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

[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.