time in the series the awesome power he’s said to possess as he lifts both dragons into the stratosphere. I also wanted to quote is so I could specifically draw attention to Glaedr noting that even he had difficulty breathing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t the larger animal require more oxygen? He should be the first one getting short of breath.

Galbatorix’s words are “round and smooth like that of a practiced orator.” I think that might go against Nasuada’s comment about him having a slight accent due to the changing of dialects over the century. How can he talk like a practice orator if he hasn’t been speaking to enough people over the century that his language is behind the times? Though I guess logically Glaedr should be pretty out of touch with accents too. Hey, what language is he even speaking in? If we assume Ancient Tongue (which is like the only way to make sense of the lack of accent part), then we can also assume everything he says hence forth is true. Let’s see how that turns out.

“Begone, foul oath-breaker!” cried Oromis. “You shall not have any satisfaction from us!”

Galbatorix chuckled. “Such a harsh greeting. For shame, Oromis-elda. Have the elves forgotten their fabled courtesy over the past century?”
“You deserve no more courtesy than a rabid wolf.”

“Tut-tut, Oromis. Remember what you said to me when I stood before you and the other Elders: ‘Anger is a poison. You must purge it from your mind or else it will corrupt your better nature.’ You should heed your own advice.”

Galbatorix is like completely in the right here, though I do sense he’s being a bit smug about it. Oromis, the calm and *cough* wise teacher does a massive 180 in personality here as he devolves to a screaming child. Also he calls Galbatorix oath-breaker. What oath would that be exactly? How can the idea of an oath-breaker even exist in this society when it’s par for the course to swear oaths in a magical binding means they’re impossible to break. The nature of what one can think of as oaths in this universe are unbreakable by their very definition.

“You cannot confuse me with your snake’s tongue, Galbatorix. You are an abomination, and we shall see to it that you are eliminated, even if it costs us our lives.”

“But why should it, Oromis? Why should you pit yourself against me? It saddens me that you have allowed your hate to distort your wisdom, for you were wise once, Oromis, perhaps the wisest member of our entire order. You were the first to recognize the madness eating away at my soul, and it was you who convinced the other Elders to deny my request for another dragon egg. That was very wise of you, Oromis. Futile, but wise. And somehow you managed to escape from Kialandí and Formora, even after they had broken you, and then you hid until all but one of your enemies had died. That too was wise of you, elf.”

A brief pause marked Galbatorix’s speech. “There is no need to continue fighting me. I freely admit that I committed terrible crimes in my youth, but those days are long past, and when I reflect upon the blood I have shed, it torments my conscience. Still, what would you have of me? I cannot undo my deeds. Now, my greatest concern is ensuring the peace and prosperity of the empire over which I find myself lord and master. Cannot you see that I have lost my thirst for vengeance? The rage that drove me for so many years has burned itself to ashes. Ask yourself this, Oromis: who is responsible for the war that has swept across Alagaësia? Not I. The Varden were the ones who provoked this conflict. I would have been content to rule my people and leave the elves and the dwarves and the Surdans to their own devices. But the Varden could not leave well enough alone. It was they who chose to steal Saphira’s egg, and they who cover the earth with mountains of corpses. Not I. You were wise once before, Oromis, and you can become wise once again. Give up your hatred and join me in Ilirea. With you by my side, we can bring an end to this conflict and usher in an era of peace that will endure for a thousand years or more.”

Here it is ladies and gentlemen. The entire conflict of the series summed up. The reasons outlined as to why this site supports Galbatorix more than Eragon. I can commend Paolini as I honestly don’t think I could summarize the reasons Galbatorix is the good guy in this story any better. Our supposed villain shows remorse for his deeds, promises reform and offers a hand of friendship and peace. Do our heroes take him up on his offer and attempt to settle this conflict diplomatically?

[Caption: Owl seemingly laughin in the left panel with text 'Ha ha ha'; in the right panel, it stares ahead with text 'No.']
(Galbatorix also uses the old name for the capital. Not sure why he changed it if he still refers to it by its old name. Maybe he was just trying to play to Oromis’ sense of nostalgia).

Glaedr was not persuaded. He tightened his crushing-piercing-jaws, causing Thorn to yowl. The pain-noise seemed incredibly loud after Galbatorix’s speech.

In clear, ringing tones, Oromis said, “No. You cannot make us forget your atrocities with a balm of honeyed lies. Release us! You have not the means to hold us here much longer, and I refuse to exchange pointless banter with a traitor like yourself.”
“Bah! You are a senile old fool,” said Galbatorix, and his voice acquired a harsh, angry cast. “You should have accepted my offer; you would have been first and foremost among my slaves. I will make you regret your mindless devotion to your so-called justice. And you are wrong. I can keep you thus as long as I want, for I have become as powerful as a god, and there are none who can stop me!”
“You shall not prevail,” said Oromis. “Even gods do not endure forever.”

I mean, they kind of do, that’s what makes them gods, unless Oromis is talking, like, socially speaking, which I guess would make sense given he’s an atheist. Still a bit of a dumb comment though.

Galbatorix shows his “true” colours here, but that doesn’t really make what he previous said obsolete. Let’s remember, there’s a high likelihood he’s speaking in the ancient language here despite Oromis’ insistence that he’s lying. He’s not lying by the way, as he doesn’t make any direct statements that could be proven false, just suggestions as to what the future might be. The only thing in his speech that he possibly could be lying about is his statement that Oromis is wise…which…I guess is a lie if Oromois directly calls it one thus making him not wise? The only other thing that could be a lie is the “tortures my conscience,” line, but I don’t think it is. Even if Galbatorix is a sociopath, he can describe his feelings of regret over wiping out the dragons as something that tortures his conscience, because if he is a true sociopath, he wouldn’t understand what a conscience really is.

At that Galbatorix uttered a foul oath. “Your philosophy does not constrain me, elf! I am the greatest of magicians, and soon I will be even greater still. Death will not take me. You, however, shall die. But first you will suffer. You will both suffer beyond imagining, and then I will kill you, Oromis, and I shall take your heart of hearts, Glaedr, and you will serve me until the end of time.”
“Never!” exclaimed Oromis.

An oath! I think that confirms Galbatorix is speaking in the ancient language. From the perspective of this culture, the word oath would only describe something sworn in the ancient language, as nobody would take an oath sworn any other way as legitimate.

Oromis’ sword is knocked from his hand and Glaedr reveals that like all of Oromis’ wards were contained in the sword…which seems monstrously short sighted. I like the idea of a guy who has siezres and has protective charms preventing it imbued on his sword, putting him at a great weakness if he’s separated from it, but in this setting it just makes no sense when we see that wards can, and are, placed directly on people. Because of massive lack of foresight revolving wards, Oromis dies along with Glaedr’s body.

So, conceptually, I actually rather like the scene. Paolini’s writing doesn’t paint the image on its own, but I like the idea of a battle high up in the air, with an army seizing a castle down below, getting slowly and slowly more distant as they raise higher and higher, more and more of the land they’re fighting over coming into sight until a massively powerful being ends it with relative ease. Because Galbatorix does finish the fight ridiculously easily. Which really begs the question, if Galbatorix is so unwilling to leave his castle because he wants access to his Eldunari, why doesn’t he simply do exactly what he does here; send Murtagh to the Varden camp and levitate Eragon and Saphira all the way to Uru Bean? The answer, because Galbatorix is quite possibly the laziest and most passive villain ever conceived.

For some reason I envision this scene has happening during the day even though I don’t think there’s any direct reference to the time of day, I guess it’s just more visually pleasing to me to imagine the green fields and army below in clear sight, growing gradually smaller. It is happening at night though, or at least it must be, because Eragon’s stuff is happening just before the break of dawn.

So we have a decent enough climax for the novel, a major character is dead and the villain that’s been hyped for three books now finally makes an appearance (sort of), but we’re not finished with this chapter yet! Heavens no, Eragon is the main protagonist of this book, therefore we
need to throw something at him to do to make him feel relevant.

The female spellcaster Eragon had been about to attack lay before him, slain by a single sword thrust. The spirits she and her companions had summoned were nowhere to be seen. Lady Lorana was still ensconced in her chair. Saphira was in the process of struggling to her feet on the opposite side of the room. And the man who had been sitting on the floor amid the three other spellcasters was standing next to him, holding Arya in the air by her throat.

I haven’t been going into the minute writing decisions that I disagree with (of which there are many) in the interest of keeping this spork short and entertaining. But I have to draw attention to this one. It took like three readings for me to realize the “him” in the last sentence was Eragon. Eragon is mentioned once at the start of the paragraph, three separate characters are then referred to in separate sentences before we refer to Eragon again using only a pronoun. It just doesn’t work. He also starts a sentence with And, which is grammatically erroneous, but I don’t actually mind it if it helps the writing flow…Here, it doesn’t. Take that one word out and see if it makes any difference at all to how the paragraph is read.

The color had vanished from the man’s skin, leaving him bone white. His hair, which had been brown, was now bright crimson, and when he looked at Eragon and smiled, Eragon saw that his eyes had become maroon. In every aspect of appearance and bearing, the man resembled Durza

[Caption: Picture of Ronald McDonald]
The shade calls himself (or I guess to use his designated pronoun, themselves) Varaug and Eragon says they’re (nah, that’s weird, I’ll just go back to calling it a he) even stronger than Durza. Will this shade, more powerful than any foe Eragon has ever faced, go on to be a major character in the next installment!? No, of course not, the Eragon portion of this chapter is 100% filler. Arya easily kills him within seconds. There’s a nice parallel where this time Eragon is the one that distracts the shade and Arya deals the final blow (although it’s ruined by Eragon bringing attention to it), but still, he goes down way too easily. Really, I question why Shades are even considered that big a threat considering how easily this one goes down. For fun, let’s quote every line the final boss of this book ever says throughout his entire existence.

“Our name is Varaug, fear us.”
“You shall die. You shall all die for imprisoning us in this cold, hard clay.”
“Your ring is full of light! Beautiful light! It will feed us for a long time!”

I think Varaug could legitimately be the worst character in this series. He’s just so completely unnecessary and lacking in any sort of substance. He even manages to make an inconsistency in one of the few things he does say. If he resents being trapped, then why doesn’t he just kill himself, or let someone else do it? He doesn’t even have the decency to spoil good potential. The book just needed something to round it off (although the Glaedr scene would have been enough by itself imo). He ruined the most basic of potential. And he’s not even a new concept! He’s something we’ve already seen before. I think the only reason Paolini even bothered to name him was so he wouldn’t have to keep saying “the shade” in narration. It’s honestly impressive how unimpressive Varaug is. The mage’s who summoned him managed to be more impressive and they literally just stood completely still without a single line of dialogue. At least we get some idea of their character since we know they were willing to give up their lives summoning a shade.

You might think from what that third quote suggests that Eragon uses the store of energy in Brom’s ring to win this battle, but nope, he doesn’t and the fight affects absolutely nothing at all. Arya gets called Shade Slayer a few times in the next book and that’s about it. You could cut this fight entirely and nothing would change. Hell, you could cut this entire battle and nothing would change. The Glaedr parts of this chapter are the only bits that mattered at all. But do you know what I think is the worst thing about all this? The next book opens with a near identical battle as they take control over another castle, except that one did have some point as it’s where he introduces the never before mentioned dragon slaying spear. The fact that those two battles weren’t combined and Eragon didn’t discovers the spear at the end of this book is pretty reasonable evidence for me that Paolini had far less planned for Inheritance than you would expect when it was originally one novel. The Deer Heart (or whatever it’s called) probably wasn’t in Paolini’s mind at all when he finished this novel and probably only came into existence when he reached the climax of the next and remembered that Shuriken exists.

Eragon tells Arya that Oromis is dead (Glaedr is screaming and sort of taking control of Saphira with his grief; he was completely ignored throughout the entirety of the Shade fight) and she has a good old cry in Eragon’s arms (Eragon is of course way too manly to mourn the death of his teacher in front of Arya). Surprisingly Eragon doesn’t come across as rapey or perverted as Arya is literally clinging to him in uncharacteristic grief. In fact, it reads as pretty platonic, which is nice.And that’s it for the climax of the book. I suppose it could have been worse. The stuff with Galbatorix is decent, the shade stuff was completely unnecessary, though I guess it didn’t blatantly contradict anything that had been previously established…which is a win as far as the series goes sometimes. I guess its good the book had some sort of climax rather than just ending abruptly. Only the last wrap up chapter left, I believe Torylltales has it written already, which means we can finally finish this spork and move on to Eragon. Ah the good old days when it seemed like Paolini gave a crap.

31 comments

Posted by

cmdrnemo

You are right about the oxygen needs. If dragons functioned according to the rules us mere mortals need to live by. During the time of the largest dinosaurs for example Earths atmospheric O2 percentage was in the ~30 range. Currently it's nearly 20. At 30+ percent creatures as large as Stegosaurus can survive. It was also a time of ferns. Because ferns can handle oxygen concentrations that high. Trees and human lungs would spontaneously burst into flames under standard pressure and temperature (sea level, 1 atm, pressure, 25 degrees celsius). By comparison if someone created a real Jurassic Park the dinos would mostly just lie around suffocating. Insects used to be hella big because oxygen is fuel and they are fuel access size limited.

So realistically high altitudes are best handled by creatures large enough to have enough lung space, and small enough to have limited oxygen needs. Dragons do not cut it. Humans are upper end of the range. 20-40 kg is your best bet. About the size of an Albatross or an Eagle. Any bird known for high altitude flight, obviously. As you would expect. Most of the time when something is a certain way, it has good reason to be that way.

Posted by

snarkbotanya

Varaug is such an afterthought of a character/boss fight that it's kind of amazing. He literally exists just to menace the main characters a little and give them something to swing their swords at, all while spouting some of the most stupid, cliched dialogue in the whole damn series.

I am going to get some use out of him, though, because he helps to build Consequence canon on how Shades work... and I am going to have fun with that.

Posted by

epistler

Also, way to completely devalue Eragon's big "victory" at the end of book one... and devalue the hell out of Arya as well. I mean really - she finally gets what's supposed to be a Moment Of Awesome, and it's against an enemy so pathetic he dies in ten seconds flat for no effort. At least Ergs got hurt, FFS.

Yet another one of Paolini's painfully token attempts at being "feminist" goes down in flames...

Edited Tuesday, 23 October 2018 08:17 (local)

Posted by

gharial

You're completely right. The presence of the two shades (and Varuag even allegedly being stronger than Durza) is actually fantastic evidence to point to show that the story progressively got worse. As bad as it was to give Eragon an injury and then heal it in the next book, it's still way better than doing nothing at all. Arya and Eragon both came out of this engagement without a scratch (and Saphira too, legit forgot to mention her). It could have been a really interesting arc for Arya if she got injured like Eragon and didn't have a magical tattoo dance to fix it. Even with Paolini's writing making her more of a faux bad ass by fighting despite injury, while silly, would be better than the literal nothing that resulted from this.

Posted by

epistler

Yeah, as bad as the first book was, Durza was at least a semi-competent, proactive villain, and killing him wasn't easy and came with a price. Plus Eragon had to fight him twice and lost the first time, and when Arya encountered him she was overpowered in ten seconds flat, and that time she had two other elves to back her up! There's none of that here.

Personally, I think the moment in Eldest when Eragon got healed and given a completely unearned power-up also marks the moment when Paolini officially stopped trying. He introduced consequences for his protagonist, and then couldn't figure out how to deal with those consequences, so he just handwaved the whole thing and never had him suffer consequences ever again. From that point forward, Eragon walked out of every single fight without a mark on him and any and all wounds became super easy to fix with cost-free magic (whereas in book one healing people was hard and the patient would sometimes die even if you did use the drinking toast spell on them).

Probably not coincidentally, this also started being an issue right around the time the hype machine was at its hysterical height. Strangely enough, telling a budding author they're the next Tolkien is a truly fantastic way to make them feel like they don't have to try very hard.

Posted by

epistler

I would still dearly like to know how the hell Galby wiped out the wild dragons all on his tod. Did he have squads of Ra'zac working for him? What? It's NEVER explained what the hell happened to them beyond a vague throaway line about how they 'resisted fiercely' but couldn't win. Actually, you know what I'm reminded of right now? Whitewashed history books which pretend that when white people arrived on the scene, the natives just conveniently stopped existing.

...amid children with sharp, flat teeth

You motherfuckin' WOT? That's just... such a bizarre description.

Also, is it just me or does Paolini seem to have inordinate levels of contempt for the aristocracy? I hate to break it to you, pal - you might be a proud American but you're still a millionaire celebrity, which makes you a member of the new American aristocracy. If I were you I'd lose the high-handed attitude toward the rich and pampered.

...Why is Lady Lorana wearing a crown? I feel like I'm watching someone play Skyrim.

"Your philosophy does not constrain me, elf!"

Galby - dude. I love you, man, but right now you're spouting complete gibberish.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that Oromis acts like a whiny little brat in this scene. Isn't this guy supposed to be like 10,000 years old and eternally wise and enlightened and shit? Because he's acting like a kid having a screaming tantrum because mummy wouldn't buy him sweets.

Oh, what am I talking about? Everybody in this series eventually turns into a whiny little childish brat, including Galby. It's like Paolini doesn't know any other way to portray anger or fear.

I love how the entire climax/boss fight for Eragon is literally just a filler scene. It's a book of filler in which everything the protag does is filler... and it climaxes with more filler.

Posted by

gharial

Got to wonder how something can be both flat and sharp. Only real explanation is that the edges of the teeth are sharp which...well teeth tend to be side by side making that unlikely. Unless sharp refers to the resolution of the paintings.

Posted by

epistler

I was thinking the same thing. What, do they have chisels for teeth? Are they some kind of little goblin monster? The description makes them sound like they're supposed to be in some way inhuman, which was clearly not intentional if only because Paolini has never proven himself to be capable of subtlety.

Edited Monday, 22 October 2018 13:22 (local)

Posted by

gharial

That's what I find weird about the paintings. It's actually some decently striking imagery (questionable dentistry aside) yet I have absolutely no idea what emotions it's actually meant to be invoking

Posted by

epistler

I don't think he really knew either - he probably just wanted some "scary" imagery and didn't put much more thought into it than that.

Posted by

torylltales

Of course Paolini ends the book with a mini boss fight, because it's the only way he knows how to end a book. My personal hypothesis is that when Paolini's publishers said "we physically cannot bind all that into one book, you need to split them", Paolini made up Varaug right then, purely because he thinks every book needs to end with an epic showdown with a powerful enemy. No matter how pointless or out of character or completely out of nowhere it may be.

Posted by

epistler

Yeah... it really does look like something made up on the fly. If it wasn't, it would have had an impact on the plot after this scene. Or indeed at all.

Posted by

gharial

To be fair to him, the other climaxes are at least appropriate (albeit incredibly rushed into in the first two books).

Posted by

torylltales

True, but the addition of Varaug not only makes the pattern become clear, but also affects the credibility if the other mini-boss fights, in my mind.

In Eragon, the fight with Durza was a natural consequence of the prior events leading up to it, and Dirza had a strong presence through the book as the primary antagonist.

In Eldest, Murtagh just appears right out of nowhere, with no buildup or introduction as a villain character (remember all the readers were supposed to assume him dead up until his reveal), and no previous screen-time in his villain role.

In Brisingr, Varaug appears right out of nowhere with no buildup or introduction, and no previous screentime to establish him/it as a character.

In Inheritance Barst (arguably the last mini-boss before Galby) appears right out of nowhere, with no buildup or introduction , or previous screentime or mentions to establish him as a powerful enemy. He just sort of poofs into existence at just the right time for a mini-boss, and fights and dies in the same scene.

So really of the end-book mini-boss fights in the series, only Durza's was really a natural consequence of the story. The rest were out of nowhere, and of those only Murtagh survived the fight scene to continue to have a presence in the story.

Edited Monday, 22 October 2018 22:02 (local)

Posted by

gharial

Well yeah, there's no real build up for Murtagh (Eragon does have one prophetic dream about him but that's so hamfisted that I can't in good fate call it foreshadowing), but Murtagh is at least still an important character in the series and his actions at the end of the book have consequences and changes the direction of the story (well, as much as it can be changed for this series. Thinking it over, removing Murtagh would change surprisingly little). You're right about Barst though, he existed purely to give Roran something to do and is almost worse than Varaug as building up Barst would have been incredibly easy. Just four or five single line references to him throughout the last two books would have done the trick. The fact that he is never mentioned even once in Brisinger is further proof Paolini only had the broadstrokes of Inheritance in mind when writing Brisinger, even though they were meant to be the same book.

Edited Tuesday, 23 October 2018 04:45 (local)

Posted by

epistler

Who the hell thought creating a Shade was a good idea anyway? Why did they think the guy would automatically be on their side?? Going on how Durza behaved, I get the feeling Shades are generally just out for themselves (which raises the question of why Durza ever worked for Galbs in the first place. For the lulz?).

But what if Vaurang or however you spell it wasn't created on the spot, but rather that it turned out Durza's "spirits" decided to possess a new body because Eragon messed up killing him, and now he's out for revenge? Bam - consequences, setup, and the guy doesn't come right the fuck out of nowhere. Eragon realises that the whole Shadeslayer thing was all a big sham, and he, Arya and Saphira must now fight him as a team rather than him doing all the work and getting all the glory while the girls are reduced to glorified cheerleaders. (Yes, I know Ergs says something stupid about how Vaurung fought alone while they won because they fought as a team, but given that he and Saphira did nothing this is patently nonsense).

Posted by

gharial

I believe Lady Lorana does say something to the effect that they have no guarantee that the Shade would actually help them and that the mages are just trying to cause as much chaos as possible. Which alone makes them way more interesting that Varuag himself, even though none of the mages have a single line of dialogue.

Posted by

epistler

Chaos... inside their own keep. SMRT.

Posted by

gharial

Not their keep, Lady Lorana's. The quote in full

“Why don’t you order them to surrender?” whispered Eragon.

“I cannot,” said Lorana. “They answer only to the king and his new Rider. I have sworn myself to Galbatorix—I had no choice in the matter—so I cannot raise a hand against him or his servants; otherwise, I would have arranged their destruction myself.”

“Why?” asked Arya. “What is it you fear so much?”

The skin around Lorana’s eyes tightened. “They know they cannot hope to drive off the Varden as they are, and Galbatorix has not sent reinforcements to our aid. So they are attempting, I do not know how, to create a Shade in the hope that the monster will turn against the Varden and spread sorrow and confusion throughout your ranks.”

Horror enveloped Eragon. He could not imagine having to fight another Durza.
“But a Shade might just as easily turn against them and everyone else in Feinster as it would against the Varden.”

Lorana nodded. “They do not care. They only wish to cause as much pain and destruction as they can before they die. They are insane, Shadeslayer. Please, you must stop them, for the sake of my people!”

Edited Tuesday, 23 October 2018 09:37 (local)

Posted by

epistler

Great, so it's just another case of "they're doing it because they're craazy!". Leave the mentally ill alone, Pao.

Posted by

ssbob90

Barst (and by extension rhunon and long knife guy) is a pretty good example of what he says about characters

"Characters are created out of necessity."(I probably worded that wrong).

Posted by

gharial

Characters being created out of necessity isn't a bad thing. It's just bad when characters are only their necessity and nothing else. Rhunon is massively better than the other two examples as she's introduced way earlier than when she comes to be necessary and actually feels like a part of the world, providing lore and diversity to the store. Barst, knife guy and Varug were just pulled out of Paolini's ass and added nothing but their very strict necessity (and I use necessity very lightly in the case of knife guy).

Posted by

ssbob90

Your right. I didn't specify that properly

Edited Saturday, 24 November 2018 10:13 (local)

Posted by

epistler

In Inheritance Barst (arguably the last mini-boss before Galby) appears right out of nowhere, with no buildup or introduction , or previous screentime or mentions to establish him as a powerful enemy. He just sort of poofs into existence at just the right time for a mini-boss, and fights and dies in the same scene.

Plus his very existence raises all sorts of questions about why the hell Galby didn't make more like him if it's just a matter of giving a guy a dragonball and some magic ward doohickeys. A squad of ten Barsts could have wiped out the whole damn Varden before they got to Feinster for heaven's sake! Instead of which he's just a cheap mini-boss who randomly spawns in in order to make Roran look "badass". You know, again.

Posted by

gharial

Why send ten Barsts when you can send just one Shuriken? Hell, judging from the powers Galbatorix shows in this chapter, levitating Glaedr (who's going to have every ward conceivable on him) into the stratosphere, Galbatorix could probably annihilate the entirety of the Varden himself without even leaving his throne room.

Posted by

epistler

Hah, yes. Plus in Eldest Murtagh has the power to freeze Saphira and Eragon to the spot all by himself, and Ergs can't do a damn thing about it. This is of course why he never uses this ability again.

Posted by

torylltales

Remember what Paolini has said about distance and size being a factor in telekinetic spells, they get progressively weaker the further away you are and the larger the object you are levitating is.

If that holds true, Galby probably has enough raw power to turn the entire Varden into ashes, Thanos style, without really straining himself.

Posted by

w3rew0lfgirl

Oh no it is the Eldunari chapter were dragons live on as miserable useless gems so they can give advice! I really hate this concept.

Out of curiosity did anyone find Glaedr or Oromis that interesting or cared when they died. I was actually annoy when Glaedr lived on. As someone who enjoyed Eragon as a teen never felt connected to them on anything. I did not like the boring mentor characters. Brom on the other hand I actually like; mostly for his movie counterpart. In both the movie and the book I was sad when he died. I really hated that movie but Brom was the most enjoyable part.

I also as a teen like Murtagh but was disappointed by the books as the continued.

Posted by

epistler

Out of curiosity did anyone find Glaedr or Oromis that interesting or cared when they died.

I know I for one didn't care. They were a pair of boring, flat stock characters. We never learned anything about either of them as people, so why should we give a fig that they're dead?

Posted by [Unknown site tag]

w3rew0lfgirl

Oblakom has made improvements to them for her fics. Oromis is interesting now.

Posted by

oblakom

‘Anger is a poison. You must purge it from your mind or else it will corrupt your better nature.’

FUCK! I forgot that there was a direct quote from the day Galbatorix was brought before the Elders. Ah, well. Can still make use of it.

Tut-tut

Also, for the love of all the plot holes of this serie, what the actual fuck is "tut-tut"? Oh, I'm gonna have so much fun with the good old Galbs :D

...And, oh. Hi, Varaug. Nice to meet you. I will adopt you soon and treat you right, don't worry.