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antishurtugal_rebornAnd now into the book itself! I’m going to make a strong effort not to rehash stuff that’s been covered in previous sporks of this thing and instead focus on other things which might not have been given as much attention.
Such as the chapter title. Why is it called “the gates of death”? What gates? The city gates the worshippers are going to come out of? The entrance to the Razzle Dazzle lair doesn’t have any gates on it. Are these just metaphorical gates?
Anyway, we open with a Paolini staple: emotionless, overwritten description.
Eragon stared at the dark tower of stone wherein hid the monsters who had murdered his uncle, Garrow.
This is a mountain not a tower, so the description is mismatched and unhelpful. The comma did not need to be there either. Nor did he need to throw in the word “wherein”; it feels unnatural, not to mention pretentious. You can tell it was written by someone who was trying too hard and not relying on his natural vocabulary.
The other big issue here which harms the opening far more is that we do not get anything as to how Eragon feels right now. He’s about to face up against the only personal enemies he has. The scary monsters who killed Garrow and Brom. But is he shown to be feeling any fear? Nope. Anger? Nope. Nor do we move on to any descriptions of how he thinks or feels about all this.
Instead, the narrative moves on with a bunch of more flat and needlessly detailed description, and it’s basically a list. First we get what Eragon can see, then we get some crap about listening to Roran breathe and how he’s got SUPER HEARING now thanks to the Blood Ex Machina Ceremony. All of that takes precedence over actually depicting Eragon as a person who has feelings or even thoughts for that matter. He doesn’t react to any of this.
Nor does he or Paolini have his priorities in order, because only now does he pay any attention to what’s actually going on, which is that a bunch of people are headed toward Helgrind from the city. We get a huge paragraph of description of them as well, and somehow Eragon can make out a whole lot of details. Just how close is he that he can count how many slaves are holding up the High Priest and their ridiculous three foot high leather “crest”?
Still no thoughts or feelings about this. Eragon might as well just be a camera on a stick.
He finally speaks up to tell Roran those are the priests of Helgrind, though how he’s that familiar with them I’ve no idea because they haven’t exactly gotten to know each other.
Roran’s only reaction is to emotionlessly ask whether they can use magic, to which Eragon emotionlessly states that it’s possible and he doesn’t dare do that mental probing thing which was so goddamn important in the last book because if any of them can they’ll sense him. Or rather, “our presence will be revealed”.
Dude, you have a fucking dragon and more power than god. Last time you made mental contact with an enemy spellcaster you squashed him like a bug.
This is one of the problems you get when you make your protagonist way too powerful; it makes scenes like this nonsensical because with all his powers Eragon should be able to just ignore that lot while he goes and gets this done, because what the fuck could they possibly do to him and who cares if people find out here’s in the area? By the time Murtagh and Thorn show up, he’ll be long gone.
Instead we just get another big paragraph of obsessively detailed description of the worshippers, which is overwritten to the point of comical. Eragon’s only reaction is to wonder whether the local governor is in there somewhere.
As this goes nowhere I’m going to add my first count.
**~~essential story elements~~** : 1
Dude never even appears on the page.
Even more description as they reach a random boulder that hasn’t been mentioned before. The High Priest starts chanting, except for some damn reason they’re referred to as a “shaman”; a title which if I’m not mistaken will not be used ever again in connection to this cult and doesn’t fit at all.
Something else that doesn’t fit is their actual words; they’re using a mishmash of Ancient Language, dwarf, Urgal and human for no reason that is ever explained. I mean it’s not as if this cult has any dwarves or Urgals in it.
And don’t the Razzle Dazzles have their own language? Why don’t their cultists speak that instead?
Instead of wondering about that, Eragon entertains arrogant self-righteous thoughts about how this “sermon” is like TOTALLY EVIL and full of terrible things we’re not going to be actually given any details about, and how all this darkness and evil has been allowed to “flourish” since the Riders aren’t around any more.
I’m sorry, what the fuck is this nonsense? (Wow, I made it all the way to page three before I started cussing). Since when were the Riders any sort of moral authority/religious/philosophical order? Since when did they have anything to do with making people behave well instead of turning evil? All we’ve been told before now is that they were the guardians of the land or some such nonsense, which… uh, yeah, I’m sure being peaceful guardians encouraging others to goodness would absolutely need razor sharp magic swords, super strength and a whole heap of death spells plus mindrape powers. If they weren’t an order of fighters with a big emphasis on martial prowess and killing, then why did they need all that shit? You don’t get people to peacefully co-exist and be nice with that much firepower on your side – literally. All you’re going to get with that is keeping people in line through fear and intimidation, and nobody ever sincerely behaves well because they’re under threat of punishment.
So yeah, this is just Eragon and Paolini pretending the Riders are or were perfect shining heroes because after all, if they weren’t, Eragon wouldn’t be a perfect shining morally immaculate hero and we can’t have that, now can we?
The other problem which continues to crop up here is Paolini’s deliberate vagueness. We’re told what the High Priest said was a “depraved oration” but we didn’t get to actually read a word of it so how the hell are we supposed to know it was depraved? Like you cannot just dance around this stuff if you want to properly evoke mood and have us see that yes, these people are horrible and scary. Oh, and he throws in a mention of “madness”, of course, because madness is eeevil.
With that done “two of the lesser priests” (how does Eragon know that’s what they are?) lift “their master – or mistress, as the case might be-” onto the altar.
Oh look, some possible enby representation. Figures it’d be in the form of an evil depraved monster who deliberately mutilated themselves. Yeah, that’s a real good look, isn’t it?
Cue some overdescribed bloodletting, and as usual Paolini has no idea how much blood you can actually afford to lose without dying (the answer is, a lot less than you might think. I nearly passed out from “just” a nosebleed once). You definitely cannot have a “rivulet” coming from each shoulder and making a pool big enough to fill “goblets” to the “rim”. We’re not told how many goblets, but it sounds like the High Priest/ess is losing at least two or three pints of blood in one go if there’s enough for everyone here to have a drink. And yes, it does specifically say that ALL the attendees get some, and by the sound of it there’s at least a hundred of them! What the fuck?
Fun fact, unlike Paolini I took the trouble of looking it up and a healthy adult can lose maybe three or four pints before it’s officially a medical emergency. And note “healthy”; this poor fool has had god knows how many bits cut off and apparently does this all the time. But nope, no ill effects at all.
Even more ridiculously, fast forward to over a decade later and Paolini still thought you could lose enough blood to “flood the inside” of your spacesuit and not go into cardiac arrest. All because he thinks he’s too good to do a five second google search. Or in my case DuckDuckGo search because I’ll have no truck with those goddamn AI overviews full of water-wasting misinformation.
Also, how the fuck is Eragon able to see all this detail? It sounds like he’s standing maybe a meter away! We’ve been given absolutely no indication as to where he and Roran are relative to where all this is happening, so this really isn’t helping.
Also also? Still no reaction from Eragon at all.
There’s one other thing that’s been going on in this scene, too, but I’ll mention it later.
Roran sort of reacts by spitting out an early example of the truly abysmal dialogue that is going to plague this book. We’ve been over it before enough times for it not to be necessary to go through in detail, but not only does it not sound like something a fantasy character would say, but it doesn’t sound like something a human being would say. Paolini was so determined to make him sound suitably Fantasy that he robbed the guy’s dialogue of any sense of human personality or emotion. Also, Roran comes off as angry and contemptuous, insulting the worshippers, instead of being upset or disturbed the way an actual person – and especially one as young and relatively experienced as he is – would and should be.
Nor does Eragon seem the least bit shocked. Instead he just flatly tells Roran “they do not partake of the meat”, which also doesn’t sound the least bit human and doesn’t match how he talked in previous books either. The guy is SO FLAT AND EMPTY. It’s mind-blowing. Like this isn’t even a character. He’s got no presence at all. No personality. And Roran is little better.
Meanwhile the High Priest/ess talks some more and is completely fine despite having just bled like a stuck pig. They blather on some more and we get some vague details at last, most of it either nonsensical because there’s no context, or pulled straight from the Religion Is EVUL playbook for lazy authors who know nothing about religion.
With that done the congregants all cut themselves and bleed on the altar as well. Just how long did that take?? Oh, it actually says in the next line. “Some minutes”.
It took just a few minutes for god knows how many people to queue up, cut themselves, bleed, then move aside? The logistics here are absolutely ridiculous.
Paolini’s still not done with pounding it into our heads that this religion is EVIL, because now someone volunteers to cut something off and everyone gets all excited. Paolini continues to insult them by describing them as jumping around and yelling “as if they had taken leave of their senses”. Oh sure, go ahead and tell us how evil religion is, because it’s not as if your “heroes” constantly engage in mindless groupthink and thought-terminating cliches (“all of Alagaësia will fall into darkness!!”). Or that they and you believe that the people you claim to represent don’t know what’s good for them without you telling them like the morally superior people you are.
Eragon gets a bit excited too despite himself, because it’s apparently woken “some primal and brutish part of him”. Yeah, that would be your bloodlust and violent tendencies which have been on full display for some time now. You’re still in no position to be pointing fingers and making moral judgements, you nasty little bastard.
Okay, time to get on with it. I’ve been typing for at least half an hour and this chapter is nowhere near finished.
The acolyte (again, how does Eragon know what his role is?) strips, so cue a description of his sweaty muscles. How’s that closet suiting you, Eragon? All comfy in there?
Eragon watches as the guy cuts his own hand off with an overdescribed knife that will never appear again.
**~~essential story elements~~** : 2
Somehow he’s able to do this with one blow, without resting his wrist on something first. Now Eragon finally has a reaction, which is to wince and look away while thinking about how wrong this is.
Roran, meanwhile, just cusses and it’s somehow “lost in his beard”. Where’s that super hearing now, pray tell? And you just know this was Paolini thinking he cleverly slipped in the fact that the guy has a beard now.
It’s mentioned that they stop the guy’s bleeding with magic (HOW DOES ERAGON KNOW THAT’S WHAT THEY DID?), which they did not do with the High Priest/ess. Then they chain up a couple of slaves to the altar (HOW DOES ERAGON KNOW THEY’RE SLAVES?) and lay down some packages which will never be seen again, or become relevant.
Finally they all leave and Eragon is somehow able to see the now one-handed guy has “a beatific smile”. I think it’s pretty obvious Paolini has forgotten to separate the character from the narrator, and not for the first time.
Eragon rather casually remarks that he’s never seen anyone do anything that strange, and Roran just as casually calls them as bad as the Razzles before instantly moving on to asking if Eragon can find out if Katrina’s in the mountain and none of this will ever be mentioned again. It sure as hell won’t ever become relevant to the plot.
**~~essential story elements~~** : 3
This count is going to get really high, isn’t it? I mean, the last time I had a religious order who performed human sacrifices, guess what? One of the protagonists was ultimately captured by them and chosen to be the next sacrificial victim. So, y’know. Peril and stakes and scary stuff that’s actually important. But what would I know? I’m not a zillionaire bestseller with 1,000 special editions.
Eragon just blithely starts his mind probe so that means – what else – MORE flat emotionless description! Am I blessed or what? Oh, and with bonus infodumping about the Razzle Dazzles and their parents and how OMG SCARY AND DANGEROUS they are!!!11 with the breath weapon they never use again. And we also suddenly learn that there are people/creatures called “mindbreakers” who can fight with telepathy alone, right the fuck out of nowhere. Also the term “psychic probe” is used in all seriousness.
After that comes an infodump about Katrina, with an hilariously melodramatic description of how OMG INTENSE Roran is, so much so his emotions could melt cocks I mean rocks and yes that was a genuine typo I kept for the lulz.
We’re told Eragon understands, and we get ANOTHER big infodump about how the Razzle Dazzles took Katrina and then Roran “convinced” the entire village to leave with him and there were “many and terrible” hardships along the way. Yeah, right, sure there were. That’s why they wouldn’t quit whining about not getting comfy bunks on board a ship and bitching about food when they were supposedly on the run for their lives. That’s how people in massive peril behave, right?
Anyway, so we’re also told that Roran only succeeded because of the “strength of his passion” which drives him to “extremes that others feared” blah blah blah. If by that you mean he makes incredibly stupid decisions because he thinks he knows best, then yeah, I buy that. The only reason none of it got him killed or captured is because the author said so.
Now we’re told that Eragon has the same “fervor” which is patently not true. Nor is this next part true:
He would leap into harm’s way without the slightest regard for his own safety if someone he cared for was in danger.
Pardon me while I laugh myself stupid. This is the guy who stood there and did nothing when his friend Murtagh was abducted and instead made excuses before sending someone else. The guy who whined and insisted on staying in the mountains all night when Garrow was in danger just because his legs were injured. And later on when Saphira gets hurt he just ignores it and lets other people heal her for him.
Further blather ensues about how much Eragon loves Roran and now considers Katrina to be family since she’s engaged to the guy and how it’s extra important because he and Roran are the Last Of Their Line.
Um, what line? You two idiots are peasants. You’re not nobles, let alone royalty. If your line dies out, so fucking what? There’ll be a few less sociopaths in the country, big deal. On top of that Eragon also informs us that he’s disowned Murtagh as a brother. Because, you know, he really cares about his friends and family and Murtagh totally deserved that because… um…
Yeah, I got nothin’. Paolini just wants us to hate him now, I guess.
After that loveliness, the narrator tediously informs us that their other goal that “obsessed them” is revenge!, italics and exclamation mark not added. Because that’s just so heroic and noble, you guys. Seriously. There’s no mention of wanting to protect people from them – nope, they just want petty revenge, and not even for Brom and Garrow. Nope, just Garrow. Brom doesn’t even warrant a mention.
Finally (and I do mean finally), the two of them start talking again.
And now it’s time to bring up that thing I mentioned earlier that had been going on this entire scene.
The two of them.
In other words, where the fuck is Saphira? She’s supposed to be in Eragon’s mind so much they’re “more one mind than two” blah blah blah but not only is she not physically present but he hasn’t spoken to her, felt her in his mind, or even fucking thought about her. It’s like she just doesn’t exist. She’s not important. Just an accessory to be left back at camp.
This series is dragon-centric, right? I mean they are the main draw for fans, right?
So where the hell are they?
Eragon tells Roran he sensed Katrina in there and she’s not in any pain because author forbid one of the favoured characters actually get hurt (seriously, though, why has she not been tortured the way Sloan was?). He also sensed one other person – Sloan, obviously – who he doesn’t mention, but it troubles him greatly, apparently. Yeah, you can totally tell by his behaviour and mode of speech, can’t you?
Roran declares that they can’t fight them at night when they’re strongest, so better wait until dawn. Ah, yes, whereupon you will fight them in their own lair where it’s pitch dark. So, y’know, they still have the advantage. You’re a moron, Roran.
Even more distastefully, they’re going to use those poor slaves as their way of knowing if the Razzle Dazzles are around. If they’ve been eaten by morning the Razzle Dazzles are around so yay let’s go kill them. If not, then they’ll set them free and rescue Katrina while cursing “our bad luck that they escaped us”.
I want to make note of that. Look at Roran’s priorities here. His first priority isn’t rescuing the woman he supposedly loves. Nope, his first priority is killing the Razzle Dazzles, to the point that he’s happy to just leave her there for another night and abandon two innocent people to die horribly. All so he can have his petty revenge.
I’m not going to add a “THESE ARE THE HEROES?” count because it’d be redundant. We already know these horrible, small-minded people aren’t objectively heroic at all.
He also says he doubts the Razzle Dazzles will leave Katrina unguarded for long since Galby wants her alive to use against Roran. Which makes no sense because if she’d been taken for Galby to use rather than by the Razzle Dazzles just making their own decision, she’d be in Uru’Baen, not here miles out of Galby’s reach. Methinks the Razzles are actually keeping out of Galby’s way since they bungled the “kidnap Roran” job so spectacularly it might as well have been deliberate weaponised incompetence.
Eragon, typically, has no problem at all with leaving the slaves to die because oh if people see Saphira fighting the Lethrblaka in the open air Galby will get them! Because it’s not as if travel times and invisibility spells are a thing, after all. And guess what, Saphira fights one of them in the open air anyway, in broad daylight.
So in other words they’re letting these guys die for no reason other than their own personal convenience. Don’t you just want to, I don’t know, name your kids after these two?
And with that the slaves are forgotten forever as they return to camp with more overwritten description and the chapter ends.
This is, and I really can’t stress this enough, a terrible way to open any book. It’s something like 80% boring poorly written description, 15% infodumping and 5% horribly written stilted dialogue. There’s no action, no emotion, no characterisation, and nothing happens other than some over-the-top unnecessary gore that really shouldn’t be in a novel marketed to kids as young as nine.
It’s all style over substance, and the style ain’t good anyway.
And guess what? It gets even worse in the next chapter.
At least this one is over so I can go do something less painful and more fun, like stabbing myself in the lungs with a spork.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-04 12:44 pm (UTC)Well, don't worry about it too much; I don't think we mind seeing some repetition, and some stuff just needs to be said. I do appreciate the possible focus on overlooked details, though!
For the chapter title, I've wondered as much myself, since there don't seem to be any physical gates. I guess it's metaphorical, and it could be because of the Ra'zac, but they don't seem to have a bad enough reputation in the area to justify the name, so it's probably just Paolini being dramatic.
Well, "clearly" setting up how evil this cult is takes precedence over things like explaining just how they aim to get at the Ra'zac, or how they might feel about that, or meeting up with Saphira. I do think that's going on, at least, given that next chapter will contain all of that and a lot of rumination on the end of last book, while this one's nearly wholly given over to the cult. And sure, I get that Paolini wanted to open in medias res, but this is taking it a little too far. (And that might be part of why there's so little emotion: that would get in the way of the descriptions.)
The High Priest starts chanting, except for some damn reason they’re referred to as a “shaman”; a title which if I’m not mistaken will not be used ever again in connection to this cult and doesn’t fit at all.
Indeed it won't!
I think the former is supposed to sound weird, without being given much more thought. And it is weird, but without any further explanation, it doesn't make much sense, and I don't really have an explanation for it.
As for speaking the Ra'zac's language... given that it seems to consist of clicks and hisses, I'm not wholly sure if the human cultists could actually use it.
We’re told what the High Priest said was a “depraved oration” but we didn’t get to actually read a word of it so how the hell are we supposed to know it was depraved?
Yeah, this is a place to establish the evil of the cult beyond doubt, and thus decidedly not a place to be squeamish. And given how little we know of them by this point, I do wonder just where the "depravity" lies in, since his description of the speech is quite vague, too. I guess it's the cannibalism? That still doesn't seem that depraved to me, though.
I rather think that the thought process was "hmmm, maybe assuming that the priest is male is a bit sexist, so Eragon should wonder if they could be a woman, too" (which does not mean much when nothing is done with it), and I sincerely doubt that the possibility of the High Priest being nonbinary even crossed his mind. ...Then again, he does seem to be using that possibility as a further point of horror, so I am tempted to headcanon the High Priest as nonbinary just out of spite.
Oh yes, there we have the advent of the Endlessly Bleeding Characters (who might well be a Paolini staple at this point)! If you want some more numbers, a medical emergency generally sets in at 30-40% blood loss, which I mention since the High Priest would have less total blood due to missing their arms and legs, and so trouble would indeed start earlier than with a common human. I can't find any solid number on how much less blood there would be, but I'd imagine about a liter, which would probably translate to a whole goblet less.
For something else... shouldn't the Priest's wounds get infected every so often? And what would have happened in the coming years? His limbs are gone, after all, and they can't remove much more without cutting into organs, so...
Roran sort of reacts by spitting out an early example of the truly abysmal dialogue that is going to plague this book.
"Errant flesh-mongers!" (Yeah, who are they selling their flesh to, Roran?) Sadly, the Dutch translation mostly kept this one...
Yeah, the Religion Is Evil stuff really isn't doing it for me. Like, everyone seems to be here because they want to, they haven't hurt anyone who minded yet, and they seem to be having a good time, so I'm having a quite hard time finding any of it "evil".
Eragon watches as the guy cuts his own hand off with an overdescribed knife that will never appear again.
I'd expect this knife or another like it to show up during the attack on the cathedral, at least, since it looks like it could cause quite some damage.
and look away by thinking about how wrong this is.
Well, he only says it seems wrong, because it's so easy to get hurt in everyday life. I need a bit more reasoning to understand that well, and it comes off as quite judgy in any case.
I think Eragon could guess a lot of it, but then we need to know that it's guesswork, not have it presented as facts that he can't verify.
and lay down some packages which will never be seen again, or become relevant.
Then I presume they're birthday presents! Maybe there's some books in there (like historical fiction about the dwarves) or maybe clothing (they always like them flying on the Lethrblakya the most).
At the very least, some of the stuff at Nal Gorgoth does become plot-relevant, so I might say he's learned a little.
Because it isn't like there's a recap just before the beginning of this chapter... It is an effective way to pad, at least.
with an hilariously melodramatic description of how OMG INTENSE Roran is, so much so his emotions could melt cocks I mean rock
Maybe he could have used "Emotional Detonation" against Barst...
The guy who whined and insisted on staying in the mountains all night when Garrow was in danger just because his legs were injured.
Well, with that, Saphira refused to go, and he was far enough away and injured enough that waiting the night was a better bet.
Roran declares that they can’t fight them at night when they’re strongest, so better wait until dawn.
...Why is Roran the one to point this out? It's probably to give him something to contribute, but this seems like something Eragon would be more familiar with. And yeah, they'd be fighting them in the dark anyway, so it'd be better to try to lure them out and attack there.
Nope, his first priority is killing the Razzle Dazzles, to the point that he’s happy to just leave her there for another night and abandon two innocent people to die horribly. All so he can have his petty revenge.
Yeah, no matter what they're saying, killing the Ra'zac clearly has the greater priority.
Next chapter will have something more to discuss, at least... so until then!
no subject
Date: 2025-07-05 08:48 am (UTC)And somehow Eragon and Roran are so stupid they don't even figure out that it's the Razzles they worship. I mean they're only leaving OFFERINGS for them. Instead, the High Priest has to spell it out for Eragon later on.
I think that's exactly it. Describing everything as much as possible has now become his first priority, all the time. It's as if he feels like he'll lose control of things somehow if he doesn't pin down every last little detail.
Yeah, he's okay with describing all that over the top blood and gore but he can't be bothered to give us any details here? Personally, I think it's just laziness.
I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't even know enby people are a thing.
Don't they even have they/them pronouns in book for? Or did Paolini go for "it"? I think it's the last, ugh.
It definitely is. The guy is obsessed with blood. Pools of blood, rivulets of blood, etc etc
In Paolini Land there's no such thing as infections. That's why Nausea has DIRTY BANDAGES put back on over her wounds and nothing comes of it.
Does Paolini just not know what that even means?
Heck, for all we know those slaves are volunteers.
Heck, if it can cut through multiple bones that easily, it must be an eversharp blade just like (ugh) Tinkledeath.
Yeah, this is really arrogant and high-handed. And therefore very typical of Eragon.
So Eragon and Roran kill the Razzles on their BIRTHDAY? Wow that's cold.
*snerk*
Sounds like a Final Fantasy finishing move to me.
The whole thing was hopelessly contrived, let's face it.
Never, ever fight an enemy on the own ground if you can possibly avoid it. They've got all the advantages.
Hey, remember in book one when Brom came up with that cockamamie plan for him and Eragon to impersonate the slaves? Why don't Eragon and Roran do that now?
no subject
Date: 2025-07-05 10:46 am (UTC)And somehow Eragon and Roran are so stupid they don't even figure out that it's the Razzles they worship. I mean they're only leaving OFFERINGS for them. Instead, the High Priest has to spell it out for Eragon later on.
Yeah, even if the ritual didn't make it clear, the slaves should establish it beyond doubt, since they know that the Ra'zac will be coming for the slaves! It makes them look incredibly incurious, which I really don't like as a reader; I want to know more about what's going on!
I think that's exactly it. Describing everything as much as possible has now become his first priority, all the time. It's as if he feels like he'll lose control of things somehow if he doesn't pin down every last little detail.
And he's at his worst with that in this book (see the scene where they meet Varaug, where we get an exhaustive description of the room before anything happens), though it does still appear in the recent books. I think that he wants to get the scene-setting out of the way first and doesn't realise that spreading it throughout the scene gives a considerably more fluent result.
Personally, I think it's just laziness.
Yeah, that would probably be it. (We do get some details from the speech, of course, but not nearly enough to understand what their "Bregnir" is, or why they "abstain" from 144... which is quite a pity.)
Don't they even have they/them pronouns in book for? Or did Paolini go for "it"? I think it's the last, ugh.
Yep, Paolini went with "it", because he presumably wanted to make the Priest look as bad as possible, and I really hate it.
In Paolini Land there's no such thing as infections. That's why Nausea has DIRTY BANDAGES put back on over her wounds and nothing comes of it.
Indeed... And I get that taking infection into account could disrupt what he wants with the characters, but then maybe he shouldn't have everyone get wounded so often.
Heck, for all we know those slaves are volunteers.
Yeah, if they've been in Dras-Leona for a while, they might well be part of the cult, too, and this would be a great honour.
Heck, if it can cut through multiple bones that easily, it must be an eversharp blade just like (ugh) Tinkledeath.
I hadn't thought of that, but now that you say it, it really has to!
The whole thing was hopelessly contrived, let's face it.
And I complained more than a little about just how contrived it was, too!
Hey, remember in book one when Brom came up with that cockamamie plan for him and Eragon to impersonate the slaves? Why don't Eragon and Roran do that now?
That wouldn't exactly be a bad idea... but we do learn that the slaves are dead the next morning, which would mean that they had to fight the Ra'zac in the middle of the night, with all the attendant problems. It would work better than in Eragon, but I still think it would be foolish.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-05 12:00 pm (UTC)It's like Paotagonists just aren't interested in anything (unless you count randomly staring at shiny things, which is incredibly weird).
It's still there in book four but it's definitely at its worst here. Every time we change location, CUE THE LIST!
If anyone's interested, here's how I handle it. If we're entering a new location and it's a calm situation, no danger, the POV character isn't upset or stressed out or anything like that - then yes, the POV character is going to take a look around so we get a description of what they notice. And note the last part; depending on who they are, what they're doing, what their frame of mind is, they're going to notice different things. Like... I don't know, random example: someone enters a room they haven't been in before and they're feeling really really tired. So what's their focus going to be? Oh great, there's a couch here! Let's go sit down and get comfy! Are they looking for something specific like that? Are they thirsty and keeping an eye out for a source of drinks? On their guard and checking the corners and exits?
But if this is an action scene or some other highly fraught situation, they're not going to have the headspace to be doing something like that. Instead their focus will be on where the most immediate threat is, where to take cover, is there a weapon they can grab?
So say a character who knows how to fight enters a room and someone is there pointing a gun at them. They aren't going to stand there admiring the etchings on the walls. No, they're going to duck behind the nearest bit of cover if there is any, so they can get out of the firing line. First priority: their own safety. Second priority: escaping or fighting back, so now they'll be looking for the safest exist or the nearest weapon they can use. Beyond that, SCREW what else might be in the room. They're in danger so they don't fucking care about anything else. This isn't a pleasant trip to the art gallery; it's a life or death situation, and they're running on instinct and adrenaline.
There, I hope that helps!
Like come on, a guy chasing after some rogue spellcasters in the middle of a battle is NOT going to be looking at the paintings. He's not even going to notice Lady Lorana all that much if she's obviously not a threat. That's not how people's mind work. I doubt even a robot would react like this.
Which is more of him dropping in random lore which will never be mentioned again. It's the laziest worldbuilding shortcut I've ever seen.
WOW that's disgusting.
Wounds need to come with consequences instead of being treated like dramatic set dressing. Nausea doesn't even suffer any lasting damage from losing all that blood and repeatedly passing out.
It wouldn't be unprecedented either; in the real world people have volunteered for this sort of thing. I went to a really amazing exhibition about the ancient Incas - you know, the people who built Machu Picchu. The common misconception is that they sacrificed screaming victims en masse (as seen in that movie Apocalypto.) I believed it myself before I went to that exhibition.
In fact, the sacrifice would be a member of the nobility, who would fight in single combat against another noble. The loser would become the sacrifice (which was done in private, witnessed only by other nobles, not in public in front of a screaming crowd of zealots). The "victim" died willingly, because they believed that whoever was sacrificed would go to live with the gods. So it was more like a divine ascension than anything else. And who wouldn't be happy and grateful for that?
It literally popped into my head while I was typing! And why is the blade shaped like a dragon's wing? Does that mean anything? It sounds like it should have.
As well you should have, as my grandfather used to say!
No less foolish than what they do instead, really. It's actually mentioned briefly that it's apparently the Lethrblaka who eat them since they find the bones in their nest. Bah, whatever.
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Date: 2025-07-05 03:38 pm (UTC)That really is quite helpful and clearly-explained! I'm sure people will find it useful.
Which is more of him dropping in random lore which will never be mentioned again. It's the laziest worldbuilding shortcut I've ever seen.
I wouldn't even have expected him to attempt any worldbuilding, so it's something...
Wounds need to come with consequences instead of being treated like dramatic set dressing. Nausea doesn't even suffer any lasting damage from losing all that blood and repeatedly passing out.
With her, he does make an attempt, by having her supposedly be too weak to go into battle during the rest of this book... but not too weak to keep manipulating everyone, which her injuries should be interfering with, too. If she nearly fell into a coma after the trial, that's really not a joke, and it would be affecting everything about her!
sacrifice
That's certainly interesting, and I can absolutely see why people would want that! And, while I didn't subscribe to that misconception, it's always nice to know more!
It literally popped into my head while I was typing! And why is the blade shaped like a dragon's wing? Does that mean anything? It sounds like it should have.
I think that's because dragons were a go-to example for Paolini? We certainly haven't had any examples of their wings being "scalloped", after all.
No less foolish than what they do instead, really. It's actually mentioned briefly that it's apparently the Lethrblaka who eat them since they find the bones in their nest. Bah, whatever.
Well, we do have this:
...but that makes little sense. We don't have any mention of something like a bulging stomach with the Ra'zac, which there ought to be if they've eaten the two slaves by themselves (because the bodies have to go somewhere) and they don't seem to be slow they way I might expect them to be if they'd eaten heavily (and I wonder if they could even do that, given that their exoskeletons limit how much their internal organs can expand). Sure, there are several bones, but that's enough for a limb at most, not for an entire skeleton... which makes it much more likely that the Lethrblakya ate them.
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Date: 2025-07-06 01:04 am (UTC)I have to remember that I'm here to share useful advice on how not to be a crap writer, as well as going off at crap writers. 😅
Exactly, and as the leader she shouldn't be going into battle anyway!
At least when he's not obsessively comparing everything to various weapons, usually swords. Or rocks, of course.
The Razzles are human-sized so them eating a human apiece would put them in a damn food coma at the very least! But if they did, why are the bones there? Did they get together with their parents for a little birthday picnic?
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Date: 2025-07-06 10:44 am (UTC)Oh, I'm prone to forgetting that myself, too, so no problem, and I do like getting to read advice!
Exactly, and as the leader she shouldn't be going into battle anyway!
Especially since I don't think she's named a successor at this point; her dying would most probably create a crisis in the Varden.
The Razzles are human-sized so them eating a human apiece would put them in a damn food coma at the very least! But if they did, why are the bones there? Did they get together with their parents for a little birthday picnic?
Hmmm, it's presumably where the Ra'zac eat the slaves, though they'd presumably need help from the Lethrblakya to get up here, which makes me wonder why they bother with that. I also wonder why they haven't bothered to clear out all these bones; even if the nest won't be used, it seems like it would be rather inconvenient to walk on. I get the strong impression that Paolini went with something that would sound bad (lots of bones, so lots of dead slaves), and didn't think it through at all.
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Date: 2025-07-06 11:13 am (UTC)And I like giving it! I enjoy it plus it makes me feel helpful.
She actually has by this point told Eragon he is in charge if anything happens to her, and that would cause a crisis all by itself, considering! (No idea if she consulted or informed anybody else).
Yeah, it's dumb. Real meat eaters clear out their nests and such.
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Date: 2025-07-06 11:09 am (UTC)I just remembered I was going to mention this - Ungwatsi is a language spoken by the bushmen of Namibia that uses clicks, and then we've got the whistle language of the Canary Islands for another example of using "less conventional" noises to talk to each other. Fascinating stuff! Not sure if there's a language that specifically uses hisses, but humans can hiss. I even figured out how to do it from the back of the throat to better impersonate a snake.
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Date: 2025-07-06 12:12 pm (UTC)Hmmm, it seems Ungwatsi was specifically invented for The Gods Must Be Crazy, but there's lots of languages that do (primarily the Khoisan languages, but also languages in contact with them), like Zulu and Xhosa to name some of the larger ones.
And yeah, whistled languages are certainly a thing (and go beyond just Silbo). (I don't think I'd put that in the same category as clicks, though, since clicks with the usual way of talking, and whistled language doesn't.)
As for hisses, I'm not sure? Those sounds would often overlap with the common "s" sounds, I think (it does for me, at least). I'd also be interested in just how you make that hiss "from the back of the throat" and how that sounds differently from an ordinary one.
For my general point, I think I phrased that rather badly; I didn't mean to say that humans can't produce clicks or hisses, I just wondered, given that the Ra'zac are clearly not human, if they might make those sounds in such a way that they can't be reproduced all that well by humans.
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Date: 2025-07-06 12:48 pm (UTC)Wait, what?! Wow, that article I read was super misleading.
What happened was that I noticed most people hiss using their tongues so it sounds kinda slobbery. I also noticed that snakes don't use their tongues to hiss. Instead, the sound seems to come from the throat. So I tried doing the same thing by constricting my throat and pushing the air out from the back of my tongue without the tongue itself moving at all and it sounded a lot more authentic, at least to my ear. It's kind of hard to explain - a professional singer could definitely explain it better, because in singing you can sing from the throat or from the gut and a whole bunch of other technical stuff I don't really understand.
Ah, okay, this is a much better way of looking at it. A "proper" snake hiss isn't you making a drawn-out "ss" sound through your teeth or sticking your tongue out. It's an exhalation first and foremost, which is probably why snakes often puff out their throats to do it.
I actually have an interesting example of something like this! In the Dark Griffin series by K.J.Taylor, the language of griffins is spoken in a way humans wouldn't usually speak. Since griffins don't have lips, their words are all sounds produced in the chest or throat, and punctuated by beak clicks. Humans speak a modified version in order to communicate with them, which is slower, and beak clicks are substituted with clicking the teeth. I thought that was pretty clever.
(It's a moot point anyway; we all know Paolini would never be that creative).
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Date: 2025-07-06 03:16 pm (UTC)Wait, what?! Wow, that article I read was super misleading.
Then I'm happy to have provided you with some more accurate stuff! (Or it might be a real language given another name; if so, I didn't find anything on it on the web.)
hissing
Oh, that helps a lot! I don't think I can do that myself just yet, but I do get the general idea of it. As for snakes... from what I see, it seems that puffing up is unrelated to hissing, though hissing is indeed just an exhalations, as you say.
Dark Griffin
That does sound clever, and it does seem like thought went into that, so kudos to Taylor!
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Date: 2025-07-07 01:56 am (UTC)Seems what they did was edit in extra clicks to whatever language it was they were actually speaking. I really enjoyed those movies as a kid, by the way. :p
She's a painfully underrated and under-appreciated author if you ask me. Not perfect by any means, but her stories are well thought out and tightly plotted and unlike a lot of bestsellers she can actually write characters who feel like people. Sadly, methinks being a woman hasn't done her any favours in the dudebro dominated epic fantasy genre.
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Date: 2025-07-08 01:19 am (UTC)That depends on what you define as an "ordinary hiss". Voiceless fricatives can be articulated pretty much anywhere in the mouth or upper throat.
A hiss with the back of the throat could be, in human terms, a glottal or epiglottal fricative
Alternatively, you could approximate an aspirated open back rounded vowel, like /ɒʰː/, but for me that makes more of a choking or gurgling sound rather than a hiss.
For a contrast, a human emulating a cat's hiss would be making something like a voiceless velar fricative, placing the back of the tongue near the soft palate. (like the ch in "loch Ness"). Although I think a true cat hiss would be somewhere halfway between velar and uvular
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Date: 2025-07-08 08:18 am (UTC)Thank you for looking all of that up! I'd never given much thought to this, so it's nice to know more.
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Date: 2025-07-08 01:36 am (UTC)Fun fact about click consonants, the only known language outside of southern and eastern Africa was Demiin, a ceremonial language in Northern Australia, used for initiations.
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Date: 2025-07-04 07:13 pm (UTC)It is absolutely possible to describe a structure in ways that make it legitimately ominous and frightening (my personal go-to example for this with evil lairs in fantasy is Barad-dur - we only see it briefly from a distance, but it's such a fantastically ominous presence when we do). This... is not that.
Even more description as they reach a random boulder that hasn’t been mentioned before. The High Priest starts chanting, except for some damn reason they’re referred to as a “shaman”; a title which if I’m not mistaken will not be used ever again in connection to this cult and doesn’t fit at all.
So, I actually took a class on shamanism as a cross-cultural phenomenon as an undergrad, and I still remember some of it. First off, "shaman" is not a synonym for "priest" - they're actually generally considered completely different kinds of religious professionals. A priest is primarily concerned with leading rituals and/or transmitting doctrine, and is usually part of a religious establishment in some way; shamans are people who mediate directly between the human world and the spiritual world and often exist outside the bounds of ordinary society even when they're very respected (and they're not always!). This guy is clearly a priest, not a shaman. But "shaman" also has connotations of indigeneity and, frankly, "primitivity" that, especially in this context, with these characters... yikes. The implications here are not great.
Also count me in as someone who thinks this religion makes no sense, because Paolini clearly hasn't put much thought into what it's supposed to actually be. What we see here is more like the sort of thing I'd expect from some sort of extremis cult that, again, operates outside the bounds of mainstream society... but they're also the dominant religion of a major city and have a big shiny cathedral and everything? Like, it's certainly not impossible to square that circle (off the top of my head, this is an "inner circle" mystery-cult type ritual of the type that most laypeople in this religion will never see or even know about) but I don't think Paolini thought that through; I think he just got a grab-bag of "evil religion" tropes without stopping to think of how they fit together, what these people actually believe, how they practice, what does this religion look like on the ground, what are its rituals for, what do the clergy do, etc.
Frankly, there's probably a lot more to be said on religion in fantasy, and how it seems like religion by American authors especially often seems to boil down to a weird mix of Catholic and Protestant tropes and to have a very Evangelical understanding of what religion is or what it's for even if you staple a bunch of other trappings on top of it, which always makes me want to tear out my hair in frustration. And also the tendency to portray the resulting melange as somehow being what all religion everywhere is fundamentally about, and it'll probably be evil (unless the author has a preferred religion, often some sort of equally shallow sparkly pseudo-paganism *glares at Bradley and Douglass*). And that's not even getting into some of the related tropes I'm getting increasingly tired of, like the pervasive idea that people literally create and shape their own gods by their belief (which I think fundamentally misstates how the vast majority of people ever have understood the relationship between the human and the divine) or having Christianity and/or Islam equivalents with no Judaism equivalent to go along with them (fun fact, trying to find alternate origins for Christianity that cut it completely away from Judaism was something 19th century antisemitic scholars really loved trying to do! It's not great when people end up inadvertently(?) repeating that!). And so on.
I really could write a lot more on this; don't have the time to do it now, alas. Maybe someday. EDIT: Depending on what I end up sporking after Scrolls of the Ancients (I'm planning to let my readers vote, probably starting in early October if the world hasn't ended by then) I might have the occasion to talk more about it.
Oh look, some possible enby representation. Figures it’d be in the form of an evil depraved monster who deliberately mutilated themselves. Yeah, that’s a real good look, isn’t it?
I would not trust Paolini to handle any trans/enby/etc. representation well. Probably not the very worst author for it (I think I'm sporking some who'd be worse at the moment...) but definitely near the bottom.
Eragon gets a bit excited too despite himself, because it’s apparently woken “some primal and brutish part of him”. Yeah, that would be your bloodlust and violent tendencies which have been on full display for some time now. You’re still in no position to be pointing fingers and making moral judgements, you nasty little bastard.
And now we're back to "this religion is coded as being 'primitive' and that's bad" yaaay. Also, yes, Paolini, now would be a great chance to actually show us the priest's sermon to both give us more of a sense of what the cult is about and why they're dangerous and need to be fought. Because all I can picture from this is the high priest is chanting nothing but random gibberish with everyone nodding encouragingly along, which... glossolalia is a real religious practice? Not generally evil, though.
Um, what line? You two idiots are peasants. You’re not nobles, let alone royalty. If your line dies out, so fucking what? There’ll be a few less sociopaths in the country, big deal. On top of that Eragon also informs us that he’s disowned Murtagh as a brother. Because, you know, he really cares about his friends and family and Murtagh totally deserved that because… um…
You know, I once read a theory that Garrow is actually an impoverished noble, not a genuine peasant. It might explain some things about his general attitude, and why he has what seems like a big country house for the time period despite being poor. Doubt Paolini meant it that way, though.
So in other words they’re letting these guys die for no reason other than their own personal convenience. Don’t you just want to, I don’t know, name your kids after these two?
Heh, I could see Wigg doing this. Or Elminster. Though Elminster would probably just defeat the Ra'zac and Lethrblaka effortlessly to show he could, then Galby himself would show up and trip and break his neck or something, and the rest of the cycle would be spent of random encounters with minor villains we've maybe heard mentioned once before;)
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Date: 2025-07-05 08:58 am (UTC)They really aren't, and it just gets worse when you know the Urgals have shamans (because of course they fucking do).
We don't even know anything about their actual doctrine (and never will). All we get is...
...this. And exactly, it makes no sense as an actual working religion, and especially one with this large of a following including the ruler of the city.
At least when I wrote in a religion that practises human sacrifice we know why they do it! They literally believe their god will die unless they sacrifice someone at certain times of the year.
God, he's absolutely going to try it anyway, isn't he? He did after all say he was going to write about "real world issues" in his stupid Fractalverse, and we've already had a token lesbian couple and more token minorities. The token trans and/or enby person is bound to crop up sooner or later. (But probably no asexuals because we don't exist).
Oh yeah, once upon a time someone started a rewrite where that was the case. It didn't get very far but it was definitely quite a popular headcanon.
Like why TF did Garrow know how to read?
🤣🤣🤣
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Date: 2025-07-06 12:39 am (UTC)And religious traditions that practiced human sacrifice and/or self-mortification have totally been a thing IRL! They just, as in your example, had actual reasons they did it (and if you're dealing with a setting where the gods are a very real and active presence, "your god(s) want it" can be a perfectly workable reason! Historically "trying to figure out what the gods want and how to give it to them" is a very common thing!) and unfortunately Paolini has shown little understanding of religion in general, and certainly doesn't seem to have put much thought into this one.
God, he's absolutely going to try it anyway, isn't he? He did after all say he was going to write about "real world issues" in his stupid Fractalverse, and we've already had a token lesbian couple and more token minorities. The token trans and/or enby person is bound to crop up sooner or later. (But probably no asexuals because we don't exist).
Yeah, that's what I was thinking of as well. Which means that in addition to representation that would likely be clumsy and shallow at best (I've seen it said that it's much harder for a cis person to understand what it's like to be trans than it is for, say, a straight person to understand what it's like to be gay, and I'd be inclined to tentatively agree, and Paolini has hardly shown great ability to get inside the mindsets of people significantly different from himself), the Fractalverse itself has so far been one of the least interesting SF settings I think I've ever encountered.
Like why TF did Garrow know how to read?
Something I've had stressed in some of my graduate courses (my area is actually religious studies, and my particular interests involve a lot of looking at ancients texts) is that in a pre-printing press world, written sources are functionally always elite perspectives - not only because literacy was largely the domain of (often particular segments of) the upper classes, but because it was such a rare skill that even if you grab Joe Average Peasant off his farm and give him a crash course in reading and writing, you've still given him access to sources of knowledge that 90% or more of people in his society won't have, and that's going to fundamentally change his perspective!
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Date: 2025-07-06 11:04 am (UTC)This reminds me of the time I asked a Jewish friend hey, is there an explanation as to why you're not allowed to eat pork? The answer was nope. It's just "Because god says so" and that's the only reason needed.
He really doesn't seem to understand why people feel the need for it in their lives, other than shallow lip service about being reunited with dead loved ones. I myself haven't ever really felt the need for religious faith in my own life, but if I did I know what I'd be hoping to get from it, and that's the sense that there's more to this existence of ours than just surviving day after day and eventually dying.
I'd say you're likely right on the money there. As a cis person I haven't the faintest idea what it feels like to know you aren't what the body you were born into makes you appear to be. I've had to draw on accounts from trans people when I've written trans characters myself (it seems it worked; I showed one of my works that had a trans lady in it to a real trans lady, who immediately connected with the character above all the rest. We all know Paolini wouldn't even do the showing part because he always thinks he's automatically right).
Ugh, tell me about it. It's so flat and boring and empty! I mean ye gods! When I wrote those spitefics I had to make up a bunch of stuff more or less from scratch because there was nothing in canon worth revisiting!
Oh yeah, absolutely, plus books were super slow and expensive to make back then, of course (I'm also making this comment for the benefit of anyone who might be reading this exchange; you probably already know this stuff!). What was one thing that completely changed the old social order in the UK? People becoming literate and going to university. If you keep the people ignorant, then you control what is and is not true and making them do your bidding - or at least, not argue with you because they don't know any better - is super easy.
Controlling education and literacy is FAR more dangerous a tool than a lot of people realise. I note that Eragon is only "allowed" to read books that are specifically given to him, and before that he wasn't allowed to read period. Even though Brom could have taught him if Garrow wouldn't, and had plenty of books just lying around (what the hell even happened to those? Surely someone looted the guy's house in the end; those books would've been enough to make the person selling them rich).
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Date: 2025-07-04 10:30 pm (UTC)About that Helgrind religion ... I wonder if Paolini is a massive fan of Papa Roach and his favourite song is Last Resort
Seriously, I don't understand the Helgrind cult he come up with. How self-mutilation means spiritually ? The more you cut parts of your own body, the better chances to go in heaven and being forgiven by their gods ? Whats the symbolization to drink blood ? Does the suffering brings virtue to the populace ? How the cult was created in the first place (ecological, plague, political) ?
I haven't read Br... Bri.... Bsr... Book Three (And I'm not going to!), and this cult feels like stupid, moron and pointless, only to drive home Paolini's point : Religion Bad. The Pope got pnwed, bitch!
I grow up and I live in a secular society, and I never thought (maybe during my dumbass teenage years) that religion is bad. I'd like to know what Chris's perspective to what makes a religion bad.
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Date: 2025-07-05 09:09 am (UTC)Ooh, nice song!
We're just not given enough information to be able to figure it out at all, and I think it's pretty obvious he just wanted to throw in every "evil cult" cliché he could come up with and then called it a day.
Seems to me this is hime showing his disdain for religion because he's the kind of atheist who thinks he's just way too smart to fall for that crap. Which is pretty damn funny because his protagonists keep acting like they're in a cult anyway.
Same. I went through an insufferable atheist phase as a teenager, but that was it. Mostly I just really don't care as long as you keep it to yourself.
Because oh, you have to think for yourself or others will deceive you for their own ends! I mean that is what he put in there, after all. While blissfully unaware of the fact that Eragon doesn't think for himself and always believes what some authority figure tells him without ever questioning it.
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Date: 2025-07-07 12:56 am (UTC)I have always said this about the series: In Eragon, Paolini was primarily writing for himself. He admitted in early interviews that they only reason he wrote it at all was sheer boredom. But then he got professionally published, with contracts and deadlines and expectations and fans, and became so painfully self-conscious of his writing that he lost all sense of personality or style in his writing.
But then by Inheritance he'd stopped caring about trying to impress fans, because he saw that they were too easily impressed regardless of the effort he put in.
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Date: 2025-07-07 01:47 am (UTC)That's exactly what this is: PAINFULLY self-conscious. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some imposter syndrome going on too; a friend who was part of his inner circle at the time says that at the time he was writing this he seemed extremely shellshocked and bewildered by somehow ending up famous, and that he was talking about not wanting to write it any more.
And he's got my sympathies; when I first started doing conventions and such I was not at all emotionally prepared for it and certainly nowhere near resilient as I needed to be; an older author made a snide remark directed at me during a panel and I instantly burst into tears.
Yeah, that was when the "I do not want to write this series any more" sentiments REALLY started to come through loud and clear. Though when he broke away to finally write something new he was allegedly really passionate about... I guess by then his bad writing habits from trying too hard and then just not caring any more had gotten far too ingrained.