Inheritance Spork - Chapter Sixty-Two: Over the Wall and into the Maw

[pangolin20]

Rorschach wrote in Antishurtugal, 2012-12-25 22:31:00

Inheritance Spork - Chapter Sixty-Two: Over the Wall and into the Maw

Chapter Sixty-Two: Over the Wall and into the Maw

Elva asks Eragon to stop chewing on the inside of his mouth, because it’s distracting and disgusting

With some surprise, he realized that he had bitten the inner surface of his right cheek until it was covered with several bloody sores (page 611).

Right. Haven’t we all been there and accidentally chewed the inside of our mouth off? Pain doesn’t work that way, Paolini. It is possible to accidentally cause yourself harm, but that’s usually because there is something else overriding your pain sensors, like adrenaline. This isn’t happening. He’s been saddling Saphira.

Eragon spent part of the night meditating while Elva talked to the dragons. Eragon can sense that they are afraid of her, because they have no defense against her power. I’m going to come out and say that this doesn’t really make any sense. Elva has power, but she is not powerful. If you want to get rid of her, it’s actually pretty simple. To help you out, I’ve put together this handy flowchart.



Theoretically, she might be able to anticipate people wanting to kill her. In that case, you’d need to be able to run or fly faster than a little girl

They get ready for departure and watch the Varden march out to war. Eragon is impressed that they’d be willing to march out after seeing Shruikan, which makes sense because they’ve never fought against a dragon before, except for Thorn. Saphira says if Shruikan shows up again, the Varden will scatter “like so many frightened mice”. Right. Like a herd of mice. Like mice, migrating together in huge numbers.

Eragon looks over at the Varden’s camp and sees Saphira’s shape and a perfect replica of himself. See, the Elvish magicians are conjuring up a perfect replica of him to fool the enemy into thinking that he’s somewhere he’s not. It’s actually not a bad plan, although you’d think any magician worth his salt - and certainly Murtagh or Galbatorix - would be able to figure it out simply by scrying Eragon. Unless, of course, magic

The Varden attack, launching lots of things over Uru’Baen’s walls. FakeSaphira flies in and destroys things until they engineer a fake “accident” and she breaks a wing and falls to the ground. A moment later, Murtagh and Thorn show up and chase after FakeSaphira. Eragon casts a spell to turn himself, Elva, and Saphira invisible, and they take off. Inside the Varden camp, Blodhgarm, Arya, and ten elf magicians are waiting, tied to a log. They throw the log into the air and Saphira catches it and flies, lifting them all off the ground as they head into Uru’Baen. Saphira’s gotten awfully strong, hasn’t she? Able to lift a sizable log and thirteen and a half people all at once?

As they pass over the walls, Galbatorix’s magic makes them turn visible again, which doesn’t actually matter. They land inside the walls and run over towards the gate to the citadel. Arya turns her spear into a blowtorch and begins cutting through the iron gate, essentially doing this.

Once they gate is open, they use the Dauthdaert, one by one, to walk inside the gate into the citadel. The Dauthdaert protects them against the wards Galbatorix has set up, apparently? Why? No real reason. I mean, it used to belong to Galbatorix, but as I recall there has been no mention of it possessing mystical powers that allow the owner to pass through magical wards. In fact, that’s astonishingly stupid. If you’re going to give a magic dragon-killing spear to someone and then send them out to fight the Varden, the very people who want to kill you, and there’s a very strong chance they could be killed or captured and the Varden would have that spear, doesn’t it make more sense to remove this loophole from either the spear or your magical wards?

Just saying.

Anyway, the loophole exists for plot contrivance reasons and now they’re all inside

12 comments

[1]

mage_apprentice
December 26 2012, 07:19:23 UTC
“like so many frightened mice”

I know I should be used to this by now, but why not just say "scatter like mice"? It's kinda implied that the mice would be afraid and that, if there is more than one mouse, there would be many, because chances are that there's a nice nest somewhere if you've seen one lonesome mouse.

[2]

pipedreamno20
December 26 2012, 08:45:47 UTC
:O I had forgotten about the chewing-cheek thing. That just sounds like Eragon's on ecstasy... :/

[2A]

borgseawolf
Dcember 26 2012, 20:29:17 UTC
To be fair to Paolini for once, I do that bloody sores thing all the time. But that's just because I'm slightly neurotic :) Is Eragon neurotic? That would explain so much...

[3]

scavokretlaw
December 26 2012, 17:12:50 UTC
The Varden are all marching together in a giant group. For the simile to work, there would need to be a group that would then scatter. Mice, unless you have a nest, don't tend to be in groups, and how often would Saphira actually see a mouse nest?

From her perspective, a herd of sheep would make a lot more sense. Sheep stay in herds, and if a dragon suddenly swooped down at them they would scatter. And I'm sure Saphira has seen that exact same thing happen.

It's just another example of Paolini not really thinking clearly about the words he uses and the characters he has using them. I probably should have made that more clear within the spork itself.

[4]

borgseawolf
December 26 2012, 20:36:33 UTC
How is an illusionary dragon destroying things? And if so, can't they just create a whole lot of illusionary dragons to fight for them?

[5]

thelesserhound
December 26 2012, 23:00:41 UTC
Every time I read about Eragon using an invisibility spell I remember that group of soldiers that he and Arya had "no choice" but to kill in Brisingr. I mean I know Paolini has no consistency whatsoever, but how can this keep happening over and over and over again? ;___;

[5A]

rhyson
December 27 2012, 04:31:10 UTC
And the sad thing is that the fans don't seem remember what the little psychopath did the book before.

The more forgetful of the fans kept speculating, "Paolini will solve plothole A by using solution C, since solution B was declared impossible in the last book." And then Paolini used solution B anyways, but those fans still didn't catch on by the time Inheritance rolled around. Gah.

[6]

rhyson
December 27 2012, 04:51:31 UTC
"Eragon can sense that they are afraid of her, because they have no defense against her power."

Paolini almost learned. One part of having scary characters is having the other characters be afraid of them. However, the other part of having scary characters is having characters who are actually scary. You failed the second half, Paolini.

I can't decide which is worse. The bad guy having a castle without a magical defence perimeter or the good guys finding a random object that can pass through said perimeters. There's no point in writing in a magical defence system if the good guys are simply going to walk right through. But if he didn't have one, Galbatorix would've looked like a bigger idiot.

And why did the elves engineer a fake accident? Let the fake dragon fly. Unless it was specifically labelled as less cost-efficient as normal fireballs.

Paolini doesn't even care anymore. He just wanted the stupid thing to be done and over with. That's the feeling I'm getting.

[6A]

ana0119
December 29 2012, 05:29:35 UTC
Paolini doesn't even care anymore. He just wanted the stupid thing to be done and over with. That's the feeling I'm getting.

...I could understand that. It might not be as much work as we wish, but Paolini has put quite a bit of work and time into this. He's probably long since lost any real inspiration or enthusiasm for this world.

At least he did finish.

[6A1]

rhyson
December 29 2012, 07:37:01 UTC
Yeah. A big problem with Inheritance was that much of the effort was misguided. It's almost like he didn't care what he was writing about as long as it adding to the word count. It would explain why there's no heart or soul in it. It's something of a tragedy, though. All that effort and all those words and all that anticipation, it's the grand finale of almost half his life's work, and the best way to describe it to say "Meh."

He did finish it, though. Even if the fantasy genre would have been better off if he didn't, he did accomplish that much. :P

[6A2]

thelesserhound
December 30 2012, 02:57:10 UTC
It does seem like it, but didn't he say he was planning like half a dozen sequels set in Alagaesia?

[6A2A]

rhyson
December 31 2012, 07:38:34 UTC
Sh. Let's just pretend it's over. lol

But in all seriousness, the planning for further crap might just be hot air. He does that a lot. I think the publishers are pushing for more Alagaesia and Paolini is willing to play along. He did say he liked plotting. The actual writing it out part might be empty promises. He said he wanted to write science fiction, and according to the nuclear dumpsite near the Vault of Souls, he's serious about it. I mean, introducing science to Alageasia was a pretty strong indicator he wants to carry out the space opera he threatened to unlease on us.