![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torylltales) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
antishurtugal_reborn2020-04-25 06:52 pm
Eragon Group Spork Chapter 45: The Hadarac Desert
Welcome to the Eragon Group Spork, Chapter 45: The Harad Haderach Hadarac Desert
Image (and maths) heavy, sorry.
Avast
Oh sorry, that’s just my ebook’s wonky formatting.
A vast expanse of dunes spread to the horizon like ripples on an ocean.
Paolini has never seen dunes up close from the ground, as we shouldn’t expect him to. But surely he could have looked at photos that weren’t taken from the air? Unfortunately the overwhelming majority of photos of sand dunes are taken from high up looking down, either from planes, from the top of a tall dune or hill, or by a drone, so it’s hard to find a photo of a sandy-dune desert from the ground. Unless Eragon and co. are on the top of a hill looking down, they shouldn’t be seeing “a vast expanse of sand dunes spread to the horizon”. The viewing angle is wrong for that. Assuming they’re on a flat plain looking up towards the dunes, they should only see the first row.
At most, something like this
with a couple of dunes in the background visible in the valleys.
But certainly not
Unless Eragon was flying on Saphira, or they were all standing on the edge of a cliff.
Anyway, the party find their way to the geologically implausible desert, spend most of a page discussing whether or not the horses will be able to find enough food, Saphira likes the desert heat more than the cold mountains, and Eragon says the most true sentence he will utter in the entire series: “My mind is as slow as a snail”.
Yes, Eragon, it is.
There’s brief mention of the fact that the Ra’zac are surely hunting them down again, so they have to be wary.
And then, even though they’re in a sandy desert, Eragon finds “gallons” of water in the ground for the horses, Saphira, and himself and Murtagh.
While it is true that every desert has groundwater under the sand, I find it implausible that Eragon could pull “gallons” of water to the surface with seemingly no effort. Especially since a few weeks ago lighting a single arrow on fire was enough to make him pass out from exhaustion.
For me, this is another wasted opportunity to make the story interesting: What if Eragon couldn’t find more than a mouthful of water, or even no water at all, and then they have to cross the desert with only the water they’d brought with them? What if Eragon’s assumption back at the outskirts of Gil’ead were wrong, and his mistake had the potential to cost them dearly? Now they’re on the run, they can’t go back to river where the soldiers are surely on the banks of by now, and they have no water with which to safely cross the desert. What now? Their desperation, Eragon’s gnawing guilt, Murtagh’s simmering resentment, Saphira’s growing irritation, could all make for a potent tinderbox of character development and conflict. Especially if Tornac, the horse Murtagh says he is fond of, dies of dehydration or heatstroke.
(And then, of course, what if they ran into the “urgal city” Brom speculated might have been in development in the empire’s southeast near the edge of the desert? Or a Nomadic People caravan? At their most desperate and dehydrated, close to death?)
Of course, this would require Eragon to be both (a) wrong, and (b) inconvenienced, neither of which Paolini could allow.
There’s a couple of pages of them just… walking. And Eragon creeping over Arya, of course.
And then they see the mountains.
What they had taken to be hills were actually the bases of gigantic mountains, scores of miles wide. Except for the dense forest along their lower regions, the mountains were entirely covered with snow and ice. It was this that had deceived Eragon into thinking the sky white. He craned back his neck, searching for the peaks, but they were not visible. The mountains stretched up into the sky until they faded from sight.
They faded from sight? Humans eyes have an angular resolution of 0.02 degrees. Assuming the mountains are being side-lit by the afternoon sun, and aren’t being concealed or camouflaged by clouds (if they were, why wouldn’t Paolini have just said so?), and assuming my maths is correct…
In order for the peaks of the Beor mountains to “fade from view” only because of angular resolution (the angle of observation from Eragon’s eyes to the peaks being less than 0.02 degrees)...
Eragon would have to be standing 33,300 miles away from the base of the mountains (rounded to the nearest hundred miles). On a flat plane with no planetary curvature, mind you.
33,300 miles is equal to roughly 53,600 kilometres. The Earth’s circumference is only 40,000 kilometres, so either this planet is several orders of magnitude larger than Earth, or Paolini’s measurement for the height of the Beor mountains is bullshit.
I tried to calculate how much of the mountains would be hidden from view by the planet’s curvature, but my “distance from object” broke the curve calculator.
They’re about another day and a half of travel away from the Ramr river, so if I take my little map and my ruler and put them about halfway across (for reasons that will be elaborated soon), that would put them at about… 24 leagues away, going by the estimated distances from the previous chapter. (16 leagues between Gil’ead and Bullridge). So if I put them 72 miles away (assuming the English league as 3 miles) from the base of the mountains, they should be able to see all but the bottom 400 metres of the mountains because of the horizon. And their angle of observation to the peaks should be 7.9 degrees, well within the angle of resolution of the naked human eye.
Even accounting for “magic” as an explanation for how the mountains got or stay that tall (Paolini said in his recent AMA that there must be a spell or ward on the mountain range that prevents erosion), no amount of magic can explain the maths, unless by “fade from view” Paolini means they literally disappear into the sky, which could well be some kind of invisibility spell.
Paolini could have just said “the mountains disappeared into the clouds” and that would have been perfectly fine. Lots of mountain ranges do that. It’s believable and it’s plausible. You can very easily have impressively tall mountain ranges without breaking physics.
Paolini had to actually put effort into breaking the physical geometry of his world.
Anyway, that aside, um, aside, the see the impossibly tall mountains, ooh aah.
Murtagh shook his head, muttering, “That’s impossible!”
Murtagh would be great at sporking.
And then at the end of the chapter they reach the foothills and a small stream. It took them only 2 days to walk through the corner of the desert.
If the Alagaesia map is to scale, then I call shenanigans. It was a full day’s hard ride between Gil’ead and Bullridge, and that was them travelling as fast as they could without being seen, fleeing from hunting dogs and solders, and travelling through much of the night as well.
So, in relatively flat country with solid ground and a damn good reason to travel as fast as possible without killing their horses, they took 1 day to travel a distance my ruler says is 1cm (on my copy of the map at a particular size on the screen). So, 1cm= 1 solid day of unsustainably hard riding.
The smallest distance between the bend of the Ramr river they crossed and the closest foothills of the Beor, is, on the same map, at the same size, and using the same ruler, approximately 3cm (from above, if 1cm=16 leagues, 3cm=48 leagues). That’s over soft sand dunes, in an (impossibly) significantly hotter and more arid biome. So they travelled 1.5 times faster than they did when fleeing the soldiers from Gil’ead, over country that is significantly more difficult to traverse (especially for horses and people), while also according to the text moving slower overall to conserve their water, and sleeping all night instead of keeping on going.
See, the thing is, I don’t expect fantasy stories to be completely accurate in every possible detail. But if you’re going to go out of your way to mention specific measurements and specific lengths of time, at least try to make sure it makes sense. It doesn’t have to actually make sense, it just has to sound like it makes sense. Ten-mile mountains and crossing a desert in 2 days does not sound like it makes sense, which is why I question it. I questioned it when I first read it, and I still question it today. Except now I have a little bit of knowledge and the ability to search for more, to actually explain why it’s nonsensical.
This and the previous chapter could have been and should have been significantly condensed, if the story isn’t about their journey and survival, or significantly expanded if it is.
Stories about travel can be really good. On The Wings of a Falcon by Cynthia Voight is 95% about two boys travelling together, at first desperately fleeing from their island cult, and later trying to find somewhere safe to settle. That story works well because the focus is on their journey, their survival, and how their friendship changes and matures over time.
In The Lord of the Rings, the journey features prominently because that’s what the story is about: the journey to reach Mount Doom to destroy the Ring. There is a specific destination, and the focus is on the journey and the dangers they face on the way there.
This story… doesn’t have that focus. Travelling is a large part of it, but it never seems to be important. For most of the time they’re not really travelling from anything in particular (with the notable exception of their flight from Gil’ead), and they almost don’t seem to really be travelling to anywhere, either. They’re just sort of wandering around saying “gee, I hope we don’t stumble upon the Varden’s hiding place!”
And to make it worse there’s barely any character growth or interaction. You can’t say the story’s about the relationship between Eragon and Saphira, because they barely even talk to each other, and the same for Eragon and Murtagh. It’s just two chapters of nothing much really.
If I were writing this, the journey to the Varden would have been maybe three chapters total between Carvahall and the Varden camp, and then the story would focus on Eragon’s training, the developing relationship between Eragon and Saphira, learning to be a part of a rebel army, participating in raids, and trying to survive in this dangerous new situation he and his soul-sister have found themselves.
OR the journey would be most of the book, but the focus of the story would be on how dangerous and stressful the journey is, how that stress impacts on the developing relationship between Eragon and Saphira, on the lengths they have to go to to survive in the wild without being seen or captured… You know, all the interesting bits that Paolini glossed over in the previous few chapters.
Next chapter is A Path Revealed, in which we might pray something interesting finally happens.
[EDIT: just after posting this I realised that I had misinterpreted my maths: 33,000 miles is the distance required for the visible portion of the mountains, from top to bottom, to become too small to see because of angular size. Perspective doesn't work in such as way that only a portion of a visible object can fade from view. Maybe a specific point on the mountain peak like a tree or a little house can become too small to fully resolve but you should always be able to see the full object from top to the horizon, regardless of the angular size.
Even though that portion was incorrect, it is still true that Paolini's geography and sense of perspective are way off. There is no geometric or physical reason for only the top of something to "fade from sight" because of the viewing angle, unless it is being physically obstructed from your view, by say clouds.]
no subject
"Harad" is the great western desert in Middle Earth
Haderach is a term in the Dune series synonymous with the story's hero, who, notably, escaped into a desert.
Another "homage" where Paolini probably thought he was being clever.
no subject
Nailed it. This whole book lacks focus, which has always been one of its biggest and most fundamental flaws. Our "hero" leaves home and starts travelling around the countryside like a lot of fantasy protagonists, but the difference here is that he never really seems to have any particular goal in mind, and particularly after the "hunting down the Ra'zac" thing is abruptly dropped forever. After that, as you say, he's just kind of wandering around.
Now, if I was writing this I'd have it that after the failure to deal with the Ra'zac (which would end not with a silly "capture" scenario but rather with an exciting fight scene between Eragon, Brom and Saphira which ends with their defeat and Brom's death), Eragon is now being actively hunted down by both them and Durza. There's no time to hang around being maudlin over Brom's Liberace style glammed-up tomb; he and Saphira have to stay constantly on the run, always on the point of being caught and killed. Eragon now realises that he has overestimated his abilities and is no match for these three powerful villains, and not only has it cost Brom's life but at any moment it could end his and Saphira's as well.
The rest of the book would then be them fleeing beyond the borders of the Empire to the mountains, where they hope to find a place to hide. Arya, having rescued herself, would get her own POV as she too hurries to rejoin the Varden. Not sure how I'd fit Murtagh in.
Eragon makes it to the mountains by the skin of his teeth, is found by the Varden who have lookouts posted everywhere, and ends up proving his worth to them and undoing his earlier mistake as he takes on Durza and the Ra'zac when they inevitably catch up with him. This time he's able to kill them with Arya and Saphira's help, which teaches him the important lesson that even as a Rider he shouldn't consider himself above needing other people's help, which leads to him becoming less of an arrogant, self-centered ass.
Or something like that, but either way it would mean cutting to the chase and actually making the travelling, y'know, exciting and suspenseful.
Meanwhile looks like I'm up for the next chapter! I'll get right on it - it's been a while since I've sporked.
no subject
no subject
If the world were flat, the Beor mountains would be visible from Carvahall, especially up in the foothills at higher elevation. However, the mountains would be completely hidden over the curve until they got to Gil'ead, where the top 3 miles would be just visible on the horizon.
But still, as I said in my edit, the scene described in the book where Eragon could see the base of the mountains but not the peaks cannot happen without magical intervention or a physical obstruction covering the peaks. Because perspective doesn't work like that.
no subject
...Also, for how absurdly difficult this desert travel was hyped up to be, "our heroes" surely manage to complete it with very minor inconvenience, that makes me wonder how difficult it is to actually escape the Big Bad Empire. I am sure escaping North Korea is harder. Damn, I am not even sure if horses *can* actually run for days in the desert. Even leaving aside the fact that Paolini's horses work like cars, I still wonder whether their hooves allow them to move so fast on the sand of the desert, especially if we consider that these two particular horses never crossed a desert before. I never rode a horse in the desert, of course, but from the little I know tossing a horse in such a different environment can cause serious problems to the animal, that can even result in the damage of its hooves and legs. Generally it is suggested that the horse receive a sort of training to condition it and that it has an expert rider able to understand where to lead the horse, so that the animal doesn't injure itself stepping on too high sand of too rocky land. You also need to be careful and aware of the normal horse behavior. A lot of things, and I am sure I missed many.
Murtagh and Eragon should have NEVER been able to cross this shit.
no subject
I can hear groans of dissatisfaction coming from the translation department.
Well...since you usually see camels/donkeys carrying heavy stuff across the desert in documentaries, it says something about why camels are preferred to horses when it comes to desert travels. So unless this is a Przewalski's horse we're talking about, there's little to no chances of your untrained average horse being able to endure the harsh conditions of the desert alive.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
(Anonymous) 2020-04-25 02:46 pm (UTC)(link)-UltimateCheetah
no subject
no subject
(Anonymous) 2020-04-25 03:01 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
If the atmospheric visibility is restricted to 30km and the base of the mountain is 25, the peaks could easily be 30+ km away and therefor impossible to see.
no subject
no subject
But, the audience doesn't buy it anyway. Reality is unrealistic kind of problem. It wouldn't matter if the description didn't suck.
no subject
no subject