When To Sleep In A Sea of Stars was announced, I was quietly a little optimistic. After 9-odd years between books, could Paolini have improved as a writer? Branching out from the generic-teenaged-power-fantasy franchise he got chained to his 20s, could his real passion for storytelling shine through in a story that is inventive, exciting, and creative?
And then it was released, and none of that came true. Paolini was if anything worse, not only at writing believable human psychologies, but plotting interesting or exciting stories, and worldbuilding creative or intriguing worlds.
And then Fractal Noise followed, and it was even less interesting and creative than To Sleep.
When Murtagh was announced, I was worried. Given his Fractalverse efforts, and the way Murtagh was characterised in The Fork, I had serious concerns that Paolini would not only assassinate his most popular character, but do so in a boring, uncreative, messy string of unrelated plot points and side quests that go nowhere.
And then Murtagh was released, and I lost any spark of optimism that maybe Paolini still cares about writing as a career, storytelling as a craft, or any of his own fantasy world or characters.
This book shouldn't have been written. Not only because it is so undercooked that it needs to go right back to the pre-first-draft, "post-it notes on a vision board" stage, but also because it is so depressingly obvious that Paolini simply does not care. He doesn't care about Murtagh, he doesn't care about Alagaesia, he doesn't care about writing a good book or telling an interesting story.
Murtagh feels like it was written post-burnout. It feels like Paolini forced himself to write it, not because he wanted to or because he had a story to tell, but because fans and others (family? publishers?) were pressuring him to continue expanding the Alagaesia franchise.
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Date: 2023-12-14 12:24 am (UTC)When To Sleep In A Sea of Stars was announced, I was quietly a little optimistic. After 9-odd years between books, could Paolini have improved as a writer? Branching out from the generic-teenaged-power-fantasy franchise he got chained to his 20s, could his real passion for storytelling shine through in a story that is inventive, exciting, and creative?
And then it was released, and none of that came true. Paolini was if anything worse, not only at writing believable human psychologies, but plotting interesting or exciting stories, and worldbuilding creative or intriguing worlds.
And then Fractal Noise followed, and it was even less interesting and creative than To Sleep.
When Murtagh was announced, I was worried. Given his Fractalverse efforts, and the way Murtagh was characterised in The Fork, I had serious concerns that Paolini would not only assassinate his most popular character, but do so in a boring, uncreative, messy string of unrelated plot points and side quests that go nowhere.
And then Murtagh was released, and I lost any spark of optimism that maybe Paolini still cares about writing as a career, storytelling as a craft, or any of his own fantasy world or characters.
This book shouldn't have been written. Not only because it is so undercooked that it needs to go right back to the pre-first-draft, "post-it notes on a vision board" stage, but also because it is so depressingly obvious that Paolini simply does not care. He doesn't care about Murtagh, he doesn't care about Alagaesia, he doesn't care about writing a good book or telling an interesting story.
Murtagh feels like it was written post-burnout. It feels like Paolini forced himself to write it, not because he wanted to or because he had a story to tell, but because fans and others (family? publishers?) were pressuring him to continue expanding the Alagaesia franchise.