This could easily have been merged into the next chapter, or even been absorbed into the previous and next chapters.
If he's so bad at lying, that's another reason he should try to sneak in instead.
But Gert had the good manners not to inquire further.
Or he thinks that that's Captain Wren's task to deal with, and he's just happy to have a good new recruit.
Like who fucking cares that there’s a “planter” of “dried baby’s breath”?
I see that "planter" in that sense only came in use in... 1959, which seems way too modern for me.
And here's a visual:
Also where is the damn fish head right now?
Still in the cart outside, I suppose (not that we find out what happens to it in the end).
For the "map table", my first thought is that Wren's using this to reenact battles with, like from the recent war.
We also learn that the guy has really bad arthritis in both hands, which is every bit as irrelevant, and if his hands are basically unusable wouldn’t he have been invalided out of the guards by now?
And of course it's described as a "flaw", as we might expect by now. As for invalidation... I could say him staying on, since he's the captain and he could certainly entrench himself in the guard. (This is also an obvious future plot hook, for some reason.)
masks paragraph
I don't mind party masks, given that the upper class has consistently (the keyword) been shown to be in the Renaissance, so much as I mind not having had a mention of masked balls. This feels like it's skipping a step. And yes, some kind of explanation for the difference would be nice (and easy to give by saying the Riders provided the upper classes with higher tech... though would it have stayed that way for a hundred years?).
the bear, the wolf, the fox, the raven, and so forth, including two animals that he didn’t recognize.
And you won't bother to describe them to us so we can guess what they are? I actually did like that a bit when Paolini did it in Eragon with a parrot and a statue of a porcupine.
Murtagh found his gaze drawn to them as a lodestone drawn to a bar of iron.
Yeah, if the lodestone's smaller than the bar, then it will happen, but the comparison's not great. What Paolini wrote is: Murtagh:masks::lodestone:iron, when it should be Murtagh:masks::iron:lodestone. The magnetic force comes from the magnet, not the iron bar, after all.
The only thing they're here for is to make Bachel look scarier and to broaden the possible scope of the Dreamers.
Morontagh has a prepared lie this time and tells him how Mr Fishy grabbed him, etc. He just leaves out all the dragon related stuff.
And he lies that he actually managed to hit Muckmaw with the dagger, which I guess is to make himself look more heroic?
says nice work and pays him a reward of four gold.
I still think that bounty's too small, since Muckmaw's been causing problems for sixty years.
Ivor's fine, Task... I can't find anything for it, so that says enough, I'd think.
Morontagh thinks about how “It made sense. Nasuada would hardly want images of Galbatorix circulating throughout the land for the rest of her reign.”
So the coins now have had Galbatorix's head on them??? I don't think we ever heard of that! Okay, I looked and Eragon does say, when Glaedr's examining his memories before they go to Vroengard, that he and Glaedr feel like "two images stamped onto the same side of a coin", so I guess there is something on those old coins, but if Galbatorix was on them, we should have heard.
This also sounds a bit like she's trying to censor mentions of Galbatorix.
First off, a footman is a nobleman’s servant, not a soldier. He should be using the term “foot soldier” or "man at arms".
Hmm, I see that it can mean a soldier, but that's quite archaic as a meaning.
Yeah, Wren's just being a bad captain here, and I'd expect Irven to have a much larger company.
At least Yazuac or Deldarad didn't come up?
A sick feeling formed in Murtagh’s stomach, and the back of his neck went cold. I should have realized.
Yes, you should have, but you can still do better from now on. That's the part he's got some trouble following through on; he'd rather ruminate endlessly about his pasts than apply it to his present.
_He finally says yeah, sure he’ll do it, then gets given a bunch of pointless details about when you get paid, going on leave, blah blah blah this has nothing to do with anything and did not need to be written out on the page! _
One interesting bit in it is that Wren names "the twenty-first of each month". We haven't heard much about calendars, so I'd love to hear more.
Yeah, I know, same goes for this entire awful book, no need to be a smartass and point it out in the comments.
Nor will I do it anywhere else, because I think that argument doesn't hold. Sure, this might be a "book of filler and retcon", but even if you take that as a given, there's many ways in which it could be better than it is, so you've got every right to complain.
Wren proudly explains that they were made by “nomads who frequent the grasslands” and who until this point did not exist. He says they have artisans who make “arcane objects that are unknown to the rest of us”.
Well, we have got a mention of nomad tribes back in chapter 16 of Eragon, where Brom talks about "nomad tribes roaming this section of the plains", and we see such nomads later... Still, this is something that needs some tying up.
Also, the feeling I got from this on first read is "Colonial captain with masks from colonised culture", given the treatment of these nomads.
and turns human saying it was just a “glamour” because now those exist too all of a sudden.
They did exist at the end of Eldest, when Galbatorix hid his army in one! It's also quite clearly more than that, given that they can also attract Murtagh's attention very much.
I suppose it's really clumsy setup for Bachel having one and to give us reason to doubt Wren.
Then he has to recite the oath of service which is written out in its entirety for no reason,
Along with the readback, which serves literally no purporse but padding.
And yet he’s having “adventures” (let’s pretend) that aren’t appropriate to someone in that position. He’s essentially doing stuff that should be happening to a different character who isn’t a Rider and certainly isn’t Murtagh either.
I don't think that's a problem per se; he might want to lie low because he hates the idea of being in power due to his past, for example. As it is, though, the answer isn't convincing enough.
no subject
This could easily have been merged into the next chapter, or even been absorbed into the previous and next chapters.
If he's so bad at lying, that's another reason he should try to sneak in instead.
But Gert had the good manners not to inquire further.
Or he thinks that that's Captain Wren's task to deal with, and he's just happy to have a good new recruit.
Like who fucking cares that there’s a “planter” of “dried baby’s breath”?
I see that "planter" in that sense only came in use in... 1959, which seems way too modern for me.
And here's a visual:
Also where is the damn fish head right now?
Still in the cart outside, I suppose (not that we find out what happens to it in the end).
For the "map table", my first thought is that Wren's using this to reenact battles with, like from the recent war.
We also learn that the guy has really bad arthritis in both hands, which is every bit as irrelevant, and if his hands are basically unusable wouldn’t he have been invalided out of the guards by now?
And of course it's described as a "flaw", as we might expect by now. As for invalidation... I could say him staying on, since he's the captain and he could certainly entrench himself in the guard. (This is also an obvious future plot hook, for some reason.)
masks paragraph
I don't mind party masks, given that the upper class has consistently (the keyword) been shown to be in the Renaissance, so much as I mind not having had a mention of masked balls. This feels like it's skipping a step. And yes, some kind of explanation for the difference would be nice (and easy to give by saying the Riders provided the upper classes with higher tech... though would it have stayed that way for a hundred years?).
the bear, the wolf, the fox, the raven, and so forth, including two animals that he didn’t recognize.
And you won't bother to describe them to us so we can guess what they are? I actually did like that a bit when Paolini did it in Eragon with a parrot and a statue of a porcupine.
Murtagh found his gaze drawn to them as a lodestone drawn to a bar of iron.
Yeah, if the lodestone's smaller than the bar, then it will happen, but the comparison's not great. What Paolini wrote is: Murtagh:masks::lodestone:iron, when it should be Murtagh:masks::iron:lodestone. The magnetic force comes from the magnet, not the iron bar, after all.
The only thing they're here for is to make Bachel look scarier and to broaden the possible scope of the Dreamers.
Morontagh has a prepared lie this time and tells him how Mr Fishy grabbed him, etc. He just leaves out all the dragon related stuff.
And he lies that he actually managed to hit Muckmaw with the dagger, which I guess is to make himself look more heroic?
says nice work and pays him a reward of four gold.
I still think that bounty's too small, since Muckmaw's been causing problems for sixty years.
Ivor's fine, Task... I can't find anything for it, so that says enough, I'd think.
Morontagh thinks about how “It made sense. Nasuada would hardly want images of Galbatorix circulating throughout the land for the rest of her reign.”
So the coins now have had Galbatorix's head on them??? I don't think we ever heard of that! Okay, I looked and Eragon does say, when Glaedr's examining his memories before they go to Vroengard, that he and Glaedr feel like "two images stamped onto the same side of a coin", so I guess there is something on those old coins, but if Galbatorix was on them, we should have heard.
This also sounds a bit like she's trying to censor mentions of Galbatorix.
First off, a footman is a nobleman’s servant, not a soldier. He should be using the term “foot soldier” or "man at arms".
Hmm, I see that it can mean a soldier, but that's quite archaic as a meaning.
Yeah, Wren's just being a bad captain here, and I'd expect Irven to have a much larger company.
At least Yazuac or Deldarad didn't come up?
A sick feeling formed in Murtagh’s stomach, and the back of his neck went cold. I should have realized.
Yes, you should have, but you can still do better from now on. That's the part he's got some trouble following through on; he'd rather ruminate endlessly about his pasts than apply it to his present.
_He finally says yeah, sure he’ll do it, then gets given a bunch of pointless details about when you get paid, going on leave, blah blah blah this has nothing to do with anything and did not need to be written out on the page! _
One interesting bit in it is that Wren names "the twenty-first of each month". We haven't heard much about calendars, so I'd love to hear more.
Yeah, I know, same goes for this entire awful book, no need to be a smartass and point it out in the comments.
Nor will I do it anywhere else, because I think that argument doesn't hold. Sure, this might be a "book of filler and retcon", but even if you take that as a given, there's many ways in which it could be better than it is, so you've got every right to complain.
Wren proudly explains that they were made by “nomads who frequent the grasslands” and who until this point did not exist. He says they have artisans who make “arcane objects that are unknown to the rest of us”.
Well, we have got a mention of nomad tribes back in chapter 16 of Eragon, where Brom talks about "nomad tribes roaming this section of the plains", and we see such nomads later... Still, this is something that needs some tying up.
Also, the feeling I got from this on first read is "Colonial captain with masks from colonised culture", given the treatment of these nomads.
and turns human saying it was just a “glamour” because now those exist too all of a sudden.
They did exist at the end of Eldest, when Galbatorix hid his army in one! It's also quite clearly more than that, given that they can also attract Murtagh's attention very much.
I suppose it's really clumsy setup for Bachel having one and to give us reason to doubt Wren.
Then he has to recite the oath of service which is written out in its entirety for no reason,
Along with the readback, which serves literally no purporse but padding.
And yet he’s having “adventures” (let’s pretend) that aren’t appropriate to someone in that position. He’s essentially doing stuff that should be happening to a different character who isn’t a Rider and certainly isn’t Murtagh either.
I don't think that's a problem per se; he might want to lie low because he hates the idea of being in power due to his past, for example. As it is, though, the answer isn't convincing enough.