The Inheritance Cycle 2: Eldest
Author: Christopher Paolini Genre: Fantasy Year of Publication: 2005 Pages: 704
Writing: 2/10 Plot: 1/10 Characters: 1/10 Creativity: 2/10
Overall: 1.5/10
This was so much worse…
I really wanted to like this series, but I have a strong feeling that it’s going to get worse from here. Eldest, the second entry in The Inheritance Cycle is hands-down one of the worst fantasy books I’ve read in a while. Not THE worst, but one of the worst. It is way WAY too long, nothing happens for 80% of the book, there is zero character development, there’s barely any plot, the worldbuilding is boring af, and the writing is so much worse than the first one!
The Plot: Eragon and Saphira go to the Elf Kingdom to learn stuff from an older dragon rider. Meanwhile, Roran, his cousin, leads his village out of their ruined home to safety, and Nasuada, the rebel leader, is doing whatever she can to help the rebellion. That’s it. This book should’ve been cut down to 300 pages. There is absolutely no reason why this needed to be 704 pages! Nothing happens for the majority of the book! It’s mostly Eragon f*cking around and doing nothing that is actually important to the plot. Roran’s chapters are so boring, meandering, and predictable that I skipped them completely. It took way too long for him to lead his village away from the Ra’zac. Why did these bumpkins actually think they could defend their home from flying, man-eating beetle monsters that specialize in killing humans? It took until page 266 for the Carvahall villagers to finally decide to leave their doomed home after so many of them died because of their stubbornness. They should’ve never fought back in the first place! As soon as they saw the massive force just outside of their home, they should’ve dipped! Then we have Nasuada and I‘ll be honest, I like Nasuada. She’s the only character in this whole book that I actually like because she has a real personality, she’s smart, and she’s actually doing stuff, unlike Eragon who sits around for chapters on end studying damn ants.
The Writing: Holy crap it’s so much worse! The amount of pointless, useless tiring exposition is immense. All of the characters speak in Purple Prose, the language where one speaks a lot of words, but actually says very little. As I said in the last review, dialogue is very important to me so whenever I see bad dialogue it takes me out of the story. Every dialogue scene was a test of will and patience because holy crap! Every character (EVERY SINGLE ONE) talks in riddles. They will say full paragraphs when they only need to say one or two sentences to get their points across. And don’t even get me started on the thesaurus words! Thesaurus words are obscure weird words that no one uses and can actually break flow and immersion in a story. “Amerlioate” is just one of these words out of many that took me out of the story. Amerlioate means “to become better; to make something less painful; to improve". In context, Paolini uses it to refer to Eragon improving his outlook on a bad situation. Amerlioate is a good college word, but it’s not a word you would use… at all. Why not use “amend,” a word that doesn’t make you look like a pretentious try-hard and won’t force your audience to look it up in order to understand what you’re even trying to say. There are plenty of these thesaurus words all throughout the book.
Purple prose, flowery writing that says/adds very little to the story, is rampant not just in the dialogue, but in the regular prose. There are times when Paolini fills up his pages with stupid bullsh*t that adds nothing to the plot. One egregious example is in the chapter, “The Secret Life of Ants.” Here, Eragon’s teacher, Oromis tells him to meditate on the land, so Eragon mediates and focuses on a colony of ants. Three entire pages are about these stupid ants. It’s written in a way that’s supposed to be profound and beautiful, but it’s not. I could care less. This section pisses me off because Paolini would much rather give us three pages about ants, instead of giving us character development! He would dedicate two whole pages to explain how dwarves make their bows, but doesn’t show Saphira learning about dragon history. Do we ever get to see Glaedr, the ancient dragon, training Saphira about the ways of their ancestors? Do we ever get to see him help her discover her parentage? Do we ever get to see her performing arial combat moves that Glaedr supposedly taught her? Nope. Not at all. We are TOLD that Saphira learned all of this, but we never get to SEE any of this interesting stuff. I’m reading the book because I love dragons. I want to see dragons doing stuff! Saphira doesn’t get to do sh*t! Not “on page” anyway. No, no instead we get to see Eragon embarrass himself in front of Arya, we get see him meditate on ants for pages on end, we get see him shave (because that’s important), we get to see him get into inane middleschooler arguments about morality with his teacher, we get to see him basically turn into an elf, but do we ever see Saphira doing anything at all? NO! Hey, didja wanna know that elves don’t have pubic hair? No? Well, here ya go!
“Going to the stream by the house, they quickly disrobed. Eragon surrepetitiously watched the elf, curious as to what he looked like without his clothes. Oromis was very thin, yet his muscles were perfectly defined, etched under his skin with the hard lines of a woodcut. No hair grew upon his chest or legs, not even around his groin…”
Page 289
Eragon just sneaking a peek at his teacher’s d*ck. What is this? Why is this here? Why would you write this? We already knew up till this point that elves don’t have body hair. We didn’t need to know that his balls are hairless.
“…etched under his skin with the hard lines of a woodcut.”
What? He has rock-hard abs? Is that what you’re trying to say, Paolini? Speaking of weird metaphors and similies, let’s dig into that major issue. Because, hoo boy, there are so many stupid lines in this garbage.
“Approaching were Nasuada- slippers flashing beneath her dress like mice darting from a hole-…”
Page 80
WHAT? What does that even mean? Are her slippers darting away from her? Why is this even here? Why write this? What does this add? If anything, it adds a weird simile to an already huge pile of weird similies.
“…They were met on the ground by Islandzadi arrayed in a mantle of ruffled swan feathers, which were like winter snow heaped upon a cardinal’s breast.”
Page 243
What are you trying to describe Paolini?! That her gaudy swan get-up flows over her gracefully? Mantles are capes that flow down someones back. So it’s not falling on her like how snow falls on a bird. Islandzadi has black hair so comparing her to a bright red cardinal is just strange. Why can’t you just say “it flowed down behind her gracefully”? What is this??
“At the head of the assembly stood a white pavilion that sheltered a throne of knotted roots. Queen Islandzadi sat upon it. She was as beautiful as an autumn sunset, proud and imperious, with dark eyebrows slanted like upraised wings, lips as bright and red as holly berries, and midnight hair bound under a diamond diadem.”
Page 224
Ugh… Okay first.
“She was as beautiful as an autumn sunset, proud and imperious…”
Is she orange? Whenever I think of autumn, I picture orange and yellow. So… is she orange??? You could’ve just kept, “she was as beautiful as a sunset” which is still cringe but not as cringey as what is written. Also, how is a sunset proud and imperious? By having those words right next to the simile, it makes it seems that Paolini is further describing how she resembles the sunset, so I ask “how is a sunset imperious?” It’s just odd and weirdly written.
“…with dark eyebrows slanted like upraised wings, lips as bright and red as holly berries…”
“Slanted like upraised wings…”
I guess her eyebrows are raised high on her face and curved out. What an awful simile.
I cannot stress enough how much Paolini would describe stupid stuff that doesn’t need to be described. We don’t need to know how Eragon shaves. We don’t need to know that the elves are atheists. We don’t need to know why the elves don’t eat meat. We don’t need to know what kind of stretches Riders do. None of this stuff is important. Instead of showing us scenes of Eragon and Oromis stretching, how about we get scenes of them practicing aerial combat moves with their dragons? We how about we get a scene of just the dragons? What about a sword fighting scene? Anything cool? Why write about the boring sh*t and not the interesting stuff? Like, we just breeze past the cool sh*t!
What we really need is character development! Eragon and company don’t reach the elf kingdom until page 219! You wanna know what happens before that? Nothing. Eragon and co travel for way too damn long and none of them develop. None of them get closer to each other, they don’t learn anything about each other. Nothing. Orik and Arya explain their races’ customs, but we could’ve learned about those customs just from how they react to things, instead of being TOLD this boring bullsh*t. I didn’t need to know about the dwarves’ religion. None of that matters to the plot! If the world was truly interesting then I wouldn’t complain, BUT IT’S NOT! None of the characters grow and change! The only character that somewhat changes is Nasuada, my favorite! The writing is atrocious!!
Characters: Same verse as the first. They’re all boring and not worth talking about. The only character I liked was Nasuada because she actually does stuff that’s interesting. I will also admit that I like Elva because her whole ordeal is so freaky. I’ll give Paolini that. Elva is a cool character. But other than those two, everyone else sucks. Barely any of them have real personalities. Orik, Oromis, and Arya are just exposition fairies and not real characters with their own stories going on in the background. Basically, all the characters are accessories for Eragon, especially Saphira, arguably the most important character in the entire story because she kicks it off. But too bad she’s literally just Eragon’s flying pet and nothing more.
The Worldbuilding: Oh my god it’s worse. It’s so much worse. Instead of letting Eragon (ie. the reader) explore the world while on his journey, he is instead exposited to by every character he comes into contact with. The world is not interesting. I’m sorry Eragon fans but it’s not cool. It’s not unique. It’s not original. As I said in the last review, this world is bland! Nothing about it stands out! With the exception of the Ra’zac, all the fantasy creatures are bland, cookie-cutter stereotypes. The only cool part- the part that could’ve made The Inheritance Cycle truly stand on its own- the damn dragons, are not explored! Paolini goes out of his way to NOT tell us anything about the dragon’s lore, customs, powers, history, NOTHING! There is NOTHING intriguing about Alagaesia whatsoever.
I already explained my dislike of the magic system in the last review and nothing has changed here. Just say the magic words correctly and magic happens. So lame…
This was my book once I was done with it. So many tabs…
I’ve never marked books before because I never felt like I had to, but this book was so bad that I went out and bought some stickers to mark areas that bothered me. I ran out of blue stickers (blue= bad lines, bad sections) by the end.
Recommendation: No one. This was horrible.
