Eldest Spork Part Seven: Pie Iesu Domine, Dona Eis Requiem *hits self in face*

[epistler]

"Requiem”

noun

1. Roman Catholic Church .
   1. Also called Requiem Mass . the Mass celebrated for the repose of the souls of the dead.
   2. a celebration of this Mass.
   3. a plainsong setting for this Mass.

2. any musical service, hymn, or dirge for the repose of the dead.

*puts on “plumber” voice*

Ah, now, I think I’ve found yer problem – this here chapter title’s tryin’ to be clever, m’am. Problem is, it ain’t actually all that clever. I gotta say I’m impressed – title’s only one word long and it’s still purple as all get-out.

Protip for the day: Don’t try to be clever. Cleverness is something that happens on its own and not when you force it. And as we all know, more or less everything in Inheritance is forced.

Such as the dialogue, which is what we open with – Orik yelling at Eragon to wake up and calling him by a fakey made-up dwarf insult. Help me out guys – have you ever met someone whose first language is not yours who used their own language to insult you when they’re fluent in English? (Or whatever your first language is?). Because I haven’t. I once knew this Vietnamese immigrant who was a total asshole, and when he wanted to insult me he sure as hell didn’t say “du ma nhieu!” or “đi ăn cứt!”. He called me “a stupid Australian” (ouch). Among other nasty racist comments. Which he said in English. I mean really – why bother insulting someone in a language they don’t speak? You’re hardly going to get a reaction out of them other than a blank stare.

Of course this is just a clunky way for Paolini to show off his totally amazing made-up language, as when Eragon wakes up – lying on a table, no less – the first thing he does is ask what “Knurlheim” means.

Because that’s totally the first thing that would be on someone’s mind when they just woke up stupidly hungover. Speaking as someone who has been hungover, an actual likely reaction to being woken up by some jerk yelling at you would be “oh fuck off”, followed by grumpily going back to sleep or grumpily stumbling into the bathroom to look for some painkillers.

And yes, the dwarves did in fact leave the oh-so-important Rider and his dragon lying passed out on the floor.
 

Pictured: Eragon.

In fact they’ve all left to sleep it off in their bunks, apparently. Yeah, if you’ve ever been to a party and someone blacks out, you do not just leave them lying on the floor. Do you have any idea how many people have died because they got blackout drunk and nobody bothered to take care of them after they keeled over?  For all they know the idiot could have had alcohol poisoning, and you can straight-up die from that. 

And… I just realised I have now officially turned into my mother, complete with boring lectures about the dangers of partying too hard. D’oh.

Even so considering how important Ergs is supposed to be, this is pretty damn irresponsible. On both his part and theirs.

Anyway, rather than make sure he’s okay Orik explains that “Knurlheim” means “stonehead”. Har har, very clever. He adds that he’s been trying to wake Durragon up for – holy shit – “almost an hour.”

Uh, if you’ve been yelling at someone for an hour and they’re not waking up, that person is in a fucking coma. Why hasn’t Orik freaked the fuck out and called for a team of paramedics? Instead of which he just seems mildly annoyed.

Worst. Friend. Ever.

Eragon doesn’t seem the least bit disturbed by this either, but I’m pretty sure he has brain damage. Hell, maybe that’s why he slowly turns into a deranged psychopath over the course of the series – he’s got a brain bleed over the frontal lobes, causing progressive damage to the part of the brain which handles empathy and impulse control.

…You know what? Headcanon accepted.

Saphira wakes up too, and bitches about how gross she feels, and as the brain damage is only in its early stages Eragon actually shows concern for someone who isn’t himself and asks if anyone got hurt when she fell over.

Orik laughs and says no, and everyone thought it was hilarious and “lays will be sung about it for decades”.

lay

⁴

[ley]

noun

1. a short narrative or other poem, especially one to be sung.

2. a song.

Slang : Vulgar .

1. a partner in sexual intercourse.
2. an instance of sexual intercourse.

Put the thesaurus down, Paolini. This is also an early example of how the favoured characters can’t so much as break wind without everyone else getting all excited and writing poems and songs about it. The inhabitants of Alaglag must be incredibly hard-up for entertainment if they’re this easily impressed.

Orik adds that they couldn’t move her so they left her where she was. No explanation as to why they just dumped Eragon on a table and went to bed.

Eragon and Saphira then have a “cute” little argument about what a hypocrite Saphira is – she nagged at him for drinking in the last book and now she’s drinking four goddamn barrels of mead. It’s not a funny argument because Saphira is a goddamn hypocrite. About quite a few things, as it happens.

Orik thrusts some clothes at Eragon and tells him to put them on. What, right in the middle of the hall where everyone can see him naked? Where did these clothes come from, anyway?

Typical of most Sue stories we get a big description of the clothes, which come with a pair of boots which are mysteriously able to “[clack] on the floor” before being put on, and a cape which is somehow able to swirl before being put on and also before Eragon moves anywhere. Maybe it’s actually the Cloak of Levitation and Doctor Strange is currently trying to get it back?

Naturally these clothes will never be seen or mentioned again anyway.

Having watched Eragon strip, no doubt in loving detail, Orik rushes him and Saphira out to attend Aji’s funeral. He exposits that the body’s journey to the gravesite can’t be interrupted or otherwise his spirit will never rest. Saphira calls this an odd custom, which is pretty presumptuous of her given that she’s about six months old and isn’t familiar with any customs. So what exactly is her point of reference here? Or has Paolini forgotten that his hero’s big sparkly personal accessory is a friggin’ baby?

(He has).

Eragon thinks about how back home when people die they’re buried on their farm or in a graveyard. A graveyard, not the graveyard. Does Carp Hat have more than one? We also learn that the funeral involves “lines recited from certain ballads”. How many carelessly swapped-out terms for “song” are we going to get in this chapter anyway? And why would you recite lines from a ballad anyway? A ballad is a lyrical song. You don’t “recite” songs – you sing them. And what ballads are these? What are they about? And why is there absolutely no reference made to any gods or prayers? It’s been vaguely hinted at that the humans have gods of some kind, but it’s never gone into.

This is a particularly big example of the complete lack of any coherent “human” culture in this series, and despite how incredibly long and padded out with attempts at worldbuilding the books are, this is a problem that will never go away. I have no idea why Paolini keeps playing coy with us like this, but I suspect it’s because he’s just plain not interested. It’s a position that’s pretty easy to support, because what gets focused upon in this series is never what needs to be focused on, but simply what Paolini felt like focusing on at that particular moment. It would explain why so many things are skipped over while other things which have no bearing on the plot or characters are obsessively catalogued and described in exhaustive detail – usually things like landscapes and exotic architecture and how amazing and special the Sues are. The end result of which is that both the plot and setting are full of holes big enough to park the hovership from The Avengers in.

Saphira continues to bitch about how hungover she is. Hey, you brought it on yourself, you lush. So shut up.

The really depressing part is that Paolini clearly thought it was funny to make the dragon be a boozehound. Which means Saphira has been saddled with at least three stock character traits, so I guess we can call it a day on the character development front. She’s “wise” and “protective” and “a drunk”. And that’s it.
 

Okay, that's way too adorable for Saphira.

When I have a character who drinks too much, I like to explore the motivations behind that. Why do they drink too much? Are they just a party animal or are they trying to use alcohol as a coping mechanism? And if so, what are they trying to cope with? Trauma? Loneliness? Depression? Anxiety? Grief?

But that’s because I think about things like that – about what motivates my characters and what makes them who they are. Paolini doesn’t do this sort of thing, or if he does, he doesn’t know how to go about it. He just slaps on a few stock traits and doesn’t seem to put any thought into why those traits are there in the first place. There’s no consideration put into why they do what they do, or think the way they think. They exist to serve the plot and nothing else (and sometimes they don’t even manage to serve the plot and just kind of… exist).

Which is why they’re all so very, very boring and shallow to read about.

More exposition follows about how dwarvish custom insists that a dead dwarf be buried in stone, because anything else (like say, dirt) is “a lesser element”. For whatever reason Aji is going to be given a stone tomb like a dwarf.

Uh, didn’t Aji come from a very specific human culture – namely the wandering tribes? (Yeah, that's real original). Don’t his people have their own funeral customs and such? Wouldn’t any of the chiefs we meet later for about five seconds take offense at this? Was Aji absorbed into dwarf culture? (No). Naturally none of this is brought up. He’s just going to be buried as a dwarf Because Reasons.

Cut to a bigass description of the funeral procession. For some unfathomable reason Aji has been laid out on a bier made of marble. Which six guys in full armour are somehow able to carry. Gotta say I’m not buying it. Why the hell would you make a bier out of marble anyway? Oh, and Aji is wearing silver “mail” which is apparently made of moonbeams and is falling off. Bad description and unnecessary similes do this to your visuals.

Nas is there wearing “sable” and looking all noble with tears on her face. The Council of Elders are also present, looking suitably Evil with “suitably remorseful” expressions which are clearly fake. Paolini really has it in for these guys, don’t ask me why. It’s not as if they’ve done anything wrong. Not wanting the rebellion in the hands of a teenager is hardly what I’d call bad or evil. On the contrary, their plan to give everyone a figurehead to rally around while providing sensible leadership backed by, y’know, years of experience sounds like common sense to me. But as we’ll see, in this series it’s an ongoing theme that age and experience don’t mean anything.

Way to subtly diss those of us who had to spend decades getting good at what we do before we ever had a book see the light of day, Paolini.

Blah blah blah, more description, Eragon and Saphira join up with Jordan which pisses off Sabrae the Evil Councillor for some reason, and then they stand around waiting “though for what, Eragon knew not”. Stop trying to be Tolkien, Paolini. It’s not working.

Eventually a drum somehow manages to make a noise like a gong (drums and gongs are not interchangeable, Paolini). They finally get going as the drum keeps “gonging” and this goes on for an entire page, interspersed with chunks of description of the stuff they pass by. Why is Ajihad’s death being made such a big screaming deal out of? The guy was a minor supporting character who got maybe one chapter of attention in the last book before he ate it! I understand why the characters are making a big deal out of it, but why exactly is the reader supposed to give a shit? Hell, even Eragon doesn’t seem to care very much, as we get no emotional reactions from him at all while this is going on. This could have been a good opportunity for character development as we see how he feels about all this and empathises with Nas as they’ve now both lost a father. But nope. We just get descriptions of architecture and the broken Star Rose or whatever the hell it’s called.

Actually I suspect this isn’t even from Ergy’s POV, because when they get to the crypt there’s a runic inscription which we get to read even though the barely literate Eragon shouldn’t be able to understand it.

The stiff is lowered into the crypt at last, and now Eragon has a token show of emotion as it’s blandly dictated that he feels “sorrow”. Oh, and he’s totally sad about Murtagh too. He looks down at Aji’s body, which of course looks all serene, and thinks about how he totally respected the guy and how he represented “freedom from tyranny”. What tyranny?
 

Paolini seems to be one of those people who holds the peculiarly American fringe view that "freedom" = "not having to pay taxes to the evil gubmint". Wait, I think I'm on to something.

He tells the corpse he’ll be remembered (when in fact Eragon is going to forget all about him pretty soon) and that the Empire will be overthrown because of what Aji “accomplished”. What exactly did he accomplish, then? And why does the Empire need to be overthrown?

No, personal revenge doesn’t count. Revenge is for villains and morally grey heroes, and Eragon is supposed to be a traditional, noble, “for the greater good” kind of hero. (Well, on paper anyway). Saphira then touches Eragon on the arm, which reads as if she’s a human touching him with her hand. How did she fit into this place anyway? Where is she standing relative to Eragon?

Next up it’s Nasuada’s turn. She starts singing “in a strange, wailing language”. Apparently we’ve finally remembered that Nas is from a different culture than Eragon. Not that it’ll come up again in any meaningful way.

Finally the dwarves seal up the tomb, “and he was no more”.

I’m pretty sure he was no more when he got stabbed in the spleen.

We’re sixty goddamn pages into the book and nothing has happened. Or nothing that couldn’t have been summed up in a single brisk chapter, anyway.

And that’s it. We just wasted an entire chapter watching some guy we don’t know or care about be laid to rest in exhaustive detail.