Julia Wilson
Character: 3/5
Plot: 2/5
Prose: 3/5 (I always forget how much Paolini loves making people tttrot~)
OVERALL: 2.5/5
Let it be known that, just like Eragon, Murtagh is not very bright. It must be from Mum’s side of the family.
This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, but I’ve had mixed feelings on the whole affair since the announcement. Like many, the Inheritance Cycle was my all-time favourite series from when I was about nine to somewhere in my early teens, and Murtagh the character left such a huge impression on me as a kid that his archetype (the angsty, angry, yet tragic bad boy loner with paternal issues) is still one of my favourite things ever. I drew dragons (specifically Saphira) for years, the first ever book I finished writing was Eragon fan fic, and you betcha that I have Inheritance, the chapter from Eldest in which Murtagh reveals all to Eragon, memorised, and it’s still my most favourite and revisited moment in the series. Hell, I was so obsessed that Eragon lore and plot and what have you will probably be burned into my brain even when I’m 108 years old. That being said, I think the magic for the series started fading in my eyes with the release of Inheritance, which I didn’t love, and my admiration for Paolini as a writer dulled with his other novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I thought was pretty … meh; it took me five weeks to finish and the only thing I could and can really say about it was, “yup, that was indeed a book I read”.
So I was excited to revisit my OG bad boy, but I was worried about Paolini’s ability to deliver a *good book*. And mixed feelings is a good way to put it now that I’ve finished.
Firstly, I adored getting to see Murtagh’s, and his dragon Thorn’s, psyches, seventeen years after being introduced to them and deciding that these two would be my favourite poor little meow meows/blorbos (or whatever the kids say nowadays). My throat did all the closing up and my heart ached whenever I read the passages about their experiences in Urû’baen at the hands of Galbatorix and his court. A shining beacon throughout the novel was in watching the two of them struggling with and addressing the trauma they experienced, most notable in Thorn’s fear of confined spaces and the ugly consequences that follow.
Yet, as a personal gripe, I’m sad that the Murtagh we saw at the end of Eldest seems to have only appeared once. The character who gleefully played the part of villain and didn’t give one damn about stomping on others, was swapped with someone who didn’t have a choice about 95% of this, my dudes. Seriously, go back and have a look at Murtagh on the Burning Plains. That guy and the guy we see in the flashback sections of this book aren’t the same person. Following on this, I wanted Murtagh to be a book about him and Thorn navigating a post-Galbatorix landscape where they must deal with the fact that they’ve committed these atrocities. I wanted the main conflict to be centred around the fact that people don’t trust Murtagh and Thorn. I wanted a character-driven piece of storytelling.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t what I got. The book is mostly plot-driven, and this plot has not left me a happy camper, as it stumbles into the age old sequel-problem of oh shit, we need to escalate the stakes. So it’s an action adventure book, it’s a book with all the swords and gore and magician duels of the previous books. It’s a winning formula, but, this time around, not for me.
Firstly, I want to talk about the structure of this book, as it was … a Choice.
Paolini is what I call a set-piece writer, in that you think of the “set-pieces” of a story (monster fight here, magic trap there, etc.) and write around those. It’s worked well in the past for him, but this really runs the risk of bloating stuff out because look at my set-piece, everyone!
The first third of this book is set in the city of Gil’ead, which we’ve been made familiar with from the original series, and it shakes out like a side-quest. And by that I mean, the main plot felt like it was barred from going forward because Murtagh had to complete a quest line for the werecat Carabel before she took away the roadblock of learning more about the witch Murtagh originally came to see her about. I spent the time waiting to get back to what we were supposed to be doing, which is never how you want an audience to feel.
Yeah, Paolini is still not the best plotter in the world. But, whatever. I’m sure my mild annoyances at how often he pulls out “and THIS was a thing all along!” are just a me thing (the Eldunarya, the Dauthdaert, and now the random general advice Umaroth gave Murtagh at the end of Inheritance has been changed into a dire warning upon which a plot hinges).
(Fucking dragon eggs being stashed away after being told for three books that Saphira, Thorn, and Fírnen’s eggs were the only ones in existence left fourteen-year-old me so infuriated because God forbid Galbatorix’s reign have lasting consequences.)
(ELDUNARYA STRENGTH SMACKDOWN BEING THE FINAL BOSS FIGHT WITH MOUSTACHE TWIRLING GALBY I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT STILL MAD ABOUT IT TWELVE YEARS LATER AAAAAH —)
Following their side-quest completion at Gil’ead, Murtagh and Thorn can finally engage with the plot and fly off the northern edge of the map, arriving in the village of Nal Gorgoth. Nal Gorgoth is very mysterious, very cult-like, and home to the witch we’ve been chasing for 51% of the book — the half-elf, half-human Bachel.
Bachel is weird and elusive, and after Murtagh remains staggeringly oblivious for some time about how she wants to use him and Thorn to take control of the world on behalf of her cult’s deity to wash it anew, she reveals that Galbatorix, after losing his original dragon, was groomed by her to be the downfall of the Riders.
w h a t
I mentioned before the instinct of sequels to escalate the stakes. The best way to explain this is: the country was in dangerous in the first instalment, so in order to make the second more exciting, it’s now the world that’s in danger! Galbatorix being manipulated by Bachel and the Dreamers for the sake of Azlagûr (basically Alagaësia’s Cthulhu) has the same vibes of “Snoke was actually just an extension of the Emperor’s power”. I’ve always thought Galby was a bit of a shit villain, and this isn’t helping.
Bachel enslaves Murtagh and Thorn to her using magic when they refuse to co-operate, and the rest of the book involves exploring that trauma of Murtagh and Thorn’s re-enslavement, and the final clash as they take down the Cthulhu cultists … for today.
But the central driving force of this plot is the characters being mind-bogglingly dumb. I was so, so tired by it.
At the beginning of the book, during the Muckmaw/Gil’ead side quest (which, in my humble opinion, is a great Pokémon name), Murtagh is tasked with obtaining one of Glaedr’s scales from his and Oromis’s graves to use as bait for Muckmaw. This grave is protected by both enchantments and those devoted to the memories of the Riders, making the task of getting this scale not particularly easy, but my immediate question which is never addressed is … why can’t Murtagh use one of Thorn’s scales as bait? It’s never said, by the rules established within the plot, that this scale needs to be Glaedr’s — only that they need “a dragon scale”, and Murtagh just happens to be one of three people in the world who have easy access to dragon scales whenever they please. There was a whole subsection of Inheritance where Saphira laments about her scales shedding! Just take one of Thorn’s shed scales!
Later, when Murtagh and Thorn arrive in Nal Gorgoth, they have a moment, on the day they arrive, that they realise this could be a place the Riders of old feared after being told by one of the old dragons do not ever, ever go there. Do they 1) retreat before they put their feet through it entirely and ask Umaroth for more information, or 2) go on ahead and decide to confront the danger themselves without knowledge because heroics. If you picked two, you’d be correct. I don’t see why deeper reasoning could be in place for them to stay if it’s important to the plot that they be in Nal Gorgoth. Instead of them choosing to stay, get them stuck there. Maybe Murtagh and Thorn try to flee but find they magically get turned around; maybe they can’t leave because they fear Bachel will retaliate (before she ends up doing just that almost ten chapters later); maybe Murtagh’s prideful nature comes to a head and he and Thorn argue about getting help from Eragon, which has previously been established as something Murtagh’s reluctant to do because he’s a stubborn git; it would also make for interesting conflict between Murtagh and Thorn. Just anything other than “hurp, guess we gotta stay here! For the safety of the hatchlings Eragon is guarding!” Dudes, if that’s your motivation, it would be smarter to just. Leave. And let Umaroth and Eragon know about this creepy fucken place you found. I have now been screaming at the book for 360 pages.
And it’s not just in Murtagh that this stupidity is present, but the underlying situation when it comes, for me, to Galbatorix and how he treated Murtagh and Thorn like personal playthings rather than powerful assets to help keep himself in power. The more the book went on about Galbatorix and his treatment of Murtagh always being bad from the start, as much as it twisted my heart, I mourned that it kept Murtagh back from a layer of nuance that would have been greatly appreciated (where is Eldest Murtagh? I ask yet again). What would it have been like if he grew up in an environment that wasn’t wholly antagonistic to him? What if he helped Galbatorix, with a certain amount of freedom, in keeping his Empire intact? And then, when he’s truly faced with a choice about keeping the familiar, comfortable, and “they’re not good, but they’re not that bad” empire, vs. the “I have to do what’s right, and that’s uncomfortable and scary” new world, is it an agonising, selfishly rooted decision?
So overall, I just wanted more depth. I wanted a (Red Rising spoilers) Cassius situation for Murtagh. Again, Eldest Murtagh. He had confidence in his bad decisions and an anti-hero edge to him. I wanted that, but the Murtagh we’ve had in Inheritance, and now in Murtagh, is an unquestionable good guy.
Zzz.
Criticisms from the original books that have been addressed and I am super happy about!
- The Empire’s soldiers aren’t all just comically evil anymore! Hooray! Care is taken to point out that many of these soldiers were drafted against their wishes, and Murtagh talks about how he had a kind of camaraderie with them (as much as there can be when common soldiers are breaking bread with Dragon Riders), and how he feels sad about their deaths and wonders where the survivors are.
- Murtagh is also, unlike Eragon, not ridiculously bloodthirsty. Sure, he is dangerous, but he’s not going about punching people so hard their hearts stop and coming away with the conclusion of “huh, I should change my knuckles to kill people even harder”, or “man, I wish I could kill three more people for my literal murder mountain so I can have an even headcount of two hundred”. Murtagh and Eragon may be equally stupid, but at least Murtagh (mostly) escaped the psychopath gene that Eragon and Roran have.
However …
- Murtagh and Thorn’s relationship feels very much the same as Eragon and Saphira’s in that the Rider is definitely in charge and the dragon is, at best, a flying sidekick. Very frustrating. There are nice scenes between Murtagh and Thorn which show them as equals in the relationship, don’t get me wrong, and I love how they’re in each other’s corners, but Murtagh’s the one making the big decisions and calling the shots, with Thorn always going along with what Murtagh wants to do. So I’m not really sold on this being an equal partnership.
- We also return to the weirdly worded pseudo-medieval speak, and I’m still not a fan. Pls Chris. And whilst we’re on the subject of dialogue, can we stop with the written accents please. It’s so frustrating to read these “not-quite-Cockney-but-aping-on-something-vaguely-East-London” accents and I wish the trend would die. Just stop.
- Paolini still cannot write poetry and verse. I automatically skip these now because they’re the reading equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
- There is still a looot of filler going on here. Flying around filler, random musings filler, random worldbuilding filler, descriptions that are so lengthy that they become, for me at least, ineffective. This book could have easily been 100 pages shorter if the filler was either cut or strictly edited down.
Nevertheless, despite my criticisms of the book, I look forward to reading the next one and more about my girlies Murtagh and Nasuada and when they finally kiss. KISS, DAMMIT! We were robbed at the end.
Character: 3/5
Plot: 2/5
Prose: 3/5 (I always forget how much Paolini loves making people tttrot~)
OVERALL: 2.5/5
Let it be known that, just like Eragon, Murtagh is not very bright. It must be from Mum’s side of the family.
This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, but I’ve had mixed feelings on the whole affair since the announcement. Like many, the Inheritance Cycle was my all-time favourite series from when I was about nine to somewhere in my early teens, and Murtagh the character left such a huge impression on me as a kid that his archetype (the angsty, angry, yet tragic bad boy loner with paternal issues) is still one of my favourite things ever. I drew dragons (specifically Saphira) for years, the first ever book I finished writing was Eragon fan fic, and you betcha that I have Inheritance, the chapter from Eldest in which Murtagh reveals all to Eragon, memorised, and it’s still my most favourite and revisited moment in the series. Hell, I was so obsessed that Eragon lore and plot and what have you will probably be burned into my brain even when I’m 108 years old. That being said, I think the magic for the series started fading in my eyes with the release of Inheritance, which I didn’t love, and my admiration for Paolini as a writer dulled with his other novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I thought was pretty … meh; it took me five weeks to finish and the only thing I could and can really say about it was, “yup, that was indeed a book I read”.
So I was excited to revisit my OG bad boy, but I was worried about Paolini’s ability to deliver a *good book*. And mixed feelings is a good way to put it now that I’ve finished.
Firstly, I adored getting to see Murtagh’s, and his dragon Thorn’s, psyches, seventeen years after being introduced to them and deciding that these two would be my favourite poor little meow meows/blorbos (or whatever the kids say nowadays). My throat did all the closing up and my heart ached whenever I read the passages about their experiences in Urû’baen at the hands of Galbatorix and his court. A shining beacon throughout the novel was in watching the two of them struggling with and addressing the trauma they experienced, most notable in Thorn’s fear of confined spaces and the ugly consequences that follow.
Yet, as a personal gripe, I’m sad that the Murtagh we saw at the end of Eldest seems to have only appeared once. The character who gleefully played the part of villain and didn’t give one damn about stomping on others, was swapped with someone who didn’t have a choice about 95% of this, my dudes. Seriously, go back and have a look at Murtagh on the Burning Plains. That guy and the guy we see in the flashback sections of this book aren’t the same person. Following on this, I wanted Murtagh to be a book about him and Thorn navigating a post-Galbatorix landscape where they must deal with the fact that they’ve committed these atrocities. I wanted the main conflict to be centred around the fact that people don’t trust Murtagh and Thorn. I wanted a character-driven piece of storytelling.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t what I got. The book is mostly plot-driven, and this plot has not left me a happy camper, as it stumbles into the age old sequel-problem of oh shit, we need to escalate the stakes. So it’s an action adventure book, it’s a book with all the swords and gore and magician duels of the previous books. It’s a winning formula, but, this time around, not for me.
Firstly, I want to talk about the structure of this book, as it was … a Choice.
Paolini is what I call a set-piece writer, in that you think of the “set-pieces” of a story (monster fight here, magic trap there, etc.) and write around those. It’s worked well in the past for him, but this really runs the risk of bloating stuff out because look at my set-piece, everyone!
The first third of this book is set in the city of Gil’ead, which we’ve been made familiar with from the original series, and it shakes out like a side-quest. And by that I mean, the main plot felt like it was barred from going forward because Murtagh had to complete a quest line for the werecat Carabel before she took away the roadblock of learning more about the witch Murtagh originally came to see her about. I spent the time waiting to get back to what we were supposed to be doing, which is never how you want an audience to feel.
Yeah, Paolini is still not the best plotter in the world. But, whatever. I’m sure my mild annoyances at how often he pulls out “and THIS was a thing all along!” are just a me thing (the Eldunarya, the Dauthdaert, and now the random general advice Umaroth gave Murtagh at the end of Inheritance has been changed into a dire warning upon which a plot hinges).
(Fucking dragon eggs being stashed away after being told for three books that Saphira, Thorn, and Fírnen’s eggs were the only ones in existence left fourteen-year-old me so infuriated because God forbid Galbatorix’s reign have lasting consequences.)
(ELDUNARYA STRENGTH SMACKDOWN BEING THE FINAL BOSS FIGHT WITH MOUSTACHE TWIRLING GALBY I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT STILL MAD ABOUT IT TWELVE YEARS LATER AAAAAH —)
Following their side-quest completion at Gil’ead, Murtagh and Thorn can finally engage with the plot and fly off the northern edge of the map, arriving in the village of Nal Gorgoth. Nal Gorgoth is very mysterious, very cult-like, and home to the witch we’ve been chasing for 51% of the book — the half-elf, half-human Bachel.
Bachel is weird and elusive, and after Murtagh remains staggeringly oblivious for some time about how she wants to use him and Thorn to take control of the world on behalf of her cult’s deity to wash it anew, she reveals that Galbatorix, after losing his original dragon, was groomed by her to be the downfall of the Riders.
w h a t
I mentioned before the instinct of sequels to escalate the stakes. The best way to explain this is: the country was in dangerous in the first instalment, so in order to make the second more exciting, it’s now the world that’s in danger! Galbatorix being manipulated by Bachel and the Dreamers for the sake of Azlagûr (basically Alagaësia’s Cthulhu) has the same vibes of “Snoke was actually just an extension of the Emperor’s power”. I’ve always thought Galby was a bit of a shit villain, and this isn’t helping.
Bachel enslaves Murtagh and Thorn to her using magic when they refuse to co-operate, and the rest of the book involves exploring that trauma of Murtagh and Thorn’s re-enslavement, and the final clash as they take down the Cthulhu cultists … for today.
But the central driving force of this plot is the characters being mind-bogglingly dumb. I was so, so tired by it.
At the beginning of the book, during the Muckmaw/Gil’ead side quest (which, in my humble opinion, is a great Pokémon name), Murtagh is tasked with obtaining one of Glaedr’s scales from his and Oromis’s graves to use as bait for Muckmaw. This grave is protected by both enchantments and those devoted to the memories of the Riders, making the task of getting this scale not particularly easy, but my immediate question which is never addressed is … why can’t Murtagh use one of Thorn’s scales as bait? It’s never said, by the rules established within the plot, that this scale needs to be Glaedr’s — only that they need “a dragon scale”, and Murtagh just happens to be one of three people in the world who have easy access to dragon scales whenever they please. There was a whole subsection of Inheritance where Saphira laments about her scales shedding! Just take one of Thorn’s shed scales!
Later, when Murtagh and Thorn arrive in Nal Gorgoth, they have a moment, on the day they arrive, that they realise this could be a place the Riders of old feared after being told by one of the old dragons do not ever, ever go there. Do they 1) retreat before they put their feet through it entirely and ask Umaroth for more information, or 2) go on ahead and decide to confront the danger themselves without knowledge because heroics. If you picked two, you’d be correct. I don’t see why deeper reasoning could be in place for them to stay if it’s important to the plot that they be in Nal Gorgoth. Instead of them choosing to stay, get them stuck there. Maybe Murtagh and Thorn try to flee but find they magically get turned around; maybe they can’t leave because they fear Bachel will retaliate (before she ends up doing just that almost ten chapters later); maybe Murtagh’s prideful nature comes to a head and he and Thorn argue about getting help from Eragon, which has previously been established as something Murtagh’s reluctant to do because he’s a stubborn git; it would also make for interesting conflict between Murtagh and Thorn. Just anything other than “hurp, guess we gotta stay here! For the safety of the hatchlings Eragon is guarding!” Dudes, if that’s your motivation, it would be smarter to just. Leave. And let Umaroth and Eragon know about this creepy fucken place you found. I have now been screaming at the book for 360 pages.
And it’s not just in Murtagh that this stupidity is present, but the underlying situation when it comes, for me, to Galbatorix and how he treated Murtagh and Thorn like personal playthings rather than powerful assets to help keep himself in power. The more the book went on about Galbatorix and his treatment of Murtagh always being bad from the start, as much as it twisted my heart, I mourned that it kept Murtagh back from a layer of nuance that would have been greatly appreciated (where is Eldest Murtagh? I ask yet again). What would it have been like if he grew up in an environment that wasn’t wholly antagonistic to him? What if he helped Galbatorix, with a certain amount of freedom, in keeping his Empire intact? And then, when he’s truly faced with a choice about keeping the familiar, comfortable, and “they’re not good, but they’re not that bad” empire, vs. the “I have to do what’s right, and that’s uncomfortable and scary” new world, is it an agonising, selfishly rooted decision?
So overall, I just wanted more depth. I wanted a (Red Rising spoilers) Cassius situation for Murtagh. Again, Eldest Murtagh. He had confidence in his bad decisions and an anti-hero edge to him. I wanted that, but the Murtagh we’ve had in Inheritance, and now in Murtagh, is an unquestionable good guy.
Zzz.
Criticisms from the original books that have been addressed and I am super happy about!
- The Empire’s soldiers aren’t all just comically evil anymore! Hooray! Care is taken to point out that many of these soldiers were drafted against their wishes, and Murtagh talks about how he had a kind of camaraderie with them (as much as there can be when common soldiers are breaking bread with Dragon Riders), and how he feels sad about their deaths and wonders where the survivors are.
- Murtagh is also, unlike Eragon, not ridiculously bloodthirsty. Sure, he is dangerous, but he’s not going about punching people so hard their hearts stop and coming away with the conclusion of “huh, I should change my knuckles to kill people even harder”, or “man, I wish I could kill three more people for my literal murder mountain so I can have an even headcount of two hundred”. Murtagh and Eragon may be equally stupid, but at least Murtagh (mostly) escaped the psychopath gene that Eragon and Roran have.
However …
- Murtagh and Thorn’s relationship feels very much the same as Eragon and Saphira’s in that the Rider is definitely in charge and the dragon is, at best, a flying sidekick. Very frustrating. There are nice scenes between Murtagh and Thorn which show them as equals in the relationship, don’t get me wrong, and I love how they’re in each other’s corners, but Murtagh’s the one making the big decisions and calling the shots, with Thorn always going along with what Murtagh wants to do. So I’m not really sold on this being an equal partnership.
- We also return to the weirdly worded pseudo-medieval speak, and I’m still not a fan. Pls Chris. And whilst we’re on the subject of dialogue, can we stop with the written accents please. It’s so frustrating to read these “not-quite-Cockney-but-aping-on-something-vaguely-East-London” accents and I wish the trend would die. Just stop.
- Paolini still cannot write poetry and verse. I automatically skip these now because they’re the reading equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
- There is still a looot of filler going on here. Flying around filler, random musings filler, random worldbuilding filler, descriptions that are so lengthy that they become, for me at least, ineffective. This book could have easily been 100 pages shorter if the filler was either cut or strictly edited down.
Nevertheless, despite my criticisms of the book, I look forward to reading the next one and more about my girlies Murtagh and Nasuada and when they finally kiss. KISS, DAMMIT! We were robbed at the end.