It could be as simple as showing what kind of impact it has on elven society, which would also go a way toward fleshing out their culture.
Definitely. The elves are just far too much like really pretentious humans and not much else. In book two we got some crap about them having really complicated politics that are a "game" that has been going on for centuries, but it's never mentioned again. (Leading me to suspect that, as usual, Paolini stole it from somewhere and then lost interest in favour of some new shiny toy). In reality, an entire race of immortals would be very different. For one thing, unless they never, ever go anywhere (unlikely) every elf would probably know just about every other elf. For centuries. How would that impact their relationships?
But no, Paolini just doesn't think about these things.
For Eragon... well, not having human Riders become immortal would solve the problem of him (and Murtagh) outliving everyone, and it'd only require relatively few changes to implement.
We don't even find out at what point the two of them will stop ageing - it's stated in book two that Eragon is still going through puberty, or at least implied. Will he stop ageing any further when he hits, say, 25? And if so, why that particular age?
Also, imagine what it would be like being stuck looking like you're barely out of your teens when you're actually five hundred years old. People who didn't know would probably keep treating you like a kid. Forever. It happened to one of my immortal characters; he's basically a grumpy old man trapped looking like he's 19. Mortals who look older than him don't take him seriously a lot of the time.
Mind you, Eragon is never treated like a kid, even though he's 16 and acts like he's 8.
(and I'm happy to see that I seem to have convinced you on the length!)
It was actually kind of easy to miss that a year passes between the end of the war and the end of the book given how dreadful the pacing is. I noticed nobody ever celebrates or even mentions a birthday at any point.
Back to what you're saying... yeah, the ancientness could be conveyed much better by giving us some concrete history, something like Dras-Leona having been settled four hundred years ago, for example. I find that easy to connect with and imagine, at least.
And what history we do get is a complete mess. The timeline is all over the place and he just keeps making it WORSE!
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Definitely. The elves are just far too much like really pretentious humans and not much else. In book two we got some crap about them having really complicated politics that are a "game" that has been going on for centuries, but it's never mentioned again. (Leading me to suspect that, as usual, Paolini stole it from somewhere and then lost interest in favour of some new shiny toy). In reality, an entire race of immortals would be very different. For one thing, unless they never, ever go anywhere (unlikely) every elf would probably know just about every other elf. For centuries. How would that impact their relationships?
But no, Paolini just doesn't think about these things.
We don't even find out at what point the two of them will stop ageing - it's stated in book two that Eragon is still going through puberty, or at least implied. Will he stop ageing any further when he hits, say, 25? And if so, why that particular age?
Also, imagine what it would be like being stuck looking like you're barely out of your teens when you're actually five hundred years old. People who didn't know would probably keep treating you like a kid. Forever. It happened to one of my immortal characters; he's basically a grumpy old man trapped looking like he's 19. Mortals who look older than him don't take him seriously a lot of the time.
Mind you, Eragon is never treated like a kid, even though he's 16 and acts like he's 8.
It was actually kind of easy to miss that a year passes between the end of the war and the end of the book given how dreadful the pacing is. I noticed nobody ever celebrates or even mentions a birthday at any point.
And what history we do get is a complete mess. The timeline is all over the place and he just keeps making it WORSE!