Inheritance Spork: Chapter Sixty-Five: The Heart of the Fray

[pangolin20]

CherryP posting in antishurtugal, 2013-01-24 12:55:00

MOOD: exhausted

Inheritance Spork: Chapter Sixty-Five: The Heart of the Fray

Sorry for chronic posting lateness... eaten alive by conference deadlines, haven't been on LJ for a while. Hey alkaven5, I sorta feel bad for posting this as I would've wanted all to have a chance at it, but didn't see your post until I logged on to post this... :(


So, to recap the story so far, Roran and his merry men have implemented the superb suicidal-rush strategy, climbed a 300 foot ladder and fought some soldiers. Also, the wall is beginning to fall. The 300-foot wall. Don’t bother committing this bit to memory. Paolini hasn’t.

We rejoin our hero on the crumbling wall of the city...

“Along with the warriors of his battalion, Roran fought his way down off Urû’baen’s outer wall to the streets below. There they paused to regroup”

Okay. So, Roran just fought his way down a 300-foot wall. About 14 flights of stairs. In not merely one sentence but actually just one clause. And his only reaction to this is ‘pausing to regroup’. That Roran is well ‘ard. In fact, this – like the ascent onto the walls – really only works for me if I ascribe to Roran the invulnerability, strength and manoeuverability of one of the über-zombies from Resident Evil.

“then he shouted, “To the gate!” and pointed with his hammer”

Again with the Resident Evil flashback; anyone remember the ‘Axeman’ zombie? Leather-clad, sack on head, persistently drags around a massive great axe like a security blanket? For some reason, no matter what is on the page, Roran’s dialogue is rendered in my mind’s ear as ‘Gwaaaaargh’.

I’m just going to render this next scene accordingly:

“At first the savage intensity of slaughter and victory blinded Roran to all else. But when the soldiers they met continued to flee, a sense of unease began to gnaw at his stomach, and he began to look around with greater alertness, searching for anything that seemed different from what it ought to be.
Something was wrong. He was sure of it.
“Gwaaargh” he muttered to himself.
“What?” asked Albriech, who was next to him.
“Gwaaaargh” Twisting his head around, Roran shouted to the rest of the battalion, “Gwaaaargh!”

“They soon broke out into the rubble-strewn street that led to what had once been the main gate of the city. Now all that was left was a gaping hole several hundred feet wide at the top, with a pile of broken stones at the bottom. Through the gap streamed the Varden and their allies”

I’d like to point out here that several hundred feet of solid rock, 300 feet in height by oh, let’s say ten feet have to go somewhere. Look up 'demolished building' on Google image search (I'd link it, but fear incurring the wrath of the post queueing system); most appear quite hard to off-handedly stream over, especially on horseback.

Roran notes that some of Galby’s soldiers seem to be protected by wards. He assumes they’re Galbatorix’s favourites, as opposed to for example the result of any particular strategy, perhaps because that’s how Eragon hands these things out.

“they charged toward the ranks of men. The soldiers shouted with alarm, and panic spread among them as they scrambled backward, trampling their own kind as they tried to find room to fight.
Howling, Roran fell upon the first row of men. Blood sprayed around him as he swung his hammer and felt metal and bone give way. The soldiers were so tightly packed that they were nearly helpless. He killed four of them before even one managed to swing a sword at him, which he blocked with his shield. He broke and he battered; he ducked and he shoved; he growled and he shouted and he killed and he killed and he killed—until, to his surprise, he swung his hammer and found nothing but empty air before him.”

Roran's dialogue is for some time limited to howls, which might as well be rendered as ‘Gwaargh’ anyhow.

“The fighting continued for another few minutes, whereupon the only soldiers remaining in the area were dead soldiers.”

Paolini's editor should have served a cease-and-desist on that line.

And now for Lord Barst: “Barst was not the sort of man to have a belly. He would not let himself go soft, nor would Galbatorix have chosen such a man to defend Urû’baen. The only explanation that made sense, then, was that Barst had an Eldunarí strapped to his body underneath his oddly shaped breastplate.”

I disagree. Evidently Barst is having Eragon’s baby. Most other characters in this series (except, as yet, Arya...) seem to want to volunteer, so why not Barst?

Anyway, turns out that Barst is impervious to magic and owns a levitating horse. There’s also a faintly irritating bit in which elves attempt to trap the legs of Barst’s horse in ‘tendrils of ice’, which makes me wonder precisely who, when looking for a good substance to substitute for rope, would pick a substance as blatantly inappropriate as ice. If you’re looking for a cold Coke, by all means conjure up some ice, but if what you’re after is trapping a horse’s legs then what's wrong with vines, brushwood, or maybe some of that IMMENSE MOUNTAIN OF RUBBLE sitting right over there that resulted from demolishing several hundred feet of 300-foot-tall city wall?

Then there’s a faintly irritating bit in which Galby’s staff shell their own city with catapults, which I suppose just goes to show that Galby the insane civil architect's decision to mount the war machines in question on a 360 degree mount, in defiance of all sanity, has been vindicated at last.

Roran uses Eragon’s stock plot advancement device, which is to say he gets hit on the head and loses consciousness. Someone we’re probably supposed to recognise gets killed. Also, Roran loses his hammer, so I suppose that the Stronghammer family are going to be a bit buggered when it’s time to put up those IKEA shelves they’ve been meaning to finish all this time. Roran may need to get down the hardware store. Maybe this time he can pick up a nice cordless Black & Decker instead?


15 comments

[1]

distinctvaguens
January 24 2013, 16:50:42 UTC
Well for the record, I'm alive and will get the next chapter up after the weekend. busy. Good spork.

[1A]

ana0119
February 1 2013, 02:05:44 UTC
You're a lying liar who lies.

You meant "after the next weekend," didn't you?

[2]

torylltales
January 24 2013, 23:17:53 UTC
With all of the unconsciousness from head trauma, it would not be surprising if Eragon and Roran were reduced to "gwaaargh".

I love how easily this fits into Video game mechanics. Barst is clearly the pre-Boss, and there will probably be a special combination of moves that will exploit the one weakness he has. When Barst is defeated, the scene will morph to the final boss, never mind all of the unnamed Imperial Mooks in the background.

[2A]

ana0119
January 25 2013, 00:08:29 UTC
The most common term is "mid-boss" or "mini-boss." And usually, you run down a hallway before reaching the boss proper. At least they aren't having a boss rush made up of the zombies of previously defeated lords or something.

[2A1]

mage_apprentice
January 25 2013, 02:25:39 UTC
The description torylltales offers with pre-bosses and switching to a different scene reminds me of Touhou where you have the mini-boss for the stage and then the boss after that. It works almost exactly like that AND you slaughter a bunch of fairies (who are said to regenerate later). Though, it's a lot more impressive than what we're given in Inheritance Cycle Then again, the absolute fairy slaughters are condoned due to the setting's danmaku laws where, if you have to resort to violence, you have to resolve conflicts with those harmless energy bullets instead of killing people.

Definitely makes a lot more sense if the senseless slaughter was actually just harmless "being defeated" or "regenerating elsewhere" and defeat means friendship like in Gensokyo.

[2A1A]

Anonymous
April 7 2013, 15:01:53 UTC
And yet, Touhou is still worse in its story compared to this book.

[3]

torylltales
January 24 2013, 23:18:57 UTC
Next Up:

Chapter Sixty Six: The Name of All Names - dibbed by distinctvaguens
Chapter Sixty Seven: Muscle Against Metal - dibbed by torylltales (yay me!)
Chapter Sixty Eight: The Gift of Knowledge - dibbed by barrington42

[4]

adder_snake
January 25 2013, 01:30:12 UTC
"he killed—until, to his surprise, he swung his hammer and found nothing but empty air before him."

Wait, whaaaat??? Was he NOT LOOKING at what he was swinging at??? Randomly swinging your hammer around with your eyes closed is NOT the proper way to fight.

[5]

mage_apprentice
January 25 2013, 02:28:42 UTC
. . . I think I need to pick up on reading good books again. These sporks are making me desensitized to bad writing.

[5A]

pipedreamno20
January 25 2013, 23:32:25 UTC
I find this happening too, and it scares me.

[5A1]

torylltales
January 25 2013, 23:50:00 UTC
Strangely, I find myself more sensitive to bad writing, i.e. I spot it more readily in whatever I'm reading.

[5A1A]

ana0119
January 27 2013, 08:16:09 UTC
I'm pretty tolerant to bad writing, both in the technical sense and in terms of plot, until it crosses that invisible line where my brain just goes, "Hell no," and I start nitpicking everything.

Amusingly, the first Eragon book only just hovered on that line (years and years ago, when I first read it). Eldest plunged headfirst past it.

[6]

loth440
February 1 2013, 08:55:47 UTC Edited: February 1 2013, 08:58:04 UTC
"I’d like to point out here that several hundred feet of solid rock, 300 feet in height by oh, let’s say ten feet have to go somewhere. Look up 'demolished building' on Google image search (I'd link it, but fear incurring the wrath of the post queueing system); most appear quite hard to off-handedly stream over, especially on horseback."

Just another example of Paopao having very little exposure to the dangerous world outside of his parents' protective bubble (or being so overly confident in his own knowledge of the world), and it being detrimental to his writing. Anyone who has read or watched the news of recent world events would have an inkling that the falling of a 300 foot wall would require at least a little bit of research, and would then discover that the amount of dust and debris it creates is very dangerous and
disabling for any living thing in it's vicinity.

The Varden army waiting to storm through the gap would not be able to see...or breathe...or walk. Never mind the fact that any of them near the edge of the wall would be underneath several hundred tons of stone and mortar.

[6A]

cherrypep
February 1 2013, 11:53:06 UTC
I really did want someone to at least mention the subject. "Gee whiz, boss, it probably would've been easier to fight our way through with the walls intact than climb over this gigantic, unstable pile of rubble." But yes, without wishing to be indelicate, the 2000s provided opportunity to learn a lot about the fall of very tall buildings :-(

The walls are supposedly as tall as Masada, a natural plateau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada) and you can see what happened when the Romans laid siege to that, although admittedly they didn't have a dragon and a bunch of singing elves. But at most he's actually describing something more like, generously, the walls of Dubrovnik.

In any case the whole city wall defence mechanism thing still feels weirdly inadequate in the context of an empire since without your supply chain, as the rebels of Masada discovered, you rapidly become nothing. City walls come into their own during times and places where populations are small, standing armies sparse, technology minimal and war involves relatively small groups of blokes in armour. It might be interesting to compare Uru'baen and ancient Rome someday...

[6A1]

loth440
February 1 2013, 21:22:43 UTC
Here's what I don't get about Paolini - he glazes over events in the story that would likely be very dramatic and challenging for the protagonist(s), then puts a sharp focus on miniscule things that have no bearing on the story. I seem to remember him giving a highly detailed and long-winded description of a bedside lamp, which we never see again, is totally unimportant, and never should have been mentioned....and then giving an extremely vague description of the character it belonged to, who we see many times afterwards. I think it was Nasuada, or perhaps one of the Dwarves? I forget.