Eldest (Inheritance Cycle #2) Book

"Is it better than Eragon??"

Lots of people have asked me if I liked Eldest better or thought it was a better book. Yes and no. The writing was more coherent and sounded less inexperienced, and some of the perspective changes made it easier to read. But if a writer doesn't get better on his second book or as he gets older, he's kind of a jerk, eh? But Chris was quite a bit more aware this time that he had an audience, that his book's arrival was being anticipated with bitten nails, whining, and drool. He therefore did even more of that language dress-up and song-and-dance, more of that irritating demonstration of his belief that the words themselves should be the art rather than the art being the story they describe.

Paolini appears to be convinced that talking in pseudo-archaic language is grand and epic rather than HOKEY AS HELL.

In talking about the novel's inconsistency with place names: Chris claims that all of Alagaësia's different areas are sorta mix-n-match because all the places were settled by different races. Umm . . . in real life, usually if that is the case then each race or culture has a name for each area, and depending on which language the map is in, you will see different names.

"While this is of great historical interest," he writes, "practically it often leads to confusion as to the correct pronunciation. Unfortunately, there are no set rules for the neophyte. The enthusiast is encouraged to study the source languages in order to master their true intricacies." The source languages? The ones that are in your head?? No one is convinced by this ramble that there is actually an alternate world where these languages are spoken. Odd how instead of doing his homework, Paolini makes up an excuse for why homework is not necessary in this instance.

And then he says this: "One more volume to go and we shall reach the end of this tale. One more manuscript of heartache, ecstasy, and perseverance. . . . One more codex of dreams." I'm going to die. Codex of dreams?? "Stay with me, if it please you, and let us see where this winding path will carry us, both in this world and in Alagaësia."

I'll tell you where it's going to lead us. Read The Hero's Journey, go watch Star Wars, study some Lord of the Rings and some obscure mythology, steal some words from ancient languages and pretend they're magic words, and read Story by Robert McKee and The Writer's Handbook, and then write a book ganking one or two aspects from all the other high fantasy you've read and liked. That's the formula. It should work for you too.

Instead of saying Murtagh and the Twins are "dead," the narration "sneakily" refers to them as "gone." That way, after the characters have lamented their kidnapping and apparent death, Paolini can rejoice in the fact that he tricked us into thinking they were dead, but then point and laugh when they reappear on the battlefield and say "HA, see I never SAID they were dead!" We know you didn't. As soon as they found no bodies, we knew they were coming back. This was not a surprise.

Saphira's magic powers. It's been said throughout the books so far that magic comes from dragons and whatnot, but that Saphira and other dragons don't really use it the same as elves and humans do. It's pointed out several times that the "rules" for dragons performing magic are not set--I suppose that's so that whatever Saphira wants to do, she can do, period.

Also, Saphira was the one who broke the Star Rose and pissed everyone off. But if she heals it, she'll be honored for "uncounted generations." Does this bother anyone else? I would think that the dwarves would pretty much reluctantly agree to tolerate her presence if she undid the damage she did and maybe kissed up to them for a few thousand years. I somehow doubt that she'd suddenly be a hero just because she's willing to clean up her own mess.

I think my BIGGEST problem is with the incoherent magic system.

A lot of people have either said this book is NOT predictable--which tells me they probably have never read another high fantasy book--or they make up a bunch of excuses why it's okay to be predictable because this is a basic story type. Sure, by all means, excuse it for all its faults because it is a hero "type" story. Which of course means that he should do the same things in the same order as every hero of myth and fantasy from Odysseus to Luke Skywalker.

A book should not be so based on a story "type" that it feels like it is following a template; every "revelation" in this book is more of a confirmation of a suspicion than an actual surprise.

BAD WRITING: NARRATION

- "For gray-eyed Destiny now weaves apace, the first resounding note of war echoes across the land." Or you could try to be a little more vague, please. And I think this needs to sound a little more like bad teenage poetry. No, really. Is there anything to be understood from calling Destiny "gray-eyed"? Do these words actually mean anything? If not, then why were they chosen?

- First line: "The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living." Eragon's walking along through a battlefield thinking this. Unless I really don't understand something, this sentence is an attempt to write romantically but actually does not say anything.

- Eragon's tear was described as "A small, glistening dome." I think I have discovered something. Christopher Paolini has never actually seen a tear before. And the trend continues in this book for there to be a single tear. Doesn't anyone actually cry, with buckets of tears and snot pouring out of their noses? I wanna see boogers and red eyes and wet cheeks and actual SORROW. Not a single tear. That's nothing but a mockery of sadness.

- Completely ridiculous simile: "Slippers flashing beneath her dress, like mice darting from a hole." First of all, why would you compare someone's feet to MICE?

- "The dawnless morning. . . . " Should I even say? Yes, I should. HOW IS IT MORNING IF THERE WAS NO DAWN? Why does he think this sounds cool? He is so obsessed with making things sound cool that he doesn't even think to himself, "Wait, this makes no sense. How is it a 'dawnless' morning?"

- "He closed his eyes and sank into the warm dusk that separates consciousness and sleep, where reality bends and sways to the winds of thought, and where creativity blossoms in its freedom from boundaries and all things are possible." I don't know. Don't you just want to, I don't know . . . DIE right now?

- Can you visualize this scene? "Katrina screamed again and jumped on the men, biting and clawing furiously. Her sharp nails furrowed their faces, drawing streams of blood that blinded the cursing soldiers." I cannot see this. At all. One woman--who might be somewhat tough but is not superhuman--is somehow biting and clawing . . . several men at once . . . to the point that they are all blinded by the blood that runs from the scratches she has caused. Oh, and they respond by standing there cursing, not, say, immobilizing her. I don't mean to be sexist, but surely it would take no more than two men to subdue a woman who is fighting with her frickin' fingernails. CP, the idea is to try to actually visualize this happening, and then THROW OUT SCENES THAT ARE STUPID.

- "Bright as a flaming sun." Call me weird, but are there any suns that aren't, oh, in flames? Could we have some similes here that don't forget that they are for description above and beyond sounding cool?

- "Hair as black as a forgotten pool." Being forgotten does not make water black. I bet there's tons of pools around that have been forgotten and nevertheless are not black. What exactly does this simile mean?

- "Silent as the night." Ever been in the night, Chris? It's pretty quiet in your room with your earplugs in, I guess. This is silly. I won't even go on with this one.

- As the book winds up to make its climax, there are all kinds of REALLY dramatic sentences that are so silly they just make me cringe. "Shall we dance, friend of my heart?" "That is the sound of our destiny." There is a time and a place for drama. But asking "shall we dance?" upon going into battle is one of the goofiest things I've heard in my life. This makes me wonder whether CP watches the movies that would be shown on MST3K and thinks the dialogue is smooth.

The parts that he's making "colorful" with zesty little words like "proclaimed" and "apologized" and "expectorated" are not the parts of the story that NEED to be colorful. They are middle school English attempts to make writing varied. What needs to be colorful is the storytelling, the descriptions, the dialogue. Not the permutations of "said." It's misplaced. That's why editors and publishers look at that as the hallmark of the amateur writer. Because it indicates a basic misunderstanding of the whole point of language. His problem is that he concentrates so much on making his prose elegant that he doesn't understand that prose's job is to be elegant enough to be invisible.

A quote from Paolini: "In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf."

Well . . . I suppose we can give him an A for effort. We definitely see the trying.

- And last but not least: The overused, horrific "you should be hit on the head by a troupe of 100 literature professors if you do this" literary device: HAVING THE VILLAIN EXPLAIN EVERYTHING IN THE END. And the fact that it was written in such a way that the author obviously thought having these characters charge in as the main villains of the story when everyone thought they were dead just adds insult to injury. This sort of writing just insults my intelligence. If you didn't see this coming or thought it was a revelation, please go find that aforementioned troupe of literature professors and let them hit you for a while. I'll join in.