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antishurtugal_rebornThe next chapter remains with Ergy, currently riding back to his treehouse with Saphira. They do a mind-meld thingy and she senses his “tumultuous emotions”. Show don’t tell, Pao. She asks him what the problem is and he tells her about his “terrible crime” of cursing the kid. Saphira tells him oh well, never mind, and tries to change the subject, but he’s not interested so she withdraws “into a taciturn silence”. a) Put the thesaurus down, and b) “Taciturn” and “silent” mean basically the exact same thing, so this is redundant as well as overwritten.
Back at the treehouse Ergy sits down to eat while mentally tantruming about there not being any meat (boo friggin’ hoo). And then Arya shows up. Because she’s the love interest we get a big description of what she’s wearing, also her hair. She seems to have chilled out now she’s home again. She “glides” over to him and offers to give him the tour, which of course Ergy accepts. Saphira says she’s coming too, which pisses him off because he wants the perfect ice queen all to himself. Oh, so it’s not okay when she wasn’t paying attention to you before, but now there’s a problem. Spoiled brat.
The three of them stroll off into the forest, so cue descriptions of “gemlike” lanterns and trees and elves acting like the self-indulgent bastards they are. Some of them are literally just sitting there staring into space looking “peaceful”.
…yeah, these guys are definitely on something. At a guess I’d say LSD, or possibly magic mushrooms. Some of them are lazing around playing music. I feel like I’m reading about a hippie commune.
Ergs asks what elves do for jobs, and Arya says they don’t – they’re a bunch of unemployed losers who slob around doing whatever they want all day with absolutely no need to worry about food or money or paying the bills.
The elves are Paolini’s ideal race, by the way.
She adds that “Very little exists that we must strive for”. So that’s why they’re all so goddamn arrogant and pretentious. And useless. An actually good, virtuous people with that much power and free time would be actively using it to help other people, but not the elves. Fuck humans and dwarves and everyone else; we’ve got ours. We’ve officially gone from hippie commune to pampered trust fund babies.
Ideal race, remember.
Next up the three of them visit a house where an elf is busy working at a forge. Unlike the rest of them she actually looks old, and isn’t interested in Arya’s boring formalities. She also has an old raspy voice, which immediately put me in mind of a chronic smoker. Apparently she’s a recluse named Rhunon who doesn’t like company and complains about having to speak “this foul language”, presumably the AL. And she’s not interested in being introduced to Ergs, and says she’s not making him a sword. Finally a character with a goddamn personality. Rhunon is pretty much the only character in this thing who is able to grab my attention, which is a shame because the only actual role she’s going to play in the plot is breaking character in the next book in order to make the perfect sword for our entitled hero.
They show Rhunon Zar’roc, and she gets all nostalgic and says how it’s one of only four special rider swords left, and asks Ergy where he got it from. On learning he got it from Brom, she talks about how the guy once came to her asking for a new sword after losing his original one, and threw a fit when she said no and had to be “knock[ed] unconscious” by Oromis. Wow, how completely unnecessary.
After that she checks Saphira out, and cue some bad description as one of Saphira’s scales is referred to as “the translucent pebble”. Lolwhatnow? Rhunon tells Saphira she’s a nice shade of blue, unlike those ugly brown dragons. I have no idea why everyone in this series hates brown dragons, but there you go. Elitist bastards.
(On further consideration it's probably a holdover from Pern, in which the dragons are classed by colour and of which this series is a huge ripoff).
Eragon checks out some armour Rhunon has made, which we get a big load of description of, and he asks her about how she made it. In a spectacular piece of irony, Rhunon talks about how she does all her work by hand instead of using magic, because if you do everything the easy way it becomes meaningless, and how it’s the journey that matters and not the goal. Ironic because after the Blood Ex Machina scene in this book, Eragon will never have to meaningfully struggle for anything, ever again.
After that Rhunon tells them to get lost. My hero.
They leave and Arya tells Ergy about the Blood Oath thingy and how it’s only held once a century. Why only once a century if it’s such a big deal? Maybe it’s because elves live pretty much forever so after a while a year basically feels like a week.
(This is why as you get older it feels like Christmas comes earlier every year. Really true).
Next up Arya shows them the Menoa Tree, which isn’t actually hugely tall – just hugely wide. Hey, just like me. Ergy remembers the thing about looking under the Menoa tree for a weapon. He tells Arya about it, but doesn’t mention Angela’s stupid prophecy because it’s “personal” and also it might give it away to Arya that he’s attracted. Ugh.
Arya says werecats are unhelpful bastards but when they do decide to help you’d better listen. She’s never heard anything about a weapon under the tree, which back in the day I was sure would turn out to be Brom’s sword, and she doesn’t know what the Rock of Kuthian is.
Eragon instantly forgets all about it in favour of… looking at ants. What is with Eragon and his fascination with ants? It was in the first book too. He starts mentally probing at them, and then notices a really big mind in the vicinity – even bigger than “Oromis’ vast intellect”. Oromis has a vast intellect, huh? I guess that would explain why he dies like a complete idiot in the next book immediately after throwing a toddler tantrum.
Ergy figures out it’s the tree. As you would expect its thoughts move very slowly and it’s not interested in Eragon. Someone who’s not instantly obsessed with our hero, twice in one chapter? It must be a blue moon. He exclaims that the tree is intelligent, and Arya offers to tell her story. The short version is that there used to be an elf woman who lived “in the years of spice and wine”. Okay, where did Paolini rip that phrase from?
By the sound of it this lady was a grey asexual, because she got old without ever feeling the need to have a partner, but when one guy started flirting with her she changed her mind and became his girlfriend. But now comes some truly shocking information – the young man… was young!
NO WAY!
Seriously, was this thing edited by a chimpanzee? Who the hell thought "the young man was young" was in any way a sentence that should be included in a novel with any kind of serious intent?
The boyfriend turned out to be a total jerk and ditched her for a younger model. Given that this is supposed to be a culture that practices Free Love you wouldn’t think that’d be that much of a big deal, but our heroine went nuts and killed him (though not the new girlfriend, which was nice of her). That did nothing to cheer her up so she sang herself into the tree, and now keeps watch over the forest.
Ergy wonders if Arya told him that story by way of a “hint, hint”, and turns out to be correct when she says the whole murder thing happened because “they weren’t suited for each other.” Well and also the boyfriend was a cheating jerk. If you’re bored with your significant other you could at least have the decency to break up with them before you do the do with someone else.
The conversation that follows is actually pretty good, as Eragon asks the sorts of questions you’d expect him to ask, about where Arya lives and whether she has any siblings. When it turns out she’s an only child he asks why on earth they’d let the “queen-in-waiting” take such a dangerous job.
Arya responds to this with… racism and sexism! She flat-out says the job would be too dangerous for a human woman, emphasis on the “human”, because human women are “helpless”. Wow, fuck you. Eragon being Eragon, he doesn’t take offense at this or even react at all, and instead they just move on to talking about his day’s training with Oromis. Eragon says that Oromis “is quite thorough”, cue immature snickering, but talking about the day makes him get miserable again.
You know what? I was wrong earlier when I said Ergy just magically gets over the whole Elva thing. In this book at least he actually is dwelling on it and feeling bad and not wanting to talk about it. I hereby apologise to Paolini, who in this instance put in some effort and had his protagonist acknowledge a mistake and feel bad about it for more than two sentences. Alas, this sort of effort will not be consistently applied in the future.
Arya coaxes it out of him, then consoles him after he spills the beans. It’s a nice moment. Ergy wonders aloud what will happen to the kid, end chapter. Presumably in the next one we’ll find out exactly what happened to the kid, because it does indeed cut to the first Nasuada POV. But as Michael Ende would say, that is another story and shall be told another time.
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Date: 2019-06-02 09:14 am (UTC)This is one of those grey-area chapters, where things happen and details are revealed that advance the plot, but could still so easily be rolled into another chapter with no significant loss of substance.
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Date: 2019-06-02 09:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-02 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-02 10:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-03 01:56 am (UTC)Also this is before elves became immortal, yet this one woman managed to gain effective immortality by becoming a tree. Why didn't all the elves do that back then when they realized it was possible? The whole forest should be made up of elf corpses.
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Date: 2019-06-03 04:10 pm (UTC)Y'know, when you put it like that, I would actually love to see the results. I'd love it even more if after the elf successfully became the Menoa Tree, the other elves looked at each other and said "well, shit, that looks like fun!" and tried to treeify themselves as well.
And fail.
Horribly. In agony.
Permanently.
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Date: 2019-06-03 05:28 pm (UTC)plot intensifies now that's an exciting premise for a story.
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Date: 2019-06-03 04:52 pm (UTC)"Saphira?"
"Bugger of, Ergs, I'm fawning over my lust object."
later
"Ergs?"
"Bugger off Saphira, I'm fawning over my lust object."
The elves are Paolini’s ideal race, by the way.
At a guess, I'd say Paolini envisioned "the ideal race" as one where they didn't suffer any strife, nor had to struggle to survive, barring outside forces (i.e. Galby in this thought process). Whether anyone would agree with that vision of the ideal is another story entirely.
Maybe it’s because elves live pretty much forever so after a while a year basically feels like a week.
(This is why as you get older it feels like Christmas comes earlier every year. Really true).
An aside: the shorthand science on this is as you grow older, the years take up less percentage of your total lifetime. This affects your perception, making the oncoming years look shorter than they really are. In other words, a year is ten times longer to a five-year-old compared to someone who's five decades.
How long do you think a year would be to someone who's five centuries?
Given that this is supposed to be a culture that practices Free Love you wouldn’t think that’d be that much of a big deal, but our heroine went nuts and killed him (though not the new girlfriend, which was nice of her).
I actually had the impression that this was a LONG time before the elves became Pao-elves, and even if that wasn't the case, I don't believe that the elves "then" and the elves "now" had the "Free Love" thing going on. Not with pre Menoelf going ape-shit like that.
That did nothing to cheer her up so she sang herself into the tree, and now keeps watch over the forest.
It was more "OH SHIT I'M A MONSTER!" iirc.
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Date: 2019-06-04 12:18 am (UTC)The other, more recent idea is that as we age our brain needs to process less new information (because it's seen more things) and therefore spends less energy/time cataloguing the world and building memory pathways, which allows common details and regular/repeated events to blur together rather than each new day standing in sharp contrast to the last.
That one was doing the rounds of the pop science magazines only a few months ago, so it's still fairly new. As far as I recall the neurological evidence supports it.
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Date: 2019-06-04 12:57 am (UTC)...I was being sarcastic. ;-)
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Date: 2019-06-04 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-03 09:42 pm (UTC)This chapter is good by the standards of this book. Several different things happen. There is a semblance of characterization. And in the process, we get to listen to a story which ties into the background of the world. The story of the Menoa Tree gives us a sense of what the elves value since it is sacred. It tells us what kinds of stories they value.
If that was consistent with the rest of their culture as portrayed in this book it would be even better. But the story of the Menoa Tree provides a background to the world. It is what the story of Palancar should have been, an event with nothing to do with Eragon. One that provides elaboration on the background of the world. Now if they had just connected the story of the Menoa Tree with something else, it would be better.
I would have had the Menoa Tree woman fall in love with Palancar's father, who ended up making a political marriage instead of marrying her. He did this because his family didn't approve of a relationship with an elf. When she killed him, Palancar went on a roaring rampage of revenge and made an alliance with wild dragons. This caused an immense bloodletting that resulted in the decimation of both elven and human civilization.
This is why she sung herself into the tree.
The elves thus regard the Menoa Tree as a memorial of sorts. A living reminder of letting passions cloud your reason. It would also be one of their justifications for abandoning formal marriage. After all, it caused such absolute misery for all the races.
This would also relate to Eragon's storyline. After all, he desires a relationship with Arya and his chief stumbling block is that she is an elf and he a human.
What do you think?
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Date: 2019-06-04 01:00 am (UTC)You don't really have to - it's a pretty decent chapter with some decent characterisation and worldbuilding in it.
I like it! It would also make a LOT more sense than the BS about human riders being outlived by their elf significant others, given that human riders are, y'know... immortal too. How the hell did nobody spot that gaping plot hole?
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Date: 2019-06-04 01:18 am (UTC)The sad fact is that Eldest is such low quality, poorly paced book that even a mediocre chapter looks good in comparison to most. In a decent book, this chapter would be slightly below average.
I honestly do think that Paolini had the skeleton of a decent backstory in his story. If he'd just taken some time to connect and elaborate on it the book would have been much better. A narrative with context will always be better than a narrative without one.
Do you think I should write a fanfic based on this idea?
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Date: 2019-06-04 02:48 am (UTC)Yes please :D
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Date: 2019-06-04 05:18 pm (UTC)Do you think I should write a fanfic based on this idea?
Please do, that is an exellent idea
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Date: 2019-06-05 12:06 am (UTC)-Stuffsayer
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Date: 2019-09-18 03:38 pm (UTC)1. Elf society is dumb and a failure on psychology. Because when we had more free time, from technology making farming and labour easier, we began to concentrate on science and learning, learning why x happens and increasing the numbers of iliterate people, because we don't need to work as hard as before for food and housing. And in the end we do stuff like labour to stave off boredom. Because a grueling routine is better than staying at home doing practically nothing, especially since the internet currently doesn't exist.
2. The menoa tree breaks what little worldbuilding Paolini made. Double standard seems to also extend to stories too. Not to mention how twisted, and anti-human, it is for them to actually gather and revere the tree that committed murder for an affair, from a culture that practises free love. But does show Paolini viewpoint of "justice" like ergon.