ignoresandra (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ignoresandra) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
antishurtugal_reborn2023-12-01 08:59 am
ignoresandra) wrote in antishurtugal_reborn2023-12-01 08:59 am
Entry tags:
Murtagh Group Spork: C-1; P-1; Maddentide
Hi, I’m IgnoreSandra. I’m a trans woman, ballroom dancer, bibliophile, and occasional poet. I dropped out of college having not completed my minor in gender studies but I like to think I learned a few important things. I’m really something of a sham and yet I have tricked this community into allowing me to write various sporkings, commentaries, and truly awful spitefics. Today I’m tackling the first chapter of Murtagh: The World of Eragon (seriously what kind of title is that?) with a focus on thematic comparison with the previous books. I’m sure I’ll discover a way to mess this up badly enough to derail the entire process, so let us begin.
This chapter really isn’t very long either by my standards or this book’s standards. According to the PDF I have, this is about 1% of the book’s length. To me that’s an indicator that this chapter isn’t particularly important and potentially could be combined with one or more other chapters. Size may not be everything, but I don’t consider this to be a good sign. The chapter is split into four sections, which we’ll tackle chronologically.
Section I
We open with Thorn and Murtagh discussing how Murtagh will approach the city of Ceunon. Specifically, whether or not Thorn will go with him. Murtagh wants Thorn to stay behind and what Thorn wants is kind of ambiguous. Thorn doesn’t exactly say what he wants, but Thorn does seem to communicate that he doesn’t mind the idea of terrifying Murtagh’s enemies and potentially flattening Ceunon.
Is Thorn Saphira in very poor disguise? Saphira’s super bloodthirsty. She openly threatens/offers to level cities and murder hundreds. I would expect Murtagh & Thorn to deliberately be characterized as the opposite of Eragon & Saphira because of their role as adversaries or opposite numbers in the previous books. There’s definitely some of that. Eragon’s the poor rural farmboy, Murtagh was raised in the nobility, Saphira had to fend for herself because Eragon’s a delinquent dragon dad, Thorn was raised among people who knew how to raise dragons (Mind they were evil but you get my point), etc etc. I would expect this characterization to be maintained in a book being told from Murtagh’s perspective because that would change the nature of the story being told and show the reader another side of this expansive fantasy setting.
Some would argue for consistency in characters, but I live in a world where everything gets rebooted all the time. We live in a world with a hundred versions of Alice in Wonderland, a thousand types of Sleeping Beauty, literal millions of Irene Adlers, and so on. I’m fine accepting the idea of multiple versions of Murtagh/Thorn if the alternate versions are compelling.
Thorn’s bloodthirst isn’t compelling. It’s boring. Saphira mined all the drama you can extract from “bloodthirsty dragon sidekick”. That vein is dry.
I’m using bold to communicate when Thorn is speaking because Paolini’s stylistic choice to have dragon words simply be italics is not playing nice with the quote system.
Paolini describes this as a joke Thorn is telling, and that Thorn has a “trenchant” sense of humor. So…incisive. Just say incisive. Also for this to count as “incisive humor” it has to be making fun of Eragon & Saphira in an aggressive way. I can think of two things Thorn could be making fun of: How many times Eragon made Saphira wait outside of places in which case how the fuck does Thorn know about that, or that Saphira showing up to a town usually means the town will stop existing soon. In which case it is an established truth in setting that Saphira is a monster, but that doesn’t play nice with Thorn’s shit literally a paragraph ago.
Murtagh doesn’t really find this funny, so we agree on something. Murtagh thinks about his and Thorn’s past, and we are told that this makes him unhappy. It’s about as inhuman in the source text.
I think if “For a moment” were removed, this would work better. “For a moment” takes us out of the situation and puts us in the perspective of someone watching these events play out. I would also appreciate “Murtagh’s mood darkened” being replaced with something more appropriate like “Murtagh clutched the hilt of Zar’roc until his fingers turned white, then took a deep breath and forced himself to relax his grip.”
See how now we the reader can infer Murtagh’s emotional state?
Back in the text, Thorn accepts that Murtagh is going alone. Then there’s some back and forth about Thorn being unhappy that Murtagh isn’t taking Zar’Roc with him into Ceunon. Thorn apparently gets extremely nervous when Murtagh is absent, even for a short time. This has certain implications for Thorn’s character and why that might be that frankly makes complete sense when we remember that Thorn was raised in the company of Galby & Shruikan.
However, Saphira is also extremely possessive of her partner. So I don’t know if Paolini is treating Thorn as a character or just copy-pasting dragon stuff.
Note is made that Murtagh doesn’t trust anyone except Thorn and Nasuada. This is not a great choice of Murtagh’s. Murtagh fantasizes about killing and dismembering Nasuada, or so I guess based on what this description is like.
Also, too, many, commas.
There’s some vague bullshit where Murtagh and Thorn talk in circles about flying towards or away from storms and trying to keep the option to change course. My guys, you just gotta COMMIT sometimes.
Murtagh hides Zar’Roc which is a questionable decision that I’ll get into later. Thorn is distressed, so Murtagh attempts to make Thorn be calm. Not kidding.
1: It’s not specific whether Murtagh is just touching Thorn to try and calm him or whether he’s using magic to try and force Thorn to be calm. The way the line is written I believe it’s more likely to be a magical or mental effect that Murtagh is trying to force upon Thorn.
I’m not okay with the idea of making Murtagh & Thorn’s relationship an abusive one. Their strength has consistently been each other in a way that Eragon can only pretend to be.
2: “Dark distress” is redundant in this context as I seriously doubt the inside of Thorn’s mind is physically dark.
Murtagh leaves Thorn to head into Ceunon then.
Section II
Paolini chooses to begin the next section with “A man with a dragon was never truly alone”. My objections are thus:
1: Why can’t women be dragon riders? If this is unintentional it’d be easy to change it to “A person with…”
2: This phrasing depersonifies (Yay I’m making up a word) dragons which is a weird choice since we were just exposed to Thorn as a character. The trick is to replace “dragon” with “scarf” and see if the sentence still makes sense. “A man with a scarf was never truly alone”. See?
This sentence is used as an excuse to dive into the nature of the bond between Thorn and Murtagh, so a better opener might be something like “Once bonded, neither Rider nor Dragon was ever truly alone.” The capitalization makes it clear that Thorn is being understood in the role of Dragon in the Rider-Dragon bond rather than being a dragon bc that’s his race which would excuse any impersonal technical talk that follows while also being a lot more clear about what’s actually going on here.
Overall this one sentence creates the impression that Thorn is as much Murtagh’s accessory as my earrings are mine. Paolini also mentions that Murtagh & Thorn are close because they are survivors of torture (Yes that is the word he uses) and Murtagh finds this comforting because he is “sick of being alone”.
There’s also discussion of Murtagh and Thorn’s relationship, and in particular that they treat each other with “empathy and compassion”. I’m not seeing good signs for that. In the previous section, Murtagh remembers his time in Uru’Baen and Thorn confuses Murtagh’s emotions for not liking Thorn’s joke. That doesn’t suggest Thorn is insightful and compassionate into Murtagh’s emotions. Fuck it, I’ll try.
Most of this section is Murtagh traveling to Ceunon and it’s way too leisurely for me.Then we have several paragraphs about what the weather is like and we learn that the titular Maddentide was TWO DAYS AGO. What even is the name of this chapter about in that case? It’s not on Maddentide and it’s not about the thing Maddentide is about, which is bergenhad migrating upriver to reproduce and being so driven they don’t mind dying in the process.
I’d expect this chapter name to be used either on Maddentide or if Murtagh agrees to do something particularly dumb or suicidal for a character he wants to fuck. But then I think chapter names should mean something.
There’s also some, uh, 2edgy3me sentiments. Like this one.
Murtagh thinks that it’s better to fight when it’s too cold rather than too hot, and I agree provided every injury can be healed with magic and no one is using metal objects. The cold creates real issues when it comes to accessing wounds for proper treatment as that usually involves taking clothes off, and cold metal feels much colder than the surrounding temperatures which can accelerate finger loss to frostbite and stuff. Cold also means people are more likely to be wearing furs which increases the chance of wound contamination.
Hilariously, a dog in a “lonely farmhouse” howls at Murtagh and Murtagh thinks back and the same to you. My girlfriend and I spent about twenty minutes last night making fun of that. Seriously what kind of character is this version of Murtagh? He wants to howl back at dogs? This book is going to get wild.
This is a very military mindset to have about things and to phrase things. I wouldn’t buy it from Eragon, but I do buy it from Murtagh. Murtagh is essentially a knight and would have some level of formal tactical training. Murtagh thinks about whether spending all his time on Thorn is going to deform his legs, and finds the idea of that funny. Then he thinks about dragons getting too big to ride like that and we get this line:
I don’t mind the idea of using a howdah on a dragon. However, I would have liked to see this in the previous books. The scene almost writes itself - Shruikan landing before the entire Varden army in front of Uru’Baen so Galbatorix, seated upon a throne carried on Shruikan’s shoulders and surrounded by a dozen armed knights, can demand their immediate surrender or face instant death.
Murtagh has a decently well written episode about Galbatorix & Shruikan which is only weakened by the mini-episode he had in literally the previous section.
Section III
Murtagh doesn’t have the decency to arrive at Ceunon, instead he arrives at the “coastal road south of Ceunon”. Weirdly he hides behind a hedge to look at the road and make sure its empty before he steps onto it, even though he was probably walking on a trail up to this point if he passed a farmhouse.
So I’m envisioning Murtagh tromping down a road, reaching a crossroads, then running across that crossroads to hide in a hedge and then look at the crossroads to make sure he’s alone. Like this is a spy comedy.
Then Murtagh pushes through the hedgerow, and uh. Paolini. Go try and “push through” a rosebush or something similar. This is really really difficult and no matter how someone is dressed you will A: leave evidence that you tramped through the hedge and B: make yourself really disheveled. If it’s meant to be a shorter hedgerow, just have Murtagh vault it. Also plants don’t like growing in neat hedges. This would have to be maintained. Who is maintaining it? Does Ceunon organize teams in the summer to travel down this road maintaining the hedges? Why?
He keeps traveling toward Ceunon and the road is apparently covered in cow shit all over the place. Wait, what? It’s late fall/early winter. This is pretty close to when livestock should be butchered.
Hey Paolini, stop beating around the bush. Show us what noble ladies wear to court. Show us what could possibly use so much lace that it financed the Varden.
Murtagh describes the wall around Ceunon. He makes particular note that it would be no help against dragons & riders, which means it’d be worthless against elves and note has already been made that Ceunon has issues with the elves. I’d expect Ceunon to be this crazy fortress town if it has to contend with elven raids and the like.
There is one guard on either side of the gate into Ceunon. They are “leaning on their pikes” and I already have an issue. Paolini, pikes are more than five feet long. Spears are less than five feet long. If they’re leaning on their polearms those are probably on the shorter side.
Murtagh considers this as sloppy because there aren’t archers on the wall. Murtagh, honey, calm down. So Murtagh opens his cloak to show the guards that he’s unarmed. This instantly makes the guards suspicious and they question Murtagh closely, forcing Murtagh to invent an implausible story about coming north to buy bergenhad for the person he works for despite lacking a horse or cart or anything which the guards inexplicably buy.
This is absolutely what Paolini meant, right? Back in medieval times in most places it was considered weird to ever travel without protection (or alone) because that made you a target for bandits or for what we today would call mugging. Murtagh is showing up alone and unarmed, which instantly marks him as a suspicious person (Say, like someone who has nothing to fear from the local bandits because he’s in league with them). He’d probably draw less negative attention to himself if he showed up with Thorn because then he’d be a known quantity.
The guards would absolutely ask him about his story though, but not because they were suspicious. It’d be because these are people who don’t have the internet so they have to find their fun with and in other people. Even if told in the most mundane ways and omitting all the significant details, Murtagh’s story would be fascinating to them.
Better backstory: Murtagh is a courier sent north from Illyria by his master to deliver a letter to a compatriot in Ceunon (Murtagh is not privy to the contents of the letter, but suspects it might be related to bergenhad). His horse unfortunately died on the way, so he’ll be looking to buy a horse or book passage to Teirm to deliver his master’s reply. His master is a noble who trained him in the way of the sword as his children are all daughters who are uninterested in the blade, and he carries a sword as he frequently travels alone at his master’s will.
This explains why he carries a sword and knows how to use it, why he doesn’t have a horse, assigns to him the protection of being part of a nobleman’s household (so he’s less likely to be swindled), and explains why Murtagh knows what lace is and what the sovereign’s court in Illyria (As well as why he’s so well mannered) looks like so he doesn’t have to pretend to be ignorant.
That took me about an hour of research and five minutes of thinking.
Murtagh internally calls one of these guards “fat-nose”. Just. Have some fucking class you bastard-born brat.
The guards tell him that the gates are gonna be closed at night and if he makes trouble or tries to sleep on the streets, they’ll throw him out of the city.
Section IV
Our next section opens with a fascinating discussion on Murtagh’s beard and the fact he’s grown one and why and that he doesn’t know enough magic to shave magically. I’m being sarcastic it’s really very boring and I don’t know why it’s here except to say that Murtagh’s not as smart as Eragon.
Seriously three paragraphs are devoted to the beard and the beard’s backstory. Why. Someone save me. My girlfriend was right. This is going to be a wack-ass book.
Murtagh spends three paragraphs thinking about how much he knows about Ceunon and about how he’s gotten a really amazing education but it means nothing and amounts to nothing. According to him, he was taught a lot about what currently is but not about the way things should be.
sigh HEY PAOLINI! SHUT UP.
Murtagh plays chicken with some drunk folks which is a weird choice for someone who’s trying to stay low key. Apparently there’s almost no one out on the streets aside from some drunk folks and a loud dwarf. Murtagh pretends to be drunk when the dwarf looks at him. I don’t know why. He was angsting about killing King Hrothgar but what are the chances this one random dwarf personally recognizes him?
Murtagh has, uh, a racist rant. He thinks about how the dwarves going places has made travel harder for Thorn and himself bc all dwarves are obviously obsessed with the fact that he killed King Hrothgar. Murtagh also says the elves hate him bc he killed Oromis despite the fact that he didn’t, Galbatorix did, Murtagh was just the weapon used. But I believe that from the elves in this setting.
Murtagh then thinks that humans hate them too because people believe that they turned traitor during the war and traitors are always hated even if the side they turned to won. What this tells me is that Nasuada considers Murtagh being believed to be a traitor to be helpful to her rule. It’d be pretty simple for Nasuada, as High Queen, to counteract that perception by knighting Murtagh and publicly thanking him for his role in securing her throne or something similar.
Murtagh thinks that there’s nowhere safe for him and Thorn but that’s normal. Apparently Murtagh has been getting so used to being in the wilderness that towns are starting to make him uncomfortable and in this way he’s becoming like Thorn. That’s an interesting beat that I hope gets explored more later.
Murtagh finally arrives at the Fulsome Feast, which is a tavern that has crystal windows. Murtagh thinks of that as a “rare luxury”. He’s wary of it because his contact picked it for them to meet in. So…you should have brought your sword.
Overall:
The expectations laid in this chapter are a strange mix of truly fascinating ideas that I want to see developed, poor writing quality, and complete abandonment of the truths established in the first four books. Starting with the dehumanizing way Thorn is treated even in this chapter.
Maddentide's sins are many and varied but its worst sin despite featuring a character who wants to howl at dogs, hide in bushes, and pretend to be drunk for little or no reason is that it's boring. If you wrote a whole book with Murtagh doing ridiculous things because he's kind of a dumbass and the world reacting with bemused acceptance this would be funny. But it's not because Paolini takes too much time to get to the point and takes this all much too seriously. If you're going to write characters who are ridiculous, you need to write the story to be ridiculous. The tone has to match. But it's like Paolini doesn't understand that Murtagh is the one being silly here.
I read this chapter as a critic, knowing that whatever it turned out to be I would be taking it apart. Had I read this chapter as a casual reader, I would probably have tapped out before the end of the first page. As a writer you do not have much time to grab a reader's attention. A domestic argument between Murtagh & Thorn does not qualify.
Here's a free idea. Open the chapter with a sparring match between Murtagh and Thorn. It's a ridiculous idea that should be very easy to make funny and exciting, and still give you the opportunity to show off their bond with each other. Then you can go into meeting weirdo at the Fulsome Feast.
One thing I fundamentally do not understand about this chapter is why it's necessary for Murtagh to go dark. I see no reason he can't show up at the gate with Thorn to say that he's here simply to talk to one person and he'll be gone in four hours at most. Regarded as a traitor or not, Murtagh is way too powerful and well connected to deny basic right of passage to. If more had been made of Murtagh not feeling comfortable leaning on his power as a dragon rider, on his connections to Eragon & Nasuada, on his obvious noble origin I'd be way more forgiving of the disguise.
Original writing
Edit: Added a cut. I'm such an idiot sometimes.
The next chapter will be The Fulsome Feast by the astounding Torylltales. I'm sure I will learn new and fascinating things then.
This chapter really isn’t very long either by my standards or this book’s standards. According to the PDF I have, this is about 1% of the book’s length. To me that’s an indicator that this chapter isn’t particularly important and potentially could be combined with one or more other chapters. Size may not be everything, but I don’t consider this to be a good sign. The chapter is split into four sections, which we’ll tackle chronologically.
Section I
We open with Thorn and Murtagh discussing how Murtagh will approach the city of Ceunon. Specifically, whether or not Thorn will go with him. Murtagh wants Thorn to stay behind and what Thorn wants is kind of ambiguous. Thorn doesn’t exactly say what he wants, but Thorn does seem to communicate that he doesn’t mind the idea of terrifying Murtagh’s enemies and potentially flattening Ceunon.
Is Thorn Saphira in very poor disguise? Saphira’s super bloodthirsty. She openly threatens/offers to level cities and murder hundreds. I would expect Murtagh & Thorn to deliberately be characterized as the opposite of Eragon & Saphira because of their role as adversaries or opposite numbers in the previous books. There’s definitely some of that. Eragon’s the poor rural farmboy, Murtagh was raised in the nobility, Saphira had to fend for herself because Eragon’s a delinquent dragon dad, Thorn was raised among people who knew how to raise dragons (Mind they were evil but you get my point), etc etc. I would expect this characterization to be maintained in a book being told from Murtagh’s perspective because that would change the nature of the story being told and show the reader another side of this expansive fantasy setting.
Some would argue for consistency in characters, but I live in a world where everything gets rebooted all the time. We live in a world with a hundred versions of Alice in Wonderland, a thousand types of Sleeping Beauty, literal millions of Irene Adlers, and so on. I’m fine accepting the idea of multiple versions of Murtagh/Thorn if the alternate versions are compelling.
Thorn’s bloodthirst isn’t compelling. It’s boring. Saphira mined all the drama you can extract from “bloodthirsty dragon sidekick”. That vein is dry.
“I think you’d best wait here.”
Thorn shuffled his velvet wings and coughed deep in his throat. His way of laughing. Then perhaps you should use magic to change the color of my scales, and we could pretend to be Eragon and Saphira. Wouldn’t that be fine sport?
I’m using bold to communicate when Thorn is speaking because Paolini’s stylistic choice to have dragon words simply be italics is not playing nice with the quote system.
Paolini describes this as a joke Thorn is telling, and that Thorn has a “trenchant” sense of humor. So…incisive. Just say incisive. Also for this to count as “incisive humor” it has to be making fun of Eragon & Saphira in an aggressive way. I can think of two things Thorn could be making fun of: How many times Eragon made Saphira wait outside of places in which case how the fuck does Thorn know about that, or that Saphira showing up to a town usually means the town will stop existing soon. In which case it is an established truth in setting that Saphira is a monster, but that doesn’t play nice with Thorn’s shit literally a paragraph ago.
Murtagh doesn’t really find this funny, so we agree on something. Murtagh thinks about his and Thorn’s past, and we are told that this makes him unhappy. It’s about as inhuman in the source text.
It hadn’t been readily apparent when they’d been bonded, partly because of Thorn’s youth and partly because of…attending circumstances.
For a moment, Murtagh’s mood darkened.
I think if “For a moment” were removed, this would work better. “For a moment” takes us out of the situation and puts us in the perspective of someone watching these events play out. I would also appreciate “Murtagh’s mood darkened” being replaced with something more appropriate like “Murtagh clutched the hilt of Zar’roc until his fingers turned white, then took a deep breath and forced himself to relax his grip.”
See how now we the reader can infer Murtagh’s emotional state?
Back in the text, Thorn accepts that Murtagh is going alone. Then there’s some back and forth about Thorn being unhappy that Murtagh isn’t taking Zar’Roc with him into Ceunon. Thorn apparently gets extremely nervous when Murtagh is absent, even for a short time. This has certain implications for Thorn’s character and why that might be that frankly makes complete sense when we remember that Thorn was raised in the company of Galby & Shruikan.
However, Saphira is also extremely possessive of her partner. So I don’t know if Paolini is treating Thorn as a character or just copy-pasting dragon stuff.
Note is made that Murtagh doesn’t trust anyone except Thorn and Nasuada. This is not a great choice of Murtagh’s. Murtagh fantasizes about killing and dismembering Nasuada, or so I guess based on what this description is like.
An image of Nasuada’s almond eyes flashed before him. Cheekbones. Teeth. Parts and pieces that failed to sum the whole. A memory of her scent, accompanied by a yearning and a sorrow, an aching absence for what might have been and now was lost.
Also, too, many, commas.
There’s some vague bullshit where Murtagh and Thorn talk in circles about flying towards or away from storms and trying to keep the option to change course. My guys, you just gotta COMMIT sometimes.
Murtagh hides Zar’Roc which is a questionable decision that I’ll get into later. Thorn is distressed, so Murtagh attempts to make Thorn be calm. Not kidding.
Murtagh laid a hand on Thorn’s jagged forehead and strove to impress a sense of calm and confidence on him. Dark chords of distress echoed in the depths of Thorn’s mindscape.
1: It’s not specific whether Murtagh is just touching Thorn to try and calm him or whether he’s using magic to try and force Thorn to be calm. The way the line is written I believe it’s more likely to be a magical or mental effect that Murtagh is trying to force upon Thorn.
I’m not okay with the idea of making Murtagh & Thorn’s relationship an abusive one. Their strength has consistently been each other in a way that Eragon can only pretend to be.
2: “Dark distress” is redundant in this context as I seriously doubt the inside of Thorn’s mind is physically dark.
Murtagh leaves Thorn to head into Ceunon then.
Section II
Paolini chooses to begin the next section with “A man with a dragon was never truly alone”. My objections are thus:
1: Why can’t women be dragon riders? If this is unintentional it’d be easy to change it to “A person with…”
2: This phrasing depersonifies (Yay I’m making up a word) dragons which is a weird choice since we were just exposed to Thorn as a character. The trick is to replace “dragon” with “scarf” and see if the sentence still makes sense. “A man with a scarf was never truly alone”. See?
This sentence is used as an excuse to dive into the nature of the bond between Thorn and Murtagh, so a better opener might be something like “Once bonded, neither Rider nor Dragon was ever truly alone.” The capitalization makes it clear that Thorn is being understood in the role of Dragon in the Rider-Dragon bond rather than being a dragon bc that’s his race which would excuse any impersonal technical talk that follows while also being a lot more clear about what’s actually going on here.
Overall this one sentence creates the impression that Thorn is as much Murtagh’s accessory as my earrings are mine. Paolini also mentions that Murtagh & Thorn are close because they are survivors of torture (Yes that is the word he uses) and Murtagh finds this comforting because he is “sick of being alone”.
There’s also discussion of Murtagh and Thorn’s relationship, and in particular that they treat each other with “empathy and compassion”. I’m not seeing good signs for that. In the previous section, Murtagh remembers his time in Uru’Baen and Thorn confuses Murtagh’s emotions for not liking Thorn’s joke. That doesn’t suggest Thorn is insightful and compassionate into Murtagh’s emotions. Fuck it, I’ll try.
I’d really prefer to come with you.
Murtagh couldn’t help but smile as he tied Zar’Roc into its sheath. “I can imagine how that’d go. Ashes and shattered buildings everywhere.”
Thorn cocked his head. If it’d be all that bad, you should make me blue first. I can pretend to be Saphira. Thorn laughed and Murtagh snorted.
“They’d never believe you as Saphira. I doubt you’d disturb a single cobblestone.” Murtagh replied. Thorn was really quite delicate with his movements. In the evenings when they read together Thorn would sometimes use a single long claw to turn the page of the only book Murtagh had taken from Uru’Baen. Saphira, the dragon partner of Murtagh’s half-brother Eragon, had no such restraint.
Thinking of Saphira led to thinking of the King and Uru’Baen. Murtagh shivered. The King had helped raise Thorn after he was hatched, and had broken both of them to his will. Galbatorix’s methods had been brutal and Murtagh could almost feel the King’s presence in his mind - Murtagh was interrupted by Thorn’s long neck wrapping around his midsection.
We’re not in Uru’Baen. We’re outside of Ceunon.
Most of this section is Murtagh traveling to Ceunon and it’s way too leisurely for me.Then we have several paragraphs about what the weather is like and we learn that the titular Maddentide was TWO DAYS AGO. What even is the name of this chapter about in that case? It’s not on Maddentide and it’s not about the thing Maddentide is about, which is bergenhad migrating upriver to reproduce and being so driven they don’t mind dying in the process.
I’d expect this chapter name to be used either on Maddentide or if Murtagh agrees to do something particularly dumb or suicidal for a character he wants to fuck. But then I think chapter names should mean something.
There’s also some, uh, 2edgy3me sentiments. Like this one.
He opened his mouth and caught a flake on his tongue; it melted like a pleasant memory, fleeting and insubstantial.
Murtagh thinks that it’s better to fight when it’s too cold rather than too hot, and I agree provided every injury can be healed with magic and no one is using metal objects. The cold creates real issues when it comes to accessing wounds for proper treatment as that usually involves taking clothes off, and cold metal feels much colder than the surrounding temperatures which can accelerate finger loss to frostbite and stuff. Cold also means people are more likely to be wearing furs which increases the chance of wound contamination.
Hilariously, a dog in a “lonely farmhouse” howls at Murtagh and Murtagh thinks back and the same to you. My girlfriend and I spent about twenty minutes last night making fun of that. Seriously what kind of character is this version of Murtagh? He wants to howl back at dogs? This book is going to get wild.
Murtagh would have preferred to land closer to Ceunon. If he needed help, every second would count. However, the risk of someone spotting Thorn was too great. Best to keep their distance and avoid a potential confrontation with local forces.
This is a very military mindset to have about things and to phrase things. I wouldn’t buy it from Eragon, but I do buy it from Murtagh. Murtagh is essentially a knight and would have some level of formal tactical training. Murtagh thinks about whether spending all his time on Thorn is going to deform his legs, and finds the idea of that funny. Then he thinks about dragons getting too big to ride like that and we get this line:
Instead of a saddle, the king had installed a small pavilion on the hump of Shruikan’s enormous shoulders.
I don’t mind the idea of using a howdah on a dragon. However, I would have liked to see this in the previous books. The scene almost writes itself - Shruikan landing before the entire Varden army in front of Uru’Baen so Galbatorix, seated upon a throne carried on Shruikan’s shoulders and surrounded by a dozen armed knights, can demand their immediate surrender or face instant death.
Murtagh has a decently well written episode about Galbatorix & Shruikan which is only weakened by the mini-episode he had in literally the previous section.
Section III
Murtagh doesn’t have the decency to arrive at Ceunon, instead he arrives at the “coastal road south of Ceunon”. Weirdly he hides behind a hedge to look at the road and make sure its empty before he steps onto it, even though he was probably walking on a trail up to this point if he passed a farmhouse.
So I’m envisioning Murtagh tromping down a road, reaching a crossroads, then running across that crossroads to hide in a hedge and then look at the crossroads to make sure he’s alone. Like this is a spy comedy.
Then Murtagh pushes through the hedgerow, and uh. Paolini. Go try and “push through” a rosebush or something similar. This is really really difficult and no matter how someone is dressed you will A: leave evidence that you tramped through the hedge and B: make yourself really disheveled. If it’s meant to be a shorter hedgerow, just have Murtagh vault it. Also plants don’t like growing in neat hedges. This would have to be maintained. Who is maintaining it? Does Ceunon organize teams in the summer to travel down this road maintaining the hedges? Why?
He keeps traveling toward Ceunon and the road is apparently covered in cow shit all over the place. Wait, what? It’s late fall/early winter. This is pretty close to when livestock should be butchered.
The snow was gathering on the ground in a soft, thin layer that reminded him of the decorative lace that ladies would wear to high events at court.
Hey Paolini, stop beating around the bush. Show us what noble ladies wear to court. Show us what could possibly use so much lace that it financed the Varden.
Murtagh describes the wall around Ceunon. He makes particular note that it would be no help against dragons & riders, which means it’d be worthless against elves and note has already been made that Ceunon has issues with the elves. I’d expect Ceunon to be this crazy fortress town if it has to contend with elven raids and the like.
There is one guard on either side of the gate into Ceunon. They are “leaning on their pikes” and I already have an issue. Paolini, pikes are more than five feet long. Spears are less than five feet long. If they’re leaning on their polearms those are probably on the shorter side.
Murtagh considers this as sloppy because there aren’t archers on the wall. Murtagh, honey, calm down. So Murtagh opens his cloak to show the guards that he’s unarmed. This instantly makes the guards suspicious and they question Murtagh closely, forcing Murtagh to invent an implausible story about coming north to buy bergenhad for the person he works for despite lacking a horse or cart or anything which the guards inexplicably buy.
This is absolutely what Paolini meant, right? Back in medieval times in most places it was considered weird to ever travel without protection (or alone) because that made you a target for bandits or for what we today would call mugging. Murtagh is showing up alone and unarmed, which instantly marks him as a suspicious person (Say, like someone who has nothing to fear from the local bandits because he’s in league with them). He’d probably draw less negative attention to himself if he showed up with Thorn because then he’d be a known quantity.
The guards would absolutely ask him about his story though, but not because they were suspicious. It’d be because these are people who don’t have the internet so they have to find their fun with and in other people. Even if told in the most mundane ways and omitting all the significant details, Murtagh’s story would be fascinating to them.
Better backstory: Murtagh is a courier sent north from Illyria by his master to deliver a letter to a compatriot in Ceunon (Murtagh is not privy to the contents of the letter, but suspects it might be related to bergenhad). His horse unfortunately died on the way, so he’ll be looking to buy a horse or book passage to Teirm to deliver his master’s reply. His master is a noble who trained him in the way of the sword as his children are all daughters who are uninterested in the blade, and he carries a sword as he frequently travels alone at his master’s will.
This explains why he carries a sword and knows how to use it, why he doesn’t have a horse, assigns to him the protection of being part of a nobleman’s household (so he’s less likely to be swindled), and explains why Murtagh knows what lace is and what the sovereign’s court in Illyria (As well as why he’s so well mannered) looks like so he doesn’t have to pretend to be ignorant.
That took me about an hour of research and five minutes of thinking.
Murtagh internally calls one of these guards “fat-nose”. Just. Have some fucking class you bastard-born brat.
The guards tell him that the gates are gonna be closed at night and if he makes trouble or tries to sleep on the streets, they’ll throw him out of the city.
Section IV
Our next section opens with a fascinating discussion on Murtagh’s beard and the fact he’s grown one and why and that he doesn’t know enough magic to shave magically. I’m being sarcastic it’s really very boring and I don’t know why it’s here except to say that Murtagh’s not as smart as Eragon.
Seriously three paragraphs are devoted to the beard and the beard’s backstory. Why. Someone save me. My girlfriend was right. This is going to be a wack-ass book.
Murtagh spends three paragraphs thinking about how much he knows about Ceunon and about how he’s gotten a really amazing education but it means nothing and amounts to nothing. According to him, he was taught a lot about what currently is but not about the way things should be.
sigh HEY PAOLINI! SHUT UP.
Murtagh plays chicken with some drunk folks which is a weird choice for someone who’s trying to stay low key. Apparently there’s almost no one out on the streets aside from some drunk folks and a loud dwarf. Murtagh pretends to be drunk when the dwarf looks at him. I don’t know why. He was angsting about killing King Hrothgar but what are the chances this one random dwarf personally recognizes him?
Murtagh has, uh, a racist rant. He thinks about how the dwarves going places has made travel harder for Thorn and himself bc all dwarves are obviously obsessed with the fact that he killed King Hrothgar. Murtagh also says the elves hate him bc he killed Oromis despite the fact that he didn’t, Galbatorix did, Murtagh was just the weapon used. But I believe that from the elves in this setting.
Murtagh then thinks that humans hate them too because people believe that they turned traitor during the war and traitors are always hated even if the side they turned to won. What this tells me is that Nasuada considers Murtagh being believed to be a traitor to be helpful to her rule. It’d be pretty simple for Nasuada, as High Queen, to counteract that perception by knighting Murtagh and publicly thanking him for his role in securing her throne or something similar.
Murtagh thinks that there’s nowhere safe for him and Thorn but that’s normal. Apparently Murtagh has been getting so used to being in the wilderness that towns are starting to make him uncomfortable and in this way he’s becoming like Thorn. That’s an interesting beat that I hope gets explored more later.
Murtagh finally arrives at the Fulsome Feast, which is a tavern that has crystal windows. Murtagh thinks of that as a “rare luxury”. He’s wary of it because his contact picked it for them to meet in. So…you should have brought your sword.
Overall:
The expectations laid in this chapter are a strange mix of truly fascinating ideas that I want to see developed, poor writing quality, and complete abandonment of the truths established in the first four books. Starting with the dehumanizing way Thorn is treated even in this chapter.
Maddentide's sins are many and varied but its worst sin despite featuring a character who wants to howl at dogs, hide in bushes, and pretend to be drunk for little or no reason is that it's boring. If you wrote a whole book with Murtagh doing ridiculous things because he's kind of a dumbass and the world reacting with bemused acceptance this would be funny. But it's not because Paolini takes too much time to get to the point and takes this all much too seriously. If you're going to write characters who are ridiculous, you need to write the story to be ridiculous. The tone has to match. But it's like Paolini doesn't understand that Murtagh is the one being silly here.
I read this chapter as a critic, knowing that whatever it turned out to be I would be taking it apart. Had I read this chapter as a casual reader, I would probably have tapped out before the end of the first page. As a writer you do not have much time to grab a reader's attention. A domestic argument between Murtagh & Thorn does not qualify.
Here's a free idea. Open the chapter with a sparring match between Murtagh and Thorn. It's a ridiculous idea that should be very easy to make funny and exciting, and still give you the opportunity to show off their bond with each other. Then you can go into meeting weirdo at the Fulsome Feast.
One thing I fundamentally do not understand about this chapter is why it's necessary for Murtagh to go dark. I see no reason he can't show up at the gate with Thorn to say that he's here simply to talk to one person and he'll be gone in four hours at most. Regarded as a traitor or not, Murtagh is way too powerful and well connected to deny basic right of passage to. If more had been made of Murtagh not feeling comfortable leaning on his power as a dragon rider, on his connections to Eragon & Nasuada, on his obvious noble origin I'd be way more forgiving of the disguise.
Original writing
Tugnada kept her face impassive as the human merchants bartered. She knew she had the winning bid. Durgrimst Fulsave, a new breakaway clan, had sent her north to buy smoked bergenhad.
A flicker of movement caught her eye. There, across the way, was a human. A man, probably, but it was hard to tell from the outside. No, definitely a man. She recognized this one.
Her eyes and nose stung at the memory of sulphur and smoke, her limbs ached as she saw the red dragon bearing the armored human inexorably down towards King Hrothgar. How the human raised their hand and in a single instant killed the old King and a dozen of the strongest mages. She'd never seen their face but even as the human pretended to be drunk she recognized the way he moved in the memory burned into her soul.
She felt her hand creep toward her dagger, but the human was dressed like a beggar, and unarmed. That one has no pride left. They may grow to be less cowardly. Tugnada knew what it was like to change in a short time. I am self-forged and self-forging. She reminded herself with pride.
She turned away from the murderer of King Hrothgar and back to the merchants. "Sir or madam," she addressed the owner of the bergenhad stacked in this warehouse. The human frowned and the barest hint of color rose in their cheeks. "In the name of mine clan and mine clan lord, I offer one hundred and twenty pounds of silver for the contents of this warehouse and the other two warehouses you own."
The human - Fallal Jorgensven - stared at her for a moment. The other merchants had been bartering goods for the bergenhad, but Jorgensven was old and trying to get out of the business. They had never married, nor had any children, and Tugnada had just offered a very handsome amount in pure currency. He would have no need to resell it or even keep his warehouses. Her offer was on the lower side compared to the other merchants, but she was betting that he'd take convenience over profit. If Jorgensven accepted, she would have saved her clan lord about half of the money he'd sent with her to make this purchase which would significantly increase her standing. One of the human merchants laughed. "Have you no sense of what smoked bergenhad is worth?"
Jorgensven nodded. "Consider it done."
Edit: Added a cut. I'm such an idiot sometimes.
The next chapter will be The Fulsome Feast by the astounding Torylltales. I'm sure I will learn new and fascinating things then.
no subject
100% this. There's a quote from Sir Terry Pratchett's Small Gods which I was unable to find at short notice but it went something like "all he hears are the echoes of his own thoughts"
When I was young and stupid (as opposed to pushing middle age and stupid) I thought I was oh so wise and enlightened because of things I'd read in books and seen in movies/tv and regurgitated onto the page without actually understanding what they truly meant. Even after I had lived for another decade and had experienced grief and loss among a whole lot of other things, I didn't truly recognise what I was going through until I finally saw a therapist who helped me recognise just how depressed I was. And it was that same therapist who helped me work through it, because of course it was.
no subject
So I respect Sir Pratchett.
Wisdom is the kind of thing that can come from books, but it is always influenced by the people around you. Having a therapist has been very helpful in tempering me from a hot-headed young woman desperately seeking meaning in life to a calculating almost-middle age woman making intentional moves to bring about the future she desires.
I like can get up and do chores and responsibilities now. I keep things neat. I literally was a friend's emotional support in a courthouse today. Therapy has helped me start to have a life that isn't just reacting to things.
no subject
Conversely, I read the entire series up until "Carpe Jugulum" before quitting. The style had changed so radically and the characters I knew suddenly had wildly different personalities. I still have no idea what happened, but either way I no longer enjoyed the series so I stopped.
Oh wow that sounds tough.
One of my problems is that I focus way too much of my energy on trying to make others happy while neglecting my own needs. It's resulted in numerous 'friendships' with people I shouldn't have wasted a minute of my time on, which often ended in bullying and abuse which I kept forgiving. Thank god I'm aro ace so I'm not at risk of ending up with an abusive partner. Bad friends is nasty enough.