I started writing my first book when I was sixteen. Seems like ages ago now, both in years and maturity. More has happened to me since then than I could possibly describe. Suffice to say, nowadays my writing is almost as different from its old self as I am.
So it was with a certain degree of understanding that I took to Christopher Paolini's The Inheritance Cycle series, in which he, by means of his parents, self-published the first book, Eregon, when he was but 19 years old. In this I truly do have to commend him. He took Eregon around to over a hundred local libraries and schools and spoke about writing while simultaneously providing copies of his book, and eventually, a major publisher took it up, and away he went. The second book, Eldest, came out three years later (2005), and Brisingr was another 3 years after that (2008), meaning that odds are good that the fourth and final book in the series will arrive sometime in the Fall of 2011, though that's purely a guess.
So what is The Inheritance Cycle about, exactly? A young farmboy, Eregon, discovers a dragon egg in the forest near his home and soon must flee the soldiers of the evil King Galbatorix, who have burned down his farm and killed his uncle. He is led to a secret base of rebels by the old storyteller Brom, who, as it turns out, was actually a Dragon Rider himself before Galbatorix and the "Foresworn" killed his dragon and practically ALL of the other Riders in existence. During his journey, Eregon must learn magic and what it means to be a rider if he wants to have any chance of toppling the evil king, for he is the last of the free Riders, and if he falls, King Galbatorix will surely take over the world and enslave all humanity (and elvenkind and dwarvenkind and probably hobbits, too, though as of the end of the third book I haven't technically heard the word "hobbit" mentioned).
Does this sound a little familiar? Let me put it this way: I very nearly called this post "Star Wars: Attack of the Cloned Plotline". Just change around a few names (Eregon-Luke, Galbatorix-Emperor Palpatine, Dragon Rider-Jedi, Brom-Obi-Wan) and you're good to go. And is it really such a coincidence that Paolini has released all of his books so far 3 years apart... just like the Star Wars movies?
Inheritance Episode IV: A New Hope
I made the great mistake of purchasing the audio book version of Eregon, for at the time I frequently drove between Dallas, my hometown, and Austin, my college town, which is 3 hours and 15 minutes south along I35, and while I love my music selection, I needed something a bit more stimulating to keep me awake for the drive. So it was in Waco, Temple, Troy (minus the horses), Hillsboro, Belton, and my personal favorite, Waxahachie, that I first heard Paolini's initial foray into the wide world of novels. I say that buying the audio book was a mistake for two reasons: 1) it was much more expensive than the book, and 2) the narrator was pretty atrocious. His "voice" for Saphira, Eregon's dragon, is a baritone impression of Yoda, and his voice for Solembum - a werecat whose purpose still eludes me - actually IS an impression of Yoda. Thinking about it still makes me cringe, and I understand that the audio tape for Eldest wasn't any better.
As for the book itself, it's a mixed bag. Eregon is a young adult adventure of middling quality, full of lengthy history lessons of the world of Alagasia and very, very predictable stereotypes. I don't entirely mean that as a bad thing; it is what it is. This is a story written by a young man not yet old enough to drink; the advantage here is that he is close to the same age as his inexperienced protagonist; the disadvantage is the very same fact. You get the sense that Paolini not only was influnced by J.R.R. Tolkien but wanted to be him, but, as he was only 19 and had never before written a full novel, there was no chance in hell that he would fully pull it off, But believe me, he tried. There are random moments of poetics that don't flow as smoothly as they should; I understand the usefulness of a well-placed simile or metaphor, but when every single tear or body of water is described as a "diamond" or "pearl" or some other crystalline entity, the imagery falters. His attempts at lyrical brilliance just fall short; frankly, each and every passage that contains one would have been better without it.
I really mean it when I say that these books are the plot of Star Wars plopped down, like fresh buffalo chips, into the Lord of the Rings universe. Alagasia may as well be called Middle-earth (for instance, Middle-earth has the Haradrim Desert. Alagasia? The Hadarac Desert). The Dragon Riders even carried special swords with blades to match the color of their dragon, which sounds suspiciously like lightsabers to me (especially when you have a blue dragon, as Eregon does). Dragon Riders can use magic, which is a huge focal point for the entire series, and this is a good thing, because Paolini's magical concepts are generally far better than his plot.
Inheritance Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
It's clear in these books that the actual storyline of The Inheritance Cycle is little more than a vehicle for Paolini's imagination: the use and history of magic, dozens of pointless legends and tales of old, and an endless stream of rituals. Characters constantly talk Eregon's ear off, which is okay for him, because he's "always asking questions", as Brom puts it, but it wears on you quickly.
Eldest picks up right after the finale of Eregon, during which the rebel base (Farthen-Dur, which I call Yavin IV) comes under attack by Urgals (Uruk-Hai from LOTR). The good guys won, of course, though at considerable cost. But when one of the primary leaders suddenly gets whacked hardly five pages into the book, things begin to change (that particular scene reminded me of the second Mortal Kombat movie, where Johnny Cage gets his neck broken by Shao Kahn about 3 minutes in. Hated it then, and I hated this, too).
Eldest is easily the weakest of the series (though, optimist that I am, I'm hopeful about Book 4). In Eldest, you receive chapters from the point of view of two other characters, Roran - Eregon's cousin - and Nasuada - the leader of the Varden (aka Rebel Alliance). This was a good move on Paolini's part, partially because certain plot points wouldn't have made sense without their views, and partially because Eregon's plotline in Eldest is, shall we say, less than exciting. He leaves the Varden and journeys to the Elves to train with an old, hidden Dragon and his Rider, Yoda. Actually, it's Oromis, but you get the idea. Meanwhile Roran, his characterless love interest Katrina, and their village come under attack by the Empire, while Nasuada experiences the difficulties of leadership. I was disappointed to learn that Roran never got encased in carbonite, meaning that Paolini only has one book left to make his Star Wars analogy complete.
It's hard to say much about plot because there is so little of it after the end of Eregon. Where Eregon spent most of its time in human cities, Eldest is almost entirely set in Dwarven and Elven lands, and believe me, Eregon makes it a point to learn as much as he can, whether you want to hear it or not. Human cities didn't require pages and pages of history and explanation. Dwarven and Elven cities, apparently, did. A fundamental shift happens between Eregon and Eldest; it's as if Paolini changed sub-genres of fantasy from young-adult adventure to... I don't know, exactly. Young-adult high fantasy, perhaps, only I feel like that gives it too much credit. For some reason, characters begin to speak in a more eloquent manner than they did in Eregon. This is particularly obvious with the Carvahall villagers and Roran, who all speak as though written by a 15-year-old told to imitate Shakespeare without over-using "thou" and "thee" and other lovely relics from the English language's past. But then, out of nowhere, you get one of the most mind-boggling moments I've yet experienced in a book, where one villager, when told that they must use a few barges as a means of escape, exclaims, "Barges! We don't want no stinking barges!" I wish I were joking.
Anyway, the first half of Eldest is pretty painful. Eregon takes over 250 pages to reach the Elves and begin his training with Yoda Rider, and Roran uses that time to get pissed off at everybody and receive similar sentiments before, out of nowhere, dishing out a stirring speech that rouses the entire village into action. The second half picks up only slightly, with Eregon training (you'll learn more about magic than you ever wanted) and Roran fleeing to the Varden with 300 villagers in tow.
Though the two protagonists had always been as brothers to each other, the circumstances of Eldest begin to push them wider and wider apart on the morality scale, as Eregon becomes a vegetarian with the Elves while Roran - oh noes! - has to kill a few innocent guards in a town to ensure the survival of his own. The separation here is predictable, but not terribly played out.
The biggest problem with Eldest, though, is its romance, or, to be more technically accurate, its lack thereof. For reasons unknown, Eregon continually pursues Arwen - excuse me, Arya - even though the elf makes it abundantly clear that she wants nothing to do with him romantically. What baffled me was that Paolini never gives me, as the reader, a good reason to care for Arya myself. Sure she can kick ass, and I've little doubt that she's very pretty, but I just can't figure out why Eregon would care so much for her. I just don't see it. Roran has the same problem: he is utterly obsessed with Katrina (though thankfully she loves him back, unlike Arya), but the reader is given absolutely no reason to feel the same way. It's like the author just expects us to love these women because his characters do and leaves it at that. Katrina does nothing but fuel Roran's actions and look pretty; when she finally gets kidnapped (as we all knew she would) I was actually relieved because I knew that now the plot was going to do something. Sure enough, Roran & company packed up and left town in practically the next chapter.
I wouldn't exactly have so much of a problem with this if it didn't play such an integral part of the narrative: Roran thinks of nothing but Katrina and the number of men he's killed (he literally keeps count until he kills so many that he loses track). His obsession with Katrina is later remarked as legendary by other characters, but without Katrina herself showing some personality, he may as well be obsessed over a dog, or a basketball, that the Empire has taken from him. Perhaps Paolini meant for him to be a sort of kickass, rugged, manly man like so many action heroes of the 1980's. The author tries to play him gruff, but when he still speaks and thinks with this awkward high-fantasy attempt at speech that has a tendency to go on for paragraphs at a time, "gruff" ceases to be an apt term, if it ever was to begin with. If Roran's meant to be an ideal of manliness, then culture as we know it may be in for some rough times.
Inheritance Episode VI: Return of the Dragon Riders... Part 1
I debated whether to continue reading the series after Eldest, which concluded with a plot twist so irritating, so utterly jaw-dropping, that I actually recall muttering, "Seriously? Seriously" when I read it. Let's just say that for all of Eldest I feared a "Luke, I am your father" moment, for you know so little about Eregon's proper parentage all this time, and here at the end of Eldest: The Empire Strikes Back, I got it. I can't particularly tell you why I bothered to read Brisingr. Maybe it was because my wife owns it and hasn't read it yet (making this practically the first book EVER that I've read before her).
Mercifully, Brisingr isn't as bad as Eldest, which is kind of like saying that dying by falling off a cliff doesn't sound as bad as drowning in a sewer. In Brisingr, both Eregon and Nasuada (who, aside from Saphira, seems to be the only female character worth reading about) are almost perpetually bogged down in politics, meaning that while you aren't treated to quite so many pointless legends and myths, you are instead forced to slog through endless debates by people who have the uncanny ability to make their points in at least three different ways before letting someone else speak. Maybe it's a cultural thing in Alagasia. Believe me, though, the legends and myths are still there. I've never encountered a book series with so many characters who love the sounds of their own voices before, and I've read all of the Song of Fire and Ice books to date. Everyone discusses every possible course of action before taking it, but the only one who really sees any sort of direct fighting is Roran, and even then he suffers through some mindnumbingly predictable plotlines, mostly in the form of "here's your new leader, Roran. He's a jerk, and he'll invariably order you to do something that will get everyone killed, so you'll have to choose between insubordination and death." "Cake or death," I can hear Eddie Izzard saying. "Um, cake please." Roran's scene of insubordination involves an action sequence so unbelievable that, again, I very nearly put the book down and gave up on the whole affair. It affirmed my suspicion that the author views Roran as some kind of ubermench.
Or, as my friend who wishes to be known as "Professor Goodtimes" sometimes refers to himself as, the "manliest of all mans".
Essentially, Roran kills so many people that he fights atop a hill of corpses that grows and grows until all enemies are defeated. In all, he slays something like 197 (one of the other soldiers in his troop aparently had nothing better to do but sit there and count the number of morons who aparently didn't know how to shoot a friggen bow). It was stupid and amazingly unbelievable, and this is from a guy who plays Dynasty Warriors religiously.
The best part of the book actually came from a few chapters told from a whole new point of view, which I won't spoil for those of you who wish to go against my will and read these books anyway. Those of you who fit in this category, though, beware: there is a chapter, called "Mind Over Metal", which captures the very essence of what I'm trying to tell you about Paolini's writing. In it, Eregon forges a sword. That's the whole chapter. He forges a sword. That doesn't sound too bad, you say? Try this: the chapter is 16 pages long. That's about 6000 words, or 3 full-length essays for your average university. As I read, I kept waiting for the punchline, for something relevant to happen, but it never came. When I finally finished the chapter, I felt like I'd been mugged. Paolini had just stolen 16 pages-worth of my life, and I wanted them back, but there's no way. I can't turn back time and undo this atrocity on my life that Paolini has caused. I read somewhere that the chapter was inspired by something called The Craft of the Japanese Sword. I say it was inspired by the little-known book - written by Paolini, I shouldn't wonder - called How to Lose Your Audience.
Yet, I'll probably read Book 4 when it comes out. It's like watching a train wreck, or a soap opera, or Catwoman. I know it's terrible, but I just can't help myself. Read these books only if you really, REALLY have nothing better to do and have somehow read every single other book in the store, even Moby Dick and those crapfest prequel novels to the Dragon Age videogames. I won't say that the books of The Inheritance Cycle are some of the worst books that I've ever read, nor even that they are the worst fantasy novels (the winner there goes to this vampire... thing... that I encountered back in 2004. I promise I'm not talking about Twilight; it's just that I don't remember the name and probably burned the book after I read it). But know that if you're looking for, oh I don't know, plot, then try something else. Anything.
Oh, and the character Angela the Herbalist should be shot. Immediately. She's an "eccentric" person who talks to Eregon at considerable length about her theory that toads (or frogs; I can't remember/care which) don't actually exist. You constantly look for some semblance of truth in the random things she says, but I really don't think it's there. I think most of what she says is the author's meager attempt at humor, like the "We don't want no stinking barges!" line (which is on page 413 of the 2005 Knopf hardback, if you don't believe me). I hated her so much that I actually had a hard time being around a friend of mine named Angela for fear that I would take my anger out on her.
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