So, basically, nothing happens. He meets a witch and escapes a witch. Does she even die?
Yep. He eventually stops screwing around and kills her.
That Galby managed to take out the entirety of the order with only a handful of traitors was an iffy plot point to begin with and he needs all the help he can get, but turning it into a "Ah, but he was working for me all along!" retcon is just very, very poor form. Sorely unnecessary discarding of previous villains to hype up newer villains.
Her helping him would probably have been fine, but yeah. This book diminishes Galby so much, thanks to this and how he's depicted in the flashbacks (as a complete dumbass who uses all sorts of tortures that could easily have killed Thorn outright and so landed him back at square one, when he could have just used mind-rape and had done with it in ten minutes).
Oh wow, seriously. He straight up gave Nasuada a purge moment...is that treated like a good thing?
It's not really painted as either, but nobody seems upset about it other than the surviving family and allies, who are Evil. So yeah, probably a good thing.
I think even saying his dragon is pink actually contradicts the previous books about the banishing of names or whatever the plot point is called that meant Paolini didn't need to give names to the forsworn's dragons.
I think it was that the dragons couldn't refer to themselves by saying "I have X coloured scales", but either way mocking Saerlith and his dragon by making them pink was really cheap. The book actually says "puce", but Paolini later tried to retcon by saying that by "puce" he meant a purply kind of colour. Which just means the dragon is being mocked for being purple instead. The text actually refers to it as "unfortunate". Wow, screw you.
Eh? Did we? That feels more like giving praise just to dump on Eragon, because from what I can remember we get basically nothing about Thorn in the previous books
Well, for what little we get Murtagh does seem to treat Thorn a hell of a lot better because he includes him when talking about himself as you say, but also because when Thorn gets hurt, Murtagh's first priority is always to heal him ASAP while Eragon makes excuses and just lets Saphira suffer before someone else does it for him. It's not much but it still makes him look like a better Rider than Eragon is, not that that's saying much.
Thorn is never given any individuality or desires other than freedom...which...I guess is a perfect representation of how dragons are meant to be in this series
That would have meant giving him some actual screentime, and we can't have that, now can we?
Thorn was literally born as a child slave soldier. That is not going to result in a confident and self assured person.
Yeah, exactly. The only side-effect he manifests thanks to Galby's ridiculously over-the-top torture (such as forcing him to fight a pack of wolves while only a hatchling, which very nearly kills him) is that he's claustrophobic now. Other than that he's just prideful and arrogant as Saphira. And at the end of the book he gets over the claustrophobia anyway.
Even though that's perfectly in character for what we see of Nasuada, I don't have the confidence that Paolini could actually pull the trigger and depict one of his good guy characters as an actual nefarious threat and obstacle in the narrative.
Oh hell no. Even though people don't like her controlling the magic users scheme she's still the Good and Noble Queen, barf.
On that note, I get that the ending takes place in the capital (Uru Bean or something, though the heroes probably renamed it to the old "good" elvish name that Galby also used for some reason), but does the rest of the book take place on the same map of Alagaseia (not looking up the spelling) or does it take place outside the map in the unknown frontiers?
It's now been restored to its previous elfy name of Ilirea, and though most of the book takes place in Alaglag and even revisits several old locations, the actual "threat" is in this new place off the map which got mentioned at the end of book four as a place Morontagh was specifically told to avoid. Not that he has the brains to listen.
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Yep. He eventually stops screwing around and kills her.
Her helping him would probably have been fine, but yeah. This book diminishes Galby so much, thanks to this and how he's depicted in the flashbacks (as a complete dumbass who uses all sorts of tortures that could easily have killed Thorn outright and so landed him back at square one, when he could have just used mind-rape and had done with it in ten minutes).
It's not really painted as either, but nobody seems upset about it other than the surviving family and allies, who are Evil. So yeah, probably a good thing.
I think it was that the dragons couldn't refer to themselves by saying "I have X coloured scales", but either way mocking Saerlith and his dragon by making them pink was really cheap. The book actually says "puce", but Paolini later tried to retcon by saying that by "puce" he meant a purply kind of colour. Which just means the dragon is being mocked for being purple instead. The text actually refers to it as "unfortunate". Wow, screw you.
Well, for what little we get Murtagh does seem to treat Thorn a hell of a lot better because he includes him when talking about himself as you say, but also because when Thorn gets hurt, Murtagh's first priority is always to heal him ASAP while Eragon makes excuses and just lets Saphira suffer before someone else does it for him. It's not much but it still makes him look like a better Rider than Eragon is, not that that's saying much.
That would have meant giving him some actual screentime, and we can't have that, now can we?
Yeah, exactly. The only side-effect he manifests thanks to Galby's ridiculously over-the-top torture (such as forcing him to fight a pack of wolves while only a hatchling, which very nearly kills him) is that he's claustrophobic now. Other than that he's just prideful and arrogant as Saphira. And at the end of the book he gets over the claustrophobia anyway.
Oh hell no. Even though people don't like her controlling the magic users scheme she's still the Good and Noble Queen, barf.
It's now been restored to its previous elfy name of Ilirea, and though most of the book takes place in Alaglag and even revisits several old locations, the actual "threat" is in this new place off the map which got mentioned at the end of book four as a place Morontagh was specifically told to avoid. Not that he has the brains to listen.