Eldest Spork Parts Eighteen and Nineteen

[epistler]

Part Seventeen:  Adrift With No Plot, and We’re All Out of Snacks

The next chapter continues with Eragon, and he’s still on a raft. Oh my god couldn’t any of this have been cut?? We get even more landscape descriptions, and the only part of it really worth noting is that Alaglag apparently has prairies now. Are you sure we’re not in Montana? Eragon and co make camp again, and Eragon starts practicing with his sword. Paolini describes him doing all sorts of fancy “forms” and whatnot, and while he’s doing it he imagines being surrounded by imaginary urgals and focuses on killing the shit out of them. Well, that’s not bloodthirsty or disturbing at all.

Then Eragon does a really stupid move where he tries to “flip” the sword into his other hand. Yeah, that’s a great way to drop it in the middle of battle, you nincompoop. For no apparently related reason his back flares up again and he keels over.

He wakes up again in his tent, and is instantly alert enough to start asking how long he was out. Funny, I thought passing out usually left people groggy and disoriented – hell, I get like that after an afternoon nap. But nope. Saphira tells him she tried to “draw you from your body into mine and shield you from the pain”. Wait, that’s a thing she can do now?

As it’s potentially interesting, it will of course never be mentioned again.

Eragon has no reaction to this and instead whines to Arya about how he’s a “broken vessel” and how can he fight or use magic now, wah wah. Dude, this happens once in a blue moon – you’re not confined to a freaking wheelchair. He asks how the Shade did this to him, and Arya doesn’t know.

She leaves, and Eragon confesses to Saphira that he’s scared because he doesn’t know when this will happen again, or how to stop it. Make note of this, guys – never again after this that I’m aware of will Eragon ever be shown acting convincingly scared of anything.It's honestly kind of depressing because I know in advance that this is one of the few remaining times I can actually sympathise with the little brat.

Saphira tells him that if this is the price he has to pay for the times when he’s not in pain, then so be it, whereupon Eragon snaps at her and storms off. I can’t say I really blame him - she’s being pretty damn insensitive. Not that that’s at all out of character for her.

After that he gets himself some food and the dwarves are all very impressed… by the fact that he keeled over in front of them. Wow, even when he’s passing out like Sarah Lynn at Adam Levine’s Halloween party he’s still the most awe-inspiring thing ever.

Behold the world's most heroic goat!

One of the dwarves fulfills his entire race’s sole story function by kissing Eragon’s ass, telling him he “bears a heavy burden”, boohoo (so Ergs has the One Ring on top of everything else?). Eragon continues to be snappish and sulky, and gets a telling off from Orik which actually results in Eragon admitting he was wrong and shouldn’t let his temper get the better of him.

Damn. Eragon’s almost coming across as an actual character here. I’d completely forgotten that at one point he actually was capable of admitting to personal flaws and mistakes and apologising for it.

Orik tells an unfunny story about the time he broke another dwarf’s nose by assaulting him in a fit of temper, which both of them laugh at, because violent assault and grievous bodily harm are hilarious. He then gives Eragon a puzzle ring to play with.

I own a puzzle ring, and I can report that the things are a pain in the ass. It’s really hard to put one together even with a YouTube tutorial (trust me; that was the first thing I tried), and they fall apart again if you so much as look at them funny. Mine is currently in a drawer where I stashed it after finally giving up.

So I’m not really surprised that Eragon is stumped by this one. I am however amused to see that this whole thing plays like he’s a little kid who threw a tantrum and was given a toy to distract him while the grown-ups talk. And it works, too.

Eragon: The Epic Hero with the attention span of a toddler.

Cut to the next morning. Eragon gets up and wanders off onto a hill, where he finds Arya and Saphira watching the sunrise together. In a rare rather touching moment, he’s reminded of how Saphira watched the sunrise back when she was a hatchling. He then admires how OMG fierce and beautiful she is, and weirdly enough Arya apparently matches her.

Yet another unintentional clue that Arya was supposed to be the Rider, not Eragon. Also an unintentional suggestion that Eragon thinks Saphira looks sexy.

Between this and constantly comparing everyone he finds attractive to cats and birds, I think it's pretty obvious Eragon is a closeted furry.

Eragon mentally congratulates himself on getting a dragon, and joins them on the hilltop. Arya looks at him and he gets all sweaty and thinks that she understands him better than anyone. I’ve seen absolutely no indication of that. If she understands him, why is she such a jerk to him? I could say the same thing about Saphira, mind you, and she’s supposed to be mentally bonded to him.

And here we get another clumsy hint that there’s supposed to be a romance developing between these two. Prepare for more forced awkward moments of this sort, because there’s plenty more where that came from.

Then – oh my god is this chapter still going? They keep traveling – AGAIN – and Eragon starts obsessing about Arya. Blah blah, landscapes, and then Orik unpacks a bow which he inexplicably keeps in a velvet-lined box studded with gemstones. The bow itself is also ridiculously fancy and over-decorated, and really sounds far better suited for ceremonial purposes.

Orik goes off with it, saying he’s going to get dinner, and comes back with “a brace of long-necked geese” (all geese have long necks – paging the Redundant Department of Redundancy), which he says he found perching in a tree.

Um.

Geese do not perch in trees. Geese are not perching animals. You wanna know why? Because they have webbed feet. Birds with webbed feet can’t grip with them. You ever see a seagull sitting on a twig? No. They stick to flat surfaces, and for good reason.

Geese nest on the ground. Isn’t Paolini supposed to be the nature boy who spent his childhood roaming the wilderness with every beast his brother and all that? If so why does he keep making such incredibly basic mistakes as not knowing where geese nest and thinking moss feels like “mouse fur”?

Anyway, moving on, Eragon asks Orik about his bow so cue a pointless infodump about that. It’s made from urgal horn, and Orik gives a long and completely unnecessary description about how they’re made. Pointless because the bow will never be seen again. Might I add, the dwarves are making cool weaponry out of the body parts of a race of sentient people. With their own culture and everything.

Naturally no-one is ever going to take issue with this, but good fuck that’s creepy. What’s next – drinking bowls made out of human skulls? Well hell, I already made it my headcanon that Arya's sexy leather outfit is made from human skins since the elves value animal life but not human life. 

Eragon asks for a go with the bow, then retrieves the arrow afterwards with magic. Don’t ask me when he learned how to do that, but he does it as smugly as possible.

He then uses the whole episode as an excuse to hit on Arya, asking her where the elves get their bows. She snippily replies that they “sing” them from “trees that do not grow”. So… dead trees? And then she just walks off, which is why I called that bit of dialogue snippy.

Public service announcement in case anyone doesn’t already know this: do not walk away while someone is talking to you unless you want to be intentionally rude. I’ve had it done to me twice, and both times the clear message was “you mean nothing to me”, so much so that when in one case it was someone I deeply admired (hence why I wanted to talk to her), she lost my respect and admiration on the spot. Since when did Arya have a problem with Ergy anyway? Shouldn’t she at least try to make nice with him because he’s kind of important politically speaking? This woman is the worst diplomat ever.
 

Picture unrelated.

The chapter ends with a completely random couple of paragraphs about how they leave the mountains behind and Eragon and Saphira do lots of flying and also there are deer and gazelle. Yes, in the same environment. Don’t ask me how that works. Eragon is glad to get away from Arya because she makes him feel “awkward”. In other words he’s discovered what spontaneous teenage boners are, and large sized textbooks haven’t been invented yet.

I swear to god this whole “travel sequence” thing had better end VERY soon or I’m going to break something.
 

Part Eighteen: Arya – Now With Pretentious Conlang Title!

Unfortunately the next chapter opens with… even more traveling. Eragon and Co. finally get off the damn rafts and mount up on donkeys (and Snowfire the Sue Horse). Arya continues to be snotty and rude, as she sneerily rejects the donkey offered to her. You are a bitch, Arya.

Instead she goes on foot and because she’s Super Speshul she can go faster than any of the animals (then why did she need a horse in the first book?). She also becomes even more untalkative than usual, and the narrator states that she’s getting tense about something.

Blah blah, more traveling, and Paolini drops a lot of place names. Eragon thinks about how there’s a bunch of elven cities around… which we’ll never see. Instead he’s just going to the one called Ellesmera for more boring training montages. He thinks about how the forest is dangerous for “mortals”, which we will later learn is nonsense as nothing remotely dangerous ever happens in elfland.

On the last night Arya shows up, and apparently she has Super Stealth powers as well. Then why wasn’t she using them in the last book when she was supposed to be on a secret mission with Saphira’s egg, instead choosing to ride around on a big noisy horse?

She telepathically asks Eragon to come with her. Ergs is surprised that she’d use mental contact because it’s so “profoundly personal” and how he hasn’t done it with her after the whole coma thing because “It seemed boorish and rude to initiate something so private without an invitation”.

This is of course swiftly forgotten at the end of this book, when he starts using mind-rape to control enemy soldiers, and again in the next book when he mentally forces himself on Sloan as well.

The two Sues sneak out of camp, and I have absolutely no idea why this was necessary. Couldn’t they have done this in Eragon’s tent and used a cone of silence spell?

Anyway, it turns out Arya wants to give him a lecture, as she tells him there are things he has to know about elf etiquette so he doesn’t “shame” himself out of ignorance. But it was totally okay for her to pull that stunt with the dwarf priest, of course. She then makes a speech about how humans and dwarves are very similar in a lot of ways, but elves are different.

Eragon rudely points out that he doesn’t believe elves could be that different because “All living things have the same basic needs and desires”. Get the hell over yourself, you pretentious little shit. 

Arya snaps back at him, and then starts talking about how because elves are immortal they’re also petty-minded jerks who never let go of a grudge. Am I supposed to be impressed by this? She goes on to say that courtesy is super duper important, and if you mess up by accident they’ll assume it was deliberate anyway and react with appropriate levels of douchebaggery. Paolini then has a stab at making the elves sound subtle and complicated as Arya claims their politics is some sort of extreme version of the long game, and when you see an elf say or do something it could be a move in the “game”, which Eragon will soon be a part of.

This goes nowhere, by the way. I also have a strong suspicion that Paolini stole it from somewhere. The more so given that we will never see the slightest hint of any of the “intrigues” Arya claims the elves get up to, along with the fact that Arya herself sucks at intrigue and has some of the worst manners I’ve ever seen.

She then teaches him a tediously elaborate series of AL greetings, and there’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment when you actually do find out what all that “stars” nonsense is about: it’s adapted from something a dragon once said, apparently.

Except the dragons are also atheists, so…

Saphira butts in and asks if the rules apply to her too, and Arya says no, because dragons are superior to the entire elvish culture.

That must be why the elvish riders of old treated them like giant flying taxis and regularly took their kids away from them.

Eragon then has to memorise a whole heap of different customised greetings – apparently there’s one for every kind of person you might interact with.

Needless to say, this will never come up again bar maybe one or two.

Arya makes to leave once they’re done, and Eragon calls her back and asks her what’s bothering her. Arya immediately flips over into Icy Rage Mode, and our hero is so rock stupid he can’t figure out why the question could possibly have offended her. Uh, maybe because you don’t ask that sort of question with someone you don’t know?

Fun fact: In highschool some well-meaning teacher told us kids that if someone’s being hostile toward you, you should ask what’s bothering them and this will instantly fix the situation. We all laughed our asses off because even as teenagers we knew damn well that there’s no faster way to make an angry person even angrier.

Arya snarls at him that he’s not allowed to speak to her like that once they’re in Elfland, and then storms off. That’s Arya for you: her solution to everything is to walk away. Why does Eragon like her so much anyway? She treats him like shit!

Saphira tells him to go and apologise, so he follows her and spouts some horribly overwritten “fantasy” dialogue by way of an apology. I mean really – who says ‘I cry your pardon’? It’s not even grammatically correct. For some reason this works and right out of nowhere Arya decides to open up and tells him she’s “afraid” before walking off on him for a second time.

This also goes nowhere, by the way. End chapter.

 

Comments

[torylltales]

1. As my kung fu teacher says, if you're doing a "form" and imagining your opponents instead of focusing on your technique and movements, you're not actually improving or developing, you're just flailing around. A form or set sequence is not an "imagined fight", it is a learning tool, just like reciting the times tables or the alphabet.

2. Re. geese nesting in treese, there IS one species, native to Canada and Northern US (especially Paolini's area) that do try to find high ground including in trees, on top of houses, telephone poles, and so on. Including that detail might be natural and normal for Paolini, but it's a distinctly Northern American phenomena only exhibited by one specific species (Canadian Goose).

3. there’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment when you actually do find out what all that “stars” nonsense is about: it’s adapted from something a dragon once said, apparently.

Yep, stolen, ahem "inspired" by the Dragonheart movie.

"Without you Draco, where will we go, where do we turn?"
"To the shtars, Bowen. To the shtars."

4. Arya acts like a badly programmed NPC in a video game. Answers your question, then immediately continues executing her {walk.js} script until you catch up and [[interact]] with her again.

[epistler]

Including that detail might be natural and normal for Paolini, but it's a distinctly Northern American phenomena only exhibited by one specific species (Canadian Goose).

Alaglag keeps dancing between Europe and rural Montana when it comes to the environment and what lives in it. It's pretty annoying.

4. Arya acts like a badly programmed NPC in a video game. Answers your question, then immediately continues executing her {walk.js} script until you catch up and [[interact]] with her again.

Thanks for giving me the biggest laugh I've had all week. XD
It's like he has no idea how to end a conversation with her except by having her randomly walk off. It happens like four times in successive chapters. Did Paolini not realise how damn rude he was making her look? (Probably not).

[torylltales]

It is possible, if we are being generous, that Paolini was trying to convey Arya getting increasingly anxious about returning to a place where she was basically self-exiled from, to family she is estranged from, and taking out her frustration and worry on the others by being snappish and irritated.

But it's not really handled very well.

[epistler]

I'd be a lot more okay with it if the other characters recognised that she was being really rude and reacted accordingly, but they don't.

[ssbob90]

The ring was a good metaphor for developememt on erg. But it was also a metaphor fot deus ex as he INSTANTLY solves it when he became a "super hybrid".

she’s Super Speshul she can go faster than any of the animals

This part is one of the few things that really pissed me off. THIS ABILITY IS GODDAMN UNNECESSARY! There is no goddamn reason to pull this ability out of the arse of writing. All it fucking does is make the elves more "speshul", like they need anymore fucking power that makes it perplexing of why they don't just storm the castle, and makes the elven horse completely pointless, which also makes them assholes since those horse were specially bred. The only asspull that worse then this is the nude elves transforming the psychopath and/or the dragon vault.

[epistler]

The ring was a good metaphor for developememt on erg. But it was also a metaphor fot deus ex as he INSTANTLY solves it when he became a "super hybrid".

Yeah, it started out as a good metaphor showing how much he has to learn, but after the Blood Ex Machina Ceremony it just becomes a symbol of how OMG PERFECT he is now. The lesson being that you don't get good at things through hard work and practice - you just get it handed to you for free. It's just such lazy writing.

This part is one of the few things that really pissed me off. THIS ABILITY IS GODDAMN UNNECESSARY! There is no goddamn reason to pull this ability out of the arse of writing.

Exactly! Like other Suethors I could name Paolini doesn't just give his favourite characters way too many special abilities - he gives them special abilities that are 100% unnecessary, sometimes so much so that you never see them again (it was all through the Axis trilogy as well). And in this case it just creates half a bajillion plot holes.

[ssbob90]

Not to mention the research fail with the urgal bow.

From what Orik said, I may be wrong because I can't remember, the entire length is horn. Which would make it unuseable, unless urgal horns bend like wood, and irl the horn is only used in the belly of a composite bow, in thin layers and not the whole thing, not to mention the how the hell is an urgal horn long enough for a bow, because I think Orik said it was only made out of a horn or a pair. As it means their horns are so impractically large, remember the horn long as our psychos arm, that they logically can't move, not to mention being unable to stand close to eachother.

[epistler]

Here's the full quote if you're interested:

Eragon eyed him suspiciously, sure that the dwarf was trying to fool
him. “Horn isn’t flexible or springy enough to make a bow.”
“Ah,” chortled Orik, “that’s because you have to know how to treat it
right. We first learned to do it with Feldûnost horns, but it works just as
well with an Urgal’s. It’s done by cutting the horn in half lengthwise, then
trimming the outside coil until it’s the right thickness. The strip is boiled
flat and sanded into the final shape before being fixed to the belly of an
ash stave with glue made from fish scales and the skin from the roof of
trout’s mouths. Then the back of the stave is covered with multiple layers
of sinew; they give the bow its snap. The last step is decoration. The
entire process can take almost a decade.”

[ssbob90]

It seem I misjudged. Props to paolini on bow research. Too bad he didn't research warfare, armor unless the gold armor is gold plated, or tactics. And the fact we never see a dwarf archer using said bow again.

[epistler]

Problem is that even if it's accurate it's information we didn't need to know. So you read an article on Wikipedia about horn bows - who cares? What does that have to do with anything? It adds nothing to the story.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, all you need to do with this is gesture in the direction of composite bows, and any reader who knows about their construction will be on the same page as you. Their experience will be enriched, and you won’t be lecturing the rest of the audience that doesn’t care so much.

That’s much better than shoving a lecture in your readers’ faces.

[epistler]

That’s much better than shoving a lecture in your readers’ faces.

Exactly! Bad authors make that mistake a lot. They think that what they, personally, have to say is so damn interesting and important that it's okay to lecture the reader about it even if it's totally irrelevant. I made the same mistake myself back in the day.

[vorpaltongue]

Between this and constantly comparing everyone he finds attractive to cats and birds, I think it's pretty obvious Eragon is a closeted furry.

If it IS a case of Ergs finding Saphira attractive, then either A) the mental link has some of her self-absorbed narcissism bleeding through and filtered through Erg's mind, or B) he's probably less Furry/Scalie and more an unknowingly closet Zoophile.

Might I add, the dwarves are making cool weaponry out of the body parts of a race of sentient people. With their own culture and everything.

Y'know, my brain is trying to find a way to make this work. If it was a case of the Dwarves REALLY hating the Urgals, due to the latter "being pricks" to the former thanks to culture differences, then I'd probably understand WHY the Dwarves would desecrate the Urgal dead.

... Assuming they'd be dead...

In any case, if the bow isn't staying, then don't include it. And I - personally - see enough reason to actually keep it in the story.

[epistler]

A) the mental link has some of her self-absorbed narcissism bleeding through and filtered through Erg's mind

That would be really interesting, if messed up. But unfortunately Paolini never really does anything much with the mental link thing.

B) he's probably less Furry/Scalie and more an unknowingly closet Zoophile.

Joking aside, I think it's just that Paolini didn't want to sexualise any of his characters. Either because the series was for kids, or because it made him uncomfortable. So therefore all the attractive characters are described aesthetically rather than sensually and therefore it doesn't matter if he uses animal metaphors.

Y'know, my brain is trying to find a way to make this work. If it was a case of the Dwarves REALLY hating the Urgals, due to the latter "being pricks" to the former thanks to culture differences, then I'd probably understand WHY the Dwarves would desecrate the Urgal dead.

In the last book it turns out the urgals themselves turn the horns of their dead fathers into musical instruments but... that's a cultural practice everybody in that culture is clearly okay with. If the dwarves choose to harvest horns and use them to make bows, they're presumably doing it without sanction from the urgals and stealing from their dead. Which makes this a case of disrespecting the dead and also - DEAR GOD NO! - cultural appropriation!

[hergrim]

Honestly, using Urgal horns to make composite bows is exactly the kind of ritual desecration and humiliation I can see happening in real life. Admittedly, it's more likely to be present in Urgal culture than Dwarven culture (especially given that the Urgals are so far away from the Dwarves and the two races are unlikely to come to blows enough for sufficient animosity to develop and opportunity to obtain said horns), but it's not in itself a bad idea (the target audience not withstanding). And, given the shorter draw length the dwarves would have, Urgal horns are probably just the right length for a dwarven recurve bow.

[epistler]

Honestly, using Urgal horns to make composite bows is exactly the kind of ritual desecration and humiliation I can see happening in real life.

Me too, except you'd expect to see it being done by the, y'know, bad guys.

[hergrim]

In a series intended for 10-15 year olds? Sure. Otherwise? No, I disagree. Morality is not absolute, and most cultures have performed something similar, either as desecration or the ritual absorption of power or both, and this generally lasted until they developed control mechanisms for this, that only worked within cultures.

[epistler]

Except that, of course, this series is intended for 10-15 year olds and the morality in it is extremely black and white. Otherwise, you're entirely correct. In a less juvenile series it would be totally fine, but here it just makes the "always 100% Good" characters look like creeps.

It would have been nice to see some follow-up on this, too. Like, how would the urgals react when they join the Varden and see dwarves toting bows made out of their dead friends? You'd think it would cause a lot of conflict between the two groups, but instead it just never comes up.

[hergrim]

Ah, okay, good to know we're on the same page.

Yeah, that would have been a great source of tension, and a much better one than the manufactured drama around the guy who just randomly murdered an Urgal for no real reason.

[epistler]

Yeah, I'm fully aware of grey morality and what was considered acceptable in the distant past. It's just a question of whether it fits, which here it doesn't.

Yeah, that would have been a great source of tension, and a much better one than the manufactured drama around the guy who just randomly murdered an Urgal for no real reason.

Hell yeah. Like, what if a dwarf was showing off his cool urgal horn bow and then and urgal saw it and was like "oh GOD THAT'S MY BROTHER'S HORN!" and went postal on his ass.

[gharial]

Eldest is cool and all, but what's up with that Eragon spork? It's been a month since the last post.

[epistler]

Seriously?! 'scuse me - I gotta send some death threats to Snarkbotanya.

[epistler]

...well that went over about as well as could be expected.

[ultramega10]

This is the part where I talk about how this chapter could have been improved.

Unfortunately, my answer is just 'cut it.'

These past few chapters have been completely worthless. They do some worldbuilding, but that worldbuilding never actually comes up. This entire sequence could have been cut and replaced with Eragon and Arya flying to Elf Land on Saphira. It would have been much more efficient and might have actually been entertaining.

Maybe they could have gotten chased by the mysterious red dragon rider, who proves himself super powerful and nearly defeats both of them. Thus making his presence less completely out of nowhere. Then Eragon could ask Oromis about him, and there could be a plotline about trying to find out who the mysterious dragon rider is.

Then we get the reveal with Murtagh, and there is some actual build up to the damn thing.

In essence, to fix these chapters would require nothing less than a full-on rewrite. This is the core problem with Eldest. It takes a thousand words to say what should have been revealed in one sentence. There is no restraint on the author's part. Paolini wanted to do worldbuilding, so he slapped together worldbuilding without ever once stopping to consider how it fit into the narrative.

[epistler]

God help us, this part of the book was apparently once even longer. I just wish the editor had taken it further with having it cut down, though to be fair it's entirely possible they tried and Paolini wouldn't listen.

[stuffsayer]

Since the horn bow has come up in the comments quite a bit, I think it's worth mentioning that it does come up again in Brisingr. But just once as a passing comment, not a serious issue. It's when Nas is telling Eragon to go to the dwarf election, and she says he'll run there together with the Nar-Something.
This is what he says:
"A Kull!" exclaimed Eragon, unable to contain himself any longer. "You would send me among the dwarves with a Kull by my side? I cannot think of any race the dwarves hate more than the Urgals. They make bows out of their horns! If I walked into Farthen Dur with an Urgal, the dwarves would not pay heed to anything I had to say."

[teres]

Unfortunately can't get the image of the sexy dragon back.