Brisingr Spork Part 56: Brisingr!

[snarkbotanya]

ANVILS! DUCK!

*dusts off* Well, isn’t that a fun way to start today’s sporking… seriously, Paolini, stop with these title drops in your chapter titles. It’s really obnoxious.

The chapter begins where the last one left off, with Eragon and Saphira rushing in to join the battle and rescue Arya, who has once again caught the Distress Ball. You’d think she’d have learned after the first few times Paolini did the “think fast!” trick with it, but apparently she just can’t resist showing off those elven reflexes.

Paolini immediately destroys any tension the previous chapter’s cliffhanger may have brought in by taking five fucking paragraphs to describe the Derpy Duo diving out of the sky and locating Arya. Apparently, it was hugely necessary for us to know that Eragon feels heavy G-forces when Saphira pulls out of a dive. There was also some irrelevant description of them dodging arrows or deflecting them with FUCKING WARDS, and something about there being ballistae on a tower, both of which could have been easily cut.

Actually, this is so bad that I think I need to do a There, I Fixed It. Here’s what Paolini gave us:

Saphira tucked her wings close to her body and tipped into a steep dive, hurtling toward the dark buildings of the city. Eragon ducked his head against the blast of wind that tore at his face. The world spun around them as Saphira rolled to her right so that the archers on the ground would have difficulty shooting her.

Eragon’s limbs grew heavy as Saphira pulled out of the dive. Then she leveled out and the weight pressing down on him vanished. Like strange, shrieking hawks, arrows whistled past them, some missing their mark, while Eragon’s wards deflected the rest.

Swooping low over the outer city walls, Saphira roared again and lashed out with her claws and tail, knocking groups of screaming men off the parapet and toward the hard ground eighty feet below.

A tall, square tower armed with four ballistae stood at the far end of the southern wall. The huge crossbows fired twelve-foot-long javelins toward the Varden massed before the city gates. Inside the curtain wall, Eragon and Saphira spotted a hundred or so soldiers gathered around a pair of warriors, who stood with their backs pressed against the base of the tower, desperately trying to fend off a thicket of thrusting blades.

Even in the gloom and from high above, Eragon recognized one of the warriors as Arya.

It’s bloated, it’s dragging, and the “recognizing Arya” bit is hideously stupid considering that we were told it was her who scaled the walls at the end of the last goddamn chapter. Really, this just stinks of Paolini trying to make it sound like Eragon has some kind of ~*~connection~*~ with her because oh, he recognizes her so easily! Either that, or the previous four paragraphs were so long and irrelevant that Paolini actually needed to remind himself that Arya was down there.

Now, let’s apply the hacksaw, shall we?

Without hesitation, Saphira dived, and Eragon’s stomach lurched as they plummeted toward the city. Arrows shrieked past his head and pinged off Saphira’s scales as they skirted the edge of one wall. While Saphira lashed out at the defenders of Feinster, Eragon scanned the city for any sign of Arya and her companion. He found them almost instantly, cornered against a tower by a force of at least a hundred.

What he took five paragraphs to do, I did in one. Suck it, Paopao.

Really, though, this is the kind of thing that needs to be kept brief. Eragon is supposed to be rushing desperately to his love interest’s side, and as horribly cliche as that situation is (not to mention sexist), there’s definitely a tone for it. He should be tense and in the moment, too focused on helping Arya to worry about things like purple similes, G-forces, and FUCKING WARDS. Who the hell has time for that shit when someone close to them is in danger?

For another point of contrast, look at the chase scene I wrote in chapter four of Consequence, especially in contrast with the rest of the chapter. When there’s downtime, or even a slight lull in an action sequence, I describe things a lot more than I do when Vanora and Verja are desperately running for their lives. Once the chips are down, there’s hardly any extra description to speak of; the prose is dominated by actions, and lines of dialogue often lose their tags. The language gets simpler, too: I avoided rare words and generally stuck to the shortest ones I could to preserve a tense and fast-paced flow, and kept similes to the minimal and descriptive (e.g. “[Fịrnen] thrashed like a drowning animal”).

If Paolini had written that scene, it would have been long, drawn-out, filled with blatant SAT-words, and Fịrnen would have “struggled mightily like a beast caught in a flood, desperate not to succumb to the inexorable pull of the deep” or some such nonsense.

Well. I just spent a page and a half (single-spaced) of the Google Doc in which I wrote this spork on the first five fucking paragraphs. This is gonna be a long haul, my friends. Expect more There, I Fixed It’s; I’m in quite an editorial mood right now.

Saphira “[leaps] down from the parapet”. Wait, they were on the parapet? Those paragraphs I fixed up there made it sound more like she buzzed them, hence why I had her do that in the revision. Goddammit, Paolini, this is exactly why you need to trim your descriptions! She lands on several of the soldiers and the rest run screaming from the Murderlizard. Not content with crushing a bunch of them to death, though, she has to grab five of them in her mouth as they try to flee and shake them until she breaks their spines. Yes, that’s literally spelled out in the book, down to the number of guys she just shook like a baby. Oh, and the reason Saphira’s acting like this? She’s “frustrated that her prey was escaping”.

Paolini, remember that bit in the first book where Brom reacted with anger to Eragon calling dragons “animals” and went on that rant about how they’re all wise and shit? Hell, remember all the times you’ve gone on rants about how they’re all wise and shit in the narration? Comments like that show us otherwise. That right there made Saphira seem less like a wise magical creature and more like a rabid animal. I’m not saying you can’t have her be vicious in battle and also a wise magical creature, but you’ve sucked so hard in your attempts to show us “wisdom” that we’ve really only seen the former from her. The hyphen-speech isn’t doing you any favors, either.

Once the soldiers have all run off or died, Eragon does this:

Eragon quickly pulled loose his leg straps, then jumped to the ground. The additional weight of his armor drove him to one knee as he landed. He grunted and pushed himself up onto his feet.

I… first, that’s padded to shit. Second, that leg straps thing feels like Pao thinks we’re all morons and/or nitpicky bastards who will flail and wail, “but what about his leg straps?” if Eragon just jumps down without mention of them. Third, that phrasing is awkward to me and confusing to Google Docs, so it needs to be reworked. Fourth, that bit about his armor is basically the G-forces thing from those first paragraphs. Fifth, doesn’t Eragon have super-strength now and can punch a guy thirty feet into the air?

And sixth, why the hell did Paolini’s editor not point out ALL OF THE ABOVE? Because now that we’ve all seen proof that this book was actually edited (courtesy of Epistler), we can’t really put all the blame on Paolini. The most charitable assumption I can make is that by this point in the novel, the editor was exhausted and had basically given up because Paolini kept being unable to change anything about his Pwecious Widdle Stowwy without whining like a little bitch.

Regardless of what caused the editor to fail here, though, let’s pick up the slack:

Eragon quickly slid from Saphira’s saddle and ran to meet Arya.

THERE, I FIXED IT.

That one sentence up there could even be easily folded into the next paragraph, where Arya comes running up to Eragon. In a rare burst of realism, she’s “panting and drenched with sweat”, but Paolini doesn’t earn any brownie points because he immediately starts describing her armor, or (relative) lack thereof. Elves apparently are very concerned with their helmets not making lens flares.

The other elf also speaks up, and turns out it’s Furry Rape Elf. Considering that he’s at least a minor character at this point, you’d think he would have been mentioned when Eragon was being told to go rescue these fuckheads; plus, having Eragon need to save Arya and Blödhgarm might have made the scenario a little less sexist.. But no, we had to keep the focus on how Arya was in trouble and Eragon had to go rescue his One Twoo Wuv, because even though Paolini had enough traces of maturity to not force them to get together in Eldest he still refuses to let that ship die. Stop trying to make the rescue romance happen, Paolini. It’s not going to happen!

Also, guess what the payoff is for this whole “ZOMG they’re in DANGER” bit? Just fucking guess.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Arya shook her head, and Blödhgarm said, “A few scratches, but nothing serious.

A few scratches. But nothing serious.

A FEW SCRATCHES.

BUT NOTHING SERIOUS.

GodFUCKINGdammit, Paolini, stop coddling your precious elfy-welfies! If you’re going to put in a situation where two of your characters get in trouble, you should at least follow up on it with a fucking INJURY, and it should MEAN something! If we needed any more proof that this little bit existed for the sake of forced tension and forced romance-pushing, that was it. Nothing fucking came of this except more evidence that Paollini is a sexist bastard.

Saphira asks what the fuck the elves were doing inside the fortress, and Arya starts panting something about the gates and how they’re heavily defended with FUCKING WARDS, so Nasuada told them to do something. We then get more BLATANT FUCKING SEXISM as Furry Rape Elf takes over the talking and apparently isn’t even winded, because of course it’s the pretty little wimmins who gets out of breath from fighting. For fuck’s sake, Paolini! They were both cornered, they were both supposedly fighting for their lives, they should both be fucking tired! STOP TRYING TO CONTRIVE A WAY FOR ARYA TO SWOON INTO ERAGON’S MANLY ARMS!

So, apparently Arya got Nasuada to greenlight her and Furry Rape Elf to scale the walls and open the gates form the inside, but they “encountered a trio of spellcasters” who pinned them down and called in a bunch of soldiers. Eragon asks where those spellcasters went, and Furry Rape Elf says that they shit their pants and ran when Eragon showed up. Saphira pointlessly adds that they were right to do so, and I’m getting an uncomfortable feeling that Paolini enjoys having people be scared of his avatar. That in turn leads to all sorts of uncomfortable feelings which I should probably table discussion of for later, or this will just turn into a rant. Still… remember this, okay?

Eragon says they should go open the gates, and Arya agrees… but then has to take a digression to mention that Eragon has a new sword. Instead of trying to get them back to the matter at hand, like any person with sense, he says that Rhunön helped him with it, and Furry Rape Elf continues the trend of utter stupidity by asking what its name is.

Luckily for Eragon, he’s saved from having to set the sword on fire by the timely arrival of some soldiers for him to massacre. THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T STAND AROUND TALKING IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLEFIELD, IDIOT! Or at least it would be if the author didn’t make you able to “[slash] through the haft of the lead man’s spear and, continuing with the blow, [decapitate] the soldier”. Because that totally doesn’t defy the laws of physics…

Yeah, that’s pretty much what Paolini just made happen. For all the times he’s obviously pictured a scene in his head down to the slightest detail, he has a really hard time visualizing combat (and, more importantly, conveying it to the readers).

The Sue Sword “[seems] to shimmer with savage delight”, no doubt mirroring that of its wielder and his author. Arya, trying to make up for the blatant Distress Balling earlier, kills two guys (despite being noticeably winded earlier… *taps Paolini’s head* hello, McFly, anyone home?), and Blödhgarm disposes of the last one. Farewell, faceless mooks; we hardly knew ye. Let’s spitefic in some detail, shall we?

In my headcanon, the guy Eragon decapitated was a new grandfather, and now he’ll never be able to dote upon his grandson as any grandparent should. The first guy Arya killed was suffering through some marriage problems, and now his widow will dive into guilt spiral after guilt spiral over the last thing she said to him being an insult. The second guy signed up for the army after his brother died in the Battle of the Burning Plains, hoping to better support his newly-orphaned nieces and nephews and also get a shot at revenge, but has secretly been scared shitless the whole time and just this morning had a conversation with one of his friends about how he’s pretty sure he’s gonna die and worries like crazy about where his family will be without him. The guy Blodhgarm killed was a teenager, barely an adult by Alaglag standards, and still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that he could, in fact, die until he felt the dagger go in.

I think I’m gonna start doing this whenever the wanton slaughter starts up. Maybe not elaborate backstories like the ones above, but just little bite-sized snippets like the ones in that comic. (Thank you, Randall Munroe!)

Arya yells for them to hurry, because we need some forced drama, and our zeroes start running for the gates, cutting down yet more soldiers as they go. One of those guys used to give treats to the guard dogs when nobody was looking. At the gate, they find the spellcasters, and…

Wait. Wait just one cotton-pickin’ minute here.

If Distress Ball Receptacle and Furry Rape Elf were sent in here to open the gate, and their mission involved scaling the walls to get to the gate, then why the blue hell were they fighting soldiers over by the ballista tower? What, did they decide to take the long way around? Or did they just run away from their goal at the slightest hint of difficulty and head deeper into enemy territory out of sheer stupidity? This makes no sense!

As little sense as it makes, though, if you look at this from a meta standpoint, as a book that is both poorly-written and poorly-edited, it’s pretty easy to tell how this came about. Paolini was clearly writing by the seat of his pants at this point, so all of this happened as he thought of it. He needed a device to get Eragon to rush into the fray, so he tossed Arya the Distress Ball and wrote in a scene he thought was cool. Then he tried to give a reason for why she got the Distress Ball, and came up with the “get the gates open” excuse, even though he’d written that she and Blödhgarm were by the ballista tower, not the gates. Then, remembering that he had them far away from the gates, he had them go charging for their newly-decided objective.

Look, Paolini, I understand the appeal of writing sequentially. It’s a lot easier to get from point A to point B to point C if you move in a straight line. Heck, I even understand the appeal of writing by the seat of your pants; I do it sometimes if I’m not sure exactly how a scene will go (though I do tend to keep an outline in my head to some degree). However, you can’t just leave it like that. You need to think about whether what you’re writing matches up with what you wrote last paragraph, and if it doesn’t, go change the last fucking paragraph!

Oh, and if some of the stuff you write between points A and B or points B and C doesn’t really contribute anything to the journey, then for the love of Thoth, cut that shit.

The spellcasters take one look at the Trio of Sues, shit their pants, and run “up the main street of Feinster, which led to the keep at the far side of the city”. Now, before that line, I actually thought that the ballista tower Arya and Blödhgarm were cornered against was the keep, but now I’m not so sure. It really comes down to whether Paolini is stupid enough to forget that Eragon and Co. just came from there and thus have his villains flee in the exact direction the heroes just came from… which he probably is, but I have a feeling that he just doesn’t know how castles work and is putting random giant towers everywhere for the EPIC.

We then get this pointless pile of shit paragraph.

Eragon longed to pursue them. However, it was more important to let the Varden into the city, where they would no longer be at the mercy of the men on the walls. I wonder what mischief they have planned, he thought, worried as he watched the spellcasters depart.

Show of hands: who else is having a flashback (flashforward?) to that scene in Inheritance where Eragon didn’t want to drop his sword in order to catch a fainting Roran?

Yeah, I thought so.

That’s not the worst part of this paragraph by a longshot, though. What’s bad about this paragraph, aside from it being completely pointless, is that it’s basically slapping you in the face with “THE SPELLCASTERS ARE DOING SOMETHING BIG, REMEMBER THIS FOR LATER!”, probably so that Paolini can try to claim that Varaug was totally foreshadowed when he comes in next chapter. Sorry, Paolini, but one “THERE ARE BAD SPELLCASTERS WHO ARE PLANNING MISCHIEF OMG” one freaking chapter before the fact does not qualify as foreshadowing. What it does qualify as is the literary equivalent of whacking your readers with a goddamn sledgehammer.

Also, here’s a bit of a note about the wording: that “however” really shouldn’t be there. It’s awkward, it begins a sentence with a conjunction, and it makes this bit read like a goddamn research paper. That’s not to say that the word “however” can never be used in prose, just that it’s very, very easy to fuck up its use and make it sound clunky as fuck (assuming the fucking in question is being done by those derpy box-man robots you see in early sci-fi movies).

Before our Sue Trio can get to the gates, a bunch of soldiers come out of the guard towers, and one of them stands up to give a melodramatic speech. And I have to quote this, because it really must be seen to be believed.

One of the soldiers pounded the hilt of his sword against his shield and shouted, “Never shall you pass, foul demons! This is our home, and we shall not allow Urgals and elves and other inhuman monsters to enter! Begone, for you shall find nothing but blood and sorrow in Feinster!”

Arya pointed at the guard towers and murmured to Eragon, “The gears for opening the gates are hidden within there.”

“Go,” he said. “You and Blödhgarm sneak around the men and slip into the towers. Saphira and I will keep them occupied in the meantime.”

First: if the people of Feinster are that adamant about not letting “inhuman monsters” into their city, you’d think they’d be skipping the formalities and murdering the shit out of Eragon and Co. for daring to enter their goddamn city! Which brings up the point that this speech makes no fucking sense given to someone who is ALREADY INSIDE THE FUCKING CITY! The fact that it’s more forced flowery dialogue is completely overshadowed by the fact that it makes NO FUCKING SENSE!

Second, way to discuss your plans RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE ENEMY, you dimbulbs! These people are right in front of you; are you really trying to say that elves are so damn stealthy that they can practically turn invisible in front of a group of fifty men? After you spelled out in front of them that that was your plan? While they inexplicably waited for you to confer with each other instead of actually attacking you?

As it turns out, the answer is yes. Yes, he really is.

Arya and Blödhgarm Sue-stealth off into the shadows, and none of the soldiers freak out at their sudden disappearance because I guess they’re all just fucking blind. Saphira gets ready to nom on some more guys, but Eragon, apparently deciding to try once again to prove that he isn’t a sociopath, tells her to wait. He then steps forward with his arms out, stopping an arrow via FUCKING WARDS as he does because Paolini thinks that sounds oh-so-badass, and pompously introduces himself before asking if any of them have sworn fealty to Galby in the Ancient Language.

The lead guy says that no, they’re Lady Lorana’s serfs and would rather die than swear fealty to Galby, so Eragon asks them to join the Varden. Dude, you’re sieging their city. THAT IS NOT A GOOD TIME TO LOOK FOR RECRUITS. This would be like if a bunch of my friends went and TP’d a guy’s house because we thought he was friends with his awful neighbor and then I asked him to help us TP the other guy’s house after confirming that he does not, in fact, like said awful neighbor… while distracting him so that my friends could keep TPing his house.

The soldiers, being Paolini characters, don’t immediately tell Eragon to fuck off and instead say, “but what if Murtagh comes back?” Eragon lies that he could totally take Murtagh, and we get a token mention of Arya and Blodhgarm being sneeky little sneks. Then we get this melodramatic speech from the lead guy.

“We may not have pledged ourselves to the king, but Lady Lorana has. What will you do to her, then? Kill her? Imprison her? No, we will not betray our trust and allow you to pass, nor the monsters clawing at our walls. You and the Varden hold nothing but the promise of death for those who have been forced to serve the Empire!

“Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone, eh, Dragon Rider? Why couldn’t you have kept your head down so the rest of us could live in peace? But no, the lure of fame and glory and riches was too great. You had to bring wrack and ruin to our homes so that you could satisfy your ambitions. Well, I curse you, Dragon Rider! I curse you with all my heart! May you leave Alagaësia and never return!”

Welp, there goes my suspension of disbelief.

I know you want it to be Dramatic Speech time, Paolini, but this one really doesn’t work. It was unrealistic enough for them to exchange a few words when these soldiers first appeared; having them go on dramatic rants like this instead of just charging his ass only compounds that. Plus, for someone who’s supposedly fiercely loyal to this Lady Lorana, this guard captain or whoever the fuck he is really isn’t doing her any favors by telling Eragon that she’s sworn an unbreakable oath to Galbatorix. He clearly knows what that will mean for her when the Varden get a hold of her, so you’d think he’d keep it quiet.

It’s also worth noting that this random NPC is quickly becoming a Hairy Stu. A Hairy Stu, spear counterpart to the Scary Sue, is a character who exists purely to doubt and/or be jealous of the Sue in order to make them look good. They can be anything from a bit part character (like this guy) to one of the main cast (like Rosalie from the Twilight books), but they all serve the same purpose.

Scary Sue/Hairy Stu arcs almost always end in one or two out of three ways: reformation, denied reformation, or death. In a reformation arc, the Scary Sue or Hairy Stu realizes how perfect the Sue was all along and joins their adoring minions. In a denied reformation arc, they admit the Sue’s greatness, but are snubbed by the Sue, who can now enjoy having the power to do so. The third option is self-explanatory, and can occur in conjunction with either of the above. In a reformation-death combo, Redemption Equals Death; in a denied reformation-death combo, the death often is the denial, and the Sue is treated as entirely justified despite the character’s penance.

Unfortunately, if a Scary Sue or Hairy Stu doesn’t reform or at least try to, death is pretty much guaranteed. Such an arc usually has the Scary Sue or Hairy Stu, who usually begins as one of the most coherent people in the story, degenerate into someone whose entire purpose is to hate the Sue until their death, preferably at the hands of said Sue. By the time their fate comes, they have been reduced to an empty shell of “this character is BAD because they HATE THE SUE”. It’s almost a mercy when it finally arrives.

This random soldier is basically serving as a microcosm of the Hairy Stu Death Arc. He exists purely for Eragon to offer him a chance to join the Varden so that he can refuse and then start cursing his name so that Eragon can feel all saaaaad and regreeeeeetful when he’s “forced” to kill him. It’s a cheap trick indicative of an amateur writer at best, and it does nothing to convince me that Eragon isn’t a goddamn psycho.

Eragon beats us with the Sledgehammer of Clumsy Foreshadowing about how oh, everyone keeps telling him to leave Alaglag, and then spouts the obligatory next line about how he doesn’t want to kill these guys, even though we know better.

Then Paolini insults my intelligence.

Arya silently opened the door at the bottom of the leftmost guard tower and slipped inside. Stealthy as a hunting wildcat, Blodhgarm crept behind the soldiers toward the other tower. If any of the men had turned around, they would have seen him.

WHAT THE… YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT NOT ONE OF THOSE FIFTY SOLDIERS, NOT ONE, DECIDED THAT MAYBE HE SHOULD LOOK AROUND FOR THE ELVES WHO WERE RIGHT FUCKING THERE WHEN THEY RAN OUT AND ARE NOW GONE? YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT ERAGON AND SAPHIRA ARE SO RIVETING THAT THESE GUYS ARE ALL JUST STANDING THERE STARING? FUCK OFF, PAOLINI! YOU JUST KEEP HANDING YOUR CHARACTERS EVERYTHING ON A GODDAMN SILVER FUCKING PLATTER AND NOW YOU HAVE TO GO RUB IT IN MY FACE LIKE THAT AND I HATE IT! I HATE IT! I HATE IT I HATE IT I HAAAAAAAAAATE—

*comes back inside, dusting self off* Apologies for that. Sometimes the stupidity just gets so high that I can’t bottle up the rage any longer.

The lead soldier guy, in true bit-part Hairy Stu form, starts spitting at Eragon’s feet and insulting him. Paolini even throws in a little token racism, so that we can’t side with him unless we want to feel dirty inside. Eragon lets him walk up toward him, then stabs him… right through his shield. Wait, no, it’s not just right through his shield: Brisingr actually goes through the guy’s shield, then his arm, then his chest, and comes out of his back.

Arya and Furry Rape Elf start opening the gates, and Eragon switches off the pretense by demanding that the soldiers “lay down [their] weapons or die”. There’s the little psycho we all know and hate. Twenty of the guys charge at him, and the others either surrender or run. Eragon and Saphira slaughter all of the ones who attacked, which causes “a fine mist of blood” to form around him. It ends with Eragon striking a pose right after cutting a guy in half.

The Varden finally bust in and give Eragon a bunch of warm welcomes to the battle, which sounds freaking psychotic considering how covered in blood he must be right now. Eragon turns the surrendered soldiers over to them, and a few of the Varden guys take them in as the rest start storming the city.

Eragon meets up with Roran and gives him “a rough hug”, which again should also be a bloody hug considering that “fine mist” he had going earlier. Roran isn’t looking too hot and gives Eragon a token bit of shit about taking a long time to show up. You know, that long time that he spent dilly-dallying up in Off-Brand Lothlorien, angsting over pictures of Mommy and Daddy and whining about not having the right goddamn sword.

Speaking of swords, Roran eventually notices that Eragon’s got a new one, and of course he has to ask what it’s called. Eragon starts to tell him, but is interrupted by his squad of elves arriving plus Arya and Blödhgarm. Convenient. Immediately after that, Jormungandr shows up and tells Eragon that he should fly around and see what needs to be done, then tells Roran off for palling it up with Cousin Ergs instead of leading his men. Of course, that’s all he’ll ever get for this, so it may as well have not even been in there.

Jormungandr rides off, and Arya and Roran both move to rejoin the fight, but Eragon… well, Eragon does this.

As Roran and Arya started to follow, Eragon grabbed Roran by the shoulder and tapped Arya’s blade with his own. “Wait,” he said.

Just guess what this is about, guys. GUESS. And no, it’s not about him having a dick-swordfight with Futa Arya. That would be way more interesting than this bullshit.

“What?” both Arya and Roran demanded in exasperated tones.

Yes, what? Saphira asked. We should not be sitting and talking when there is sport to be had.

Oh shut up you useless flying cat-horse, and stop talking about killing people as “sport”! It’s fucking psychotic! At least Arya and Roran are displaying an appropriate reaction… for now, that is.

Brace yourselves, people, because even if you’ve guessed what’s coming (which, really, you probably have), you are going to facepalm so hard in about two seconds.

“My father,” Eragon exclaimed. “It’s not Morzan, it’s Brom!”

Mini-spitefic!

“What—Eragon, this is not the time for that,” said Arya, and before Eragon could stop her. she had disappeared into the throng of Varden soldiers. Roran gave a weak smile, then went to join her as Eragon stood still, blinking in shock.

Really, Eragon… this is not the time to share the “good” news about your dumbly departed daddy.

Unfortunately for my sanity, this is how the other characters react in the book.

Roran blinked. “Brom?”

“Yes, Brom!”

Even Arya appeared surprised. “Are you sure, Eragon? How do you know?”

“Of course I’m sure! I’ll explain later, but I couldn’t wait to tell you the truth.”

Roran shook his head. “Brom… I never would have guessed, but I suppose it makes sense. You must be glad to be rid of Morzan’s name.”

“More than glad,” Eragon said, grinning.

*grinding teeth* I am going to strangle that little fucker.

Seriously, though, this is some bullshit. These three chucklefucks are in the middle of a battlefield, and yet Eragon can’t wait to drop the Brom-bomb and Arya and Roran don’t tell him to cram it.

Roran heads off to join the other guys from Carvahall, and Arya follows, but not before Eragon can tell her that Oromis has left Off-Brand Lothlorien to join in the fighting. She wants to ask something, but the crowd pulls her away and Blodhgarm ends up asking instead. Eragon spouts some bull about how Oromis and Glaedr “felt that the time had come to strike against the Empire and reveal their presence” and blah blah blah I don’t fucking care. We already know this, Paolini; we were there when they left to join the battle!

Eragon gets on Saphira and tells the elves that he’ll meet them at the keep, and then he and the flying horse-cat take off. There’s a mention of “burning hovels” as they do so. Hey, look, it’s all the poor peasants “forced to serve the Empire”, burning to death in their thatched-roof cottages. Saphira really is Trogdor the Burninator!

"dragon homestarrunner strong bad trogdor homestar" (Watch on YouTube)

 

There’s a little mention of how Eragon and Saphira can’t tell anyone else about Oromis and Glaedr until Arya gives them permission, but she probably will once she’s heard the story. I really hope that doesn’t mean we’re going to hear the story all over again. Though really, I’d prefer a reiteration of that to this bullshit.

Eragon and Saphira flew from place to place within Feinster, landing wherever they spotted a large clump of men or wherever members of the Varden appeared beleaguered. Unless someone immediately attacked, Eragon attempted to convince each group of enemies to surrender. He failed as often as he succeeded, but he felt better for having tried, for many of the men who thronged the streets were ordinary citizens of Feinster, and not trained soldiers. To each, Eragon said, “The Empire is our foe, not you. Do not take up arms against us and you shall have no cause to fear us.” The few times Eragon saw a woman or child running through the dark city, he ordered them to hide in the nearest house, and without exception, they obeyed.

While I appreciate the condensation of the battle scene, I’m rather unimpressed that Eragon’s mercy pastede-on-yay is delivered to us in a giant block of Tell, Don’t Show. The faux-epic writing style isn’t impressing me either, as it basically reads as a bad style imitation of the boring parts of the Bible. Paolini is really laying it on thick here, and in so doing makes it painfully obvious that he’s trying too hard.

Also, that’s a nice little bit of casual misogyny about the women and children. Y’know, Eragon, I’m pretty sure that when these civilians run and hide, it’s not because they’re obeying you. A good number of them probably didn’t even hear you. They’re hiding because HOLY SHIT THERE’S A GUY ON A DRAGON COMING RIGHT FOR US! Even if they do hear you, they’re probably hearing what you say as a threat, i.e. “run and hide or I’ll fucking kill you”.

Plus, there’s a good chance that the reason they’re in the street in the first place is because their houses got burninated by your Varden buddies, so there’s that too.

Eragon is also casually mindraping everyone in search of more magicians. He only finds the three who were at the gate, and they’re being all Sneeky Snek and shielding their thoughts from him. This prompts Eragon and Saphira to drop some Dead Herrings about how maybe they’re planning to abandon the city, because Galbatorix wouldn’t want to lose his spellcasters, right? At this point, it’s painfully obvious that they’re sticking around and probably prepping for some giant boss battle.

The Dumbass Duo decide they’re better off helping the Varden win ASAP, and then we get a nice big block of text about how fighting in a city is different than fighting out in the open, and how Saphira can’t move right and sometimes wrecks buildings. None of this hurts our heroes, though, because they have luck and Eragon’s FUCKING WARDS. The narration then pretends that this makes them “even more cautious and tense than they normally were in battle”.

Please, Paolini, point out one example of them being “cautious and tense” in a fight scene. Even if you manage to find one, I bet I can match it with at least ten scenes where they’re glorying in their bloodlust.

As if to immediately give me some ammunition, the next paragraph goes into Eragon chasing some guys into a hat shop (sorry, “millinery shop”, wouldn’t want to be in any way understandable to a layperson, would we?), “determined to kill every last one”. Yes, that’s very cautious and tense of him. It’s dark inside, and we get a ridiculous amount of deliberation about whether or not he should light the place up with magic that’s completely irrelevant and really should have been cut for the sake of what meager flow this scene has. Then… well, this line just has to be seen to be believed.

Faint as a line of thread falling to the floor, Eragon heard an object flying through the air.

That’s it’s own paragraph, by the way. Apparently Paolini was so impressed with that awful, meaningless, over-metaphored sentence that he decided it needed to be its own damn paragraph.

The ensuing scene reads, as many of Paolini’s fight scenes do, like a blow-for-blow description of a scene in a movie. Eragon blocks whatever was thrown at him, which breaks his shield, kills a dude, then realizes he’s backlit by some lantern, making him visible to the others. He throws away the shield, and then the soldiers run up a flight of stairs into the second story of the building. Eragon follows them, and they rush through the shop owners’ home, startling a baby in the process. That is such a cliche it is physically painful. These people apparently have one of those multi-room commoner houses just like Eragon’s, so he has to run through “a maze of small rooms” before cornering and massacring the soldiers and taking one of their shields for good measure.

As he leaves the scene of the slaughtering, someone tries to stab him. It’s stopped by the FUCKING WARDS, and Eragon pulls back to retaliate before noticing that it’s a kid holding the knife. This leads to another revoltingly cliche moment where he looks at the terrified family (with the baby notably absent; apparently Paolini forgot about it in between paragraphs), tells them not to go outside and leaves in shaaaaaaaame.

Cry me a fucking river, Ergs; you just cornered and killed four guys in their home. Don’t you just love how one moment he’s going on about how merciful he is, and the next he chases down people who are retreating and slaughters them to the last man?

Eragon and Saphira continue along the street. Why do I mention that? Because apparently Paolini thought that was important enough to have its own paragraph too.

They come across some of Orrin’s men doing some looting. Note that it’s specifically Orrin’s men, not just Varden soldiers, because as if the noble Varden would ever do something so uncivilized as looting. Naturally, Eragon seesaws back to his self-righteous, moralizing persona, threatening to have them “strung up and whipped as the thieves [they] are”. Then they take time out of the urgent battle they want to win ASAP to supervise these looters as they put the loot back.

Hey, didn’t Eragon just loot a shield from those guys he murdered?

With that bit all sorted out, Eragon and Saphira are about to move on when some guy runs up yelling for their help. Hey, look, a plot hook! Also, this is how the guy phrases his request:

“We need your help, Shadeslayer. And yours too, Saphira!”

Nice to see that Saphira’s still an afterthought to author and characters alike. Though I suppose this is more acknowledgement than the people in this book usually give her when they’re begging for Eragon to fix their problems.

The Dumbass Duo follows the guy to a “large stone building” with a bunch of Varden hanging around outside. The Varden tell them to beware of archers, so they hide in a corner and then do a little “you want to take them on, or shall I?” exchange. Then Saphira jumps on the building and tears it apart like a Christmas present, or like a box of chocolates. She loves the little scream-filled ones!

This scene is only here so that Saphira can scare the Varden with “her display of ferocity” and then have this nauseating little exchange with Eragon:

Have I ever told you how glad I am we’re not enemies? Eragon asked.

No, but it’s very sweet of you.

Oh, barf. Thank goodness my hair is short, so I don’t need anyone to hold it while I puke.

We then get an asterisked scene break. After, going by the .pdf I’m referring to, ten pages of a thirteen-page chapter.

I don’t think I need to emphasize how clumsy that is.

We open our new section with some establishment of how the fight is going, which mentions that the Varden didn’t get to the keep “until the first faint light of dawn began to spread across the sky”. Wait, it was night this whole time? There sure hasn’t been any mention of people carrying torches or having difficulty seeing for this entire chapter, besides that one mention of “gloom” in the first few paragraphs and the bit where Eragon chased the guys into the hat shop. Plus, it’s been long enough for Eragon and Saphira to have several “epic” battles around the city, so you’d think it would be fucking daylight by now! What, was the sun stuck on pause? I’m reminded of that bit in Armageddon where it’s somehow sunset everywhere across the globe so that Michael Bay can have more dramatic shots of people staring at the twilight sky.

Moving on, we get a huge block of description of Feinster’s keep, which is, in keeping with Paolini tradition, way longer than it needs to be. The only relevant detail is that its only entrance is barred by a portcullis, which the Varden are stupidly trying to break with their battering ram. Portcullises are a lot harder to break down with a ram, because if you do manage to break through, it’s only in one spot. You have to keep hammering away at the damn thing for ages before you can get enough space to move on to the gate. Plus, this particular portcullis is specifically stated to be made of iron. A wooden portcullis might be feasibly done away with (albeit slowly) by a wooden battering ram, but an iron one is going to be nigh impossible to get rid of.

Some of the Varden are also trying to get grappling hooks up onto the walls, but the defenders keep pushing them down. Meanwhile, everyone is shooting arrows at everyone else and missing like a bunch of Imperial stormtroopers.

Eragon and Saphira, who are apparently just arriving, decide they need to help with the gate, so Saphira burninates the people above it and then lands on the wall. We then get an unnecessary description of how Eragon gets down to the street. It adds absolutely nothing to the scene, let alone the plot as a whole, and yet I feel I must quote it in order to emphasize a point.

The wall was too high for Eragon to comfortably jump to the street below, so Saphira draped her tail over the side and wedged it between two merlons. Eragon sheathed Brisingr, then climbed down, using the spikes on her tail like rungs on a ladder. When he reached the tip, he released his hold and fell the remaining twenty feet. He rolled to lessen the impact as he landed amid the press of the Varden.

This really isn’t anything special as far as Pointless Paolini Prose goes: it’s a laundry-list description of our POV character’s actions in response to a minor physical problem. What I want to discuss, though, is why I think Paolini does this. After seeing so many of these and reflecting on the blatant lack of plot and real conflict throughout most of the series, I’ve come to the conclusion that Paolini wants to show his characters dealing with real conflicts and overcoming problems, but lacks the ability to really set up said conflicts and problems beyond the immediate. Thus, he compensates by writing in little bits like this: minor physical stumbling blocks that the characters can leap over like hurdles on an obstacle course. Unfortunately for him, such scenes are a very poor substitute for actual conflict; they’re too short, almost always entirely pointless, and, much like many other things he does, often come off as him trying way too hard.

Furry Rape Elf and his elfy buddies pop out of the crowd like a bunch of dramatic prairie dogs and tell Eragon that the keep’s gate is covered in FUCKING WARDS. Wait a minute, didn’t we have this exact same problem with the city gates? Bloody hell, Paolini, if you can’t think up another problem, don’t just use the same one over and over again! This makes you look uncreative just as much as the amount of shit you’ve blatantly ripped off from other authors!

Oh, but this time it’s different because Blödhgarm and the other elves can apparently break through these wards, but haven’t been doing so because if they use up all their energy, they can’t do their Very Important Duty of protecting the Head Stu! Eragon, for once, makes a valid point, asking them if they’d rather he and Saphira use all their energy to break through instead. This brief display of sense is immediately rendered pointless, however, because when Blödhgarm moves to gather the other elves to take down the wards, Eragon stops them and tells them to wait where they are.

Eragon runs for the gate, and the Varden part before him like the Red Sea so he can have his mandatory “I’m So Awesome” scene without anyone interfering. A ballista bolt glances off his FUCKING WARDS, and somehow this doesn’t make him feel even a little tired despite the fact that ballista bolts are fucking heavy and would be an utter bitch to just shove out of the way like that. But no, this is Eragon’s “show off how awesome I am with my awesome new Sue Accessory” scene, so he just lifts his sword, yells “Brisingr!” and starts hacking away at the portcullis, which cannot stand up against his awesome new lightsaber sword. Naturally, the Varden extras are all amazed by the awesomeness of the Sue-Sword.

Oh, and cutting through the wards apparently does make Eragon tired. But deflecting a ballista bolt does nothing. Because that makes sense.

He cuts a big old hole in the portcullis, then shoves his sword into the crack between the doors and powers up the flames, and this isn’t at all ripped from that scene in The Phantom Menace where Qui-Gon melts the blast doors with his lightsaber. Paolini, just because most people like to pretend a movie never existed does not mean that you are free to rip it off.

So Eragon gets the door open with a little last-minute help from Saphira, and the Varden flood into the keep just like they flooded into the city earlier in the chapter. Eragon recharges his mana meter with the Belt of Beloth the Plot-Convenient, and he and Saphira have a little pointless banter about needing a good night’s sleep. Then… oh no.

Then Angela comes in.

Angela struts up to Eragon and gives him some Sue-praise about the “impressive display” at the doors, then asks if he isn’t overdoing it. Eragon plays dumb, and Angela asks if it was really necessary to set the Sue-sword on fire. Ugh, the obvious setup for Sue-sword-praise and faux-humor is painful.

Eragon laughs, admits that it was an unnecessary thing that he did for the hell of it, and then says he can’t help it because every time he says his sword’s name, it bursts into flames. Um, Eragon? I think you’re overlooking the fact that you didn’t have to say the sword’s name there! You could have just run up and hacked away at the gate without setting it on fire, you megalomaniacal, attention-whoring douchecanoe!

Angela turns up the Quirk-o-Meter, talking about how “fire” is such a boring name, and he should have named it “Blazing Blade” or “Sheepbiter or Chrysanthemum Cleaver or something else with imagination”. I wasn’t aware that Alagaesia, a fantasy world inhabited mostly by plants and animals native to America and maybe western Europe, had chrysanthemums… a flower that is native to Asia.

Eragon makes a cringey joke about how he already has a Sheepbiter in the form of Saphira, so he doesn’t need another one, and Angela praises his wit and flounces off to be quirky somewhere else. Then, the chapter finally ends on this little exchange:

A soft growl emanated from Saphira, and she said, Be careful whom you call Sheepbiter, Eragon, or you might get bitten yourself.

Yes, Saphira.

I know Swankivy already said it, but… Saphira. You ARE a sheepbiter! You eat sheep!

That little nitpick aside, though, that was a terrible way to end this chapter. You know why? Because it completely killed the mood! All throughout the previous scenes, Paolini had been laying it on thick and heavy that this was supposed to be Le Epic BattleTM, and he’ll be right back to that in the next chapter… and yet, he ends this chapter with a break for quirky comic relief. We’re approaching the (alleged) climax of this book, and he found it necessary to pause the (allegedly) climactic battle for a string of lame jokes.

This is just sad.

Next up on the Spork Train is Gharial, with “Shadow of Doom”. We’re almost there, folks!

Comments

[epistler]

Huzzah!
This chapter is obnoxious for a whole lot of reasons, and one of the chief ones is how inconsistent it is. Not just in the sense that it has a lot of whacking great continuity problems, but because it keeps see-sawing between Eragon being "noble" and trying to avoid killing people, and Eragon going out of his way to kill people unnecessarily.

Like when he stabs the soldier through his shield. The guy was doing nothing more threatening than walking slowly toward him. He posed literally NO threat. All Eragon would have had to do is disarm him and maybe knock him over. Hell, if he did it impressively that might have led the rest of them to have a change of heart and surrender. But nope. He kills the guy in cold blood simply for being rude to him. Because at the end of the day the only thing that has ever mattered to Eragon is his ever-expanding ego, which must be protected at all costs. Hell, what the soldier guy said to him about how he's killing people just because he wants fame and glory wasn't even an insult - it was the unvarnished truth. Remember how Eragon reacted when Saphira first hatched in book one? He reacted by immediately thinking "if I raise this dragon I can become a Rider and be counted among the heroic myths!", or words to that effect. He doesn't think about how the dragon is cute and innocent and he wants to protect it, nor is there any affection toward her involved. He sees her as nothing but a means to become famous and important.

Basically, in this chapter Ergs comes across as a bloodthirsty psychopath who occasionally pretends to be good and merciful because he wants people to like him. And it's not working.

(Note how the "hovels" were set on fire BY THE VARDEN because they were in the way, and our hero has absolutely no reaction to this).

[snarkbotanya]

Note how the "hovels" were set on fire BY THE VARDEN because they were in the way, and our hero has absolutely no reaction to this

Indeed. "You looters, stop that! We're not here to rob these people! But go on and burn some more houses, that's fine."

[epistler]

Remember how at the beginning of this very book he pompously told the Ra'zac "I am the champion of the people!" Which "people" would those be, Durragon? The ones whose houses are being actively destroyed by your own troops? About which you did absolutely nothing?

Eragon isn't a champion of jack shit. He just claims to be the saviour of the land whenever he thinks it will make him look good. (Despite knowing damn well the common people don't like the Varden and are happy with things the way they are). Classic narcissist behaviour.

[epistler]

Note too how he tells everybody about the Brom thing as if he were showing off his new skateboard. Discovering his father's true identity should be incredibly painful and confusing and he should be working through a lot of complicated emotions about it. Instead of which he treats it like something to brag about. Which pretty well reinforces what I said in an earlier chapter about how Brom being his dad is just another Hero Accessory when all is said and done. Because that's exactly how it's treated by the narrative. And Eragon immediately forgets all about it up until the point where he gets an opportunity to flaunt it to make himself look cool in front of his would-be girlfriend. This is Grade A Dick Behaviour and in a sensible novel would have been greeted with funny looks followed by contempt.

[gharial]

That line of thread...line could possible be the worst line in the entire series.

[epistler]

I agree.

[torylltales]

The next chapter of the Brisingr Spork? YES! AT LAST!


A few scratches. But nothing serious.

A FEW SCRATCHES.

BUT NOTHING SERIOUS.


"it's only a flesh wound!"

none of the soldiers freak out at their sudden disappearance because I guess they’re all just fucking blind.

Skyrim logic: If you stand still and/or crouch, the NPC soldiers will forget that you exist, even if there is an arrow suddenly and inexplicably sticking out of their knee chest.


This whole battle scene is just... Paolini playing with his dolls again.

[epistler]

The additional weight of his armor drove him to one knee as he landed. He grunted and pushed himself up onto his feet

...he did a Superhero Landing. Holy shit, Paolini actually went there. He made Eragon do the Superhero Landing!

Says it all, really.

[vorpaltongue]

"Brom's my father!"
"Yay! You're not part Evil! You were too good for that!"



On a serious note, I don't have a problem with pinching shields off of the dead. I do have a problem with the one group of Orrin's men pinching things, then having Ergs watch them put it all back while said Ergs does not get kebabbed by some dude with a pointy stick.

I also have a problem with Ergs not taking the technically pacifistic route when he's obviously capable of it. Dude's being a dick? Break his sword! Hell, break ALL their swords!