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.
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: 2025-07-04 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;)