Characters make use of such ridiculous anachronisms as “partook” and “forsooth.” Even as a realistic old English dialect, the dialogue falls short, as anyone who has read Shakespeare can probably tell you. In addition, the dialogue is still contrived. Instead he uses his favored vague adjectives and cliches to describe things, sometimes forcing as many as five adjectives into a single terrified sentence, begging for mercy. The great novelist Chekhov once said, “In the particular is contained the universal.” Paolini’s descriptions are void of those little details of description that stick with us. Paragraph long descriptions of common place things in the environment still fail to breathe life into Paolini’s lifeless Middle Earth. But the writing really hasn’t improved, and the book is still filled with guffaw inducing lines. He also has a professional editor to help him. Writing style is something you undoubtedly can improve with time, and Paolini has had ten years to do it. This was an area I had really expected Paolini to make great headway in. Paolini’s signature purple prose and poor descriptors fill close to a third of the pages. Eldest and Brisingr lack the eventfulness, and so they fall flat.Īctually, there aren’t even enough random events to fill 784 pages. Perhaps the reason Eragon was the most tolerable book of the three is that it stuck to the formulaic but comfortable Star Wars plot. But since the Inheritance Cycle has always been about its Bildungsroman epic fantasy quest, when the book stops supplying this, it stops supplying at all. In books by masters, such as Anna Karenina we can tolerate hundreds of pages of characters sitting around and talking. I only comment on the need of plot, because Paolini’s characters still struggle to be sympathetic. Each page leads you to wonder whether the story will go anywhere. It leaves the reader wondering what the point was. After helping the hermit prepare a meal, and listening to a convoluted rant, Eragon runs away. For example, Eragon randomly meets a hermit magician in an abandoned keep… and then, nothing. The problem is, you get the feeling this book was just a collection of scenes cobbled together. Now, the book doesn’t contain a lot of plot, but it sure has a lot of scenes. Further, one of them involves the dwarves, who just aren’t very interesting. Approximately 1 for every 155 pages of this colossal beast. Wikipedia’s plot summary) deems a mere 5 events worthy of summary. But more than that the plot points are predictable, the book suffers from a far larger problem. Just about every fan who has ever posted on the Inheritance Forums predicted this, showing just how inventive the series is. Spoilers ahoy: the only plot twist in the book is that Brom is Eragon’s father. Your expectations are always wrong, when it comes to the Inheritance Cycle, unless you were expecting an obvious plot twist. So you might expect that, given this amount of time, the book is pretty good. It is interesting to note that this book took three years to publish. Nor will he receive any exceptions from the War Veterans Card, since he is not a war veteran. I would like to note that at his point, he is 25, and not 15, so he will be allowed no exceptions from the Age Card. Brisingr, or, The Seven Promises of Eragon Shadeslayer and Saphira Bjartskular is the third book in the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini.
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