So, I bet you’re all wondering why my first post in nearly three months is a book review. Well, the answer is because I wanted to branch out into a new form of media.
I love books, I love reading. Honest, I do. But there are those books out there that just make me want to pull my goddamn hair out in rage and scream “WHY, GOD, WHY?” as loud as I can.
So, without further adieu, we’re going to be looking at the first of these books, Christopher Paolini’s ‘Brisingr’.
To give you some background about Brisingr, it’s the third of four books in Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle. Apparently it was supposed to be the third and final book in the series, but Paolini realized that for some reason everything he’d written for the third book would be better if it was split into two parts. This basically means that Brisingr is an intermediate stage between Eldest, the second book, and the as-yet untitled fourth and final installment in the series.
Our story begins with Paolini recapping what happened in Eragon and Eldest (which, to be honest, isn’t really necessary for people who’ve read those two books before, but is apparently intended for people who are jumping in at Brisingr and oh god this makes my brain hurt why do you do this), and then jumping into the first chapter…which is Eragon and Roran bullshitting about what they’ve been up to since they last saw each other. They’ve flown to Dras-Leona to save Roran’s fiancee Katrina from the oh-so-evil cannibalistic Ra’zac (nothing more than humanoid bug things who turn into giant freaking bats). Saphira, Eragon’s dragon, discovers that Helgrind, the supposedly impenetrable mountain fortress home of the creatures, is anything but impenetrable, as she tumbles through a magical hologram into a cave.
The adventurous trio are quickly beset by the Ra’zac and their parents, who, despite having been built up to be incredibly dangerous and hard-to-kill creatures, are killed almost instantaneously by the combined efforts of Eragon, Roran, and Saphira. Eragon and Roran discover Katrina alive in one of the cells at the top of Helgrind, but the Dragon Rider senses another presence and goes to investigate when Roran is gone; it’s Sloan, Katrina’s scumbag asshole of a father, whom Eragon, being the jackass he is, magically compels to go running off to the elven capital despite being blind. Paolini explains this one off by having Eragon’s spell cause any animals nearby to actually run up to Sloan and essentially force-feed themselves to him. Eragon then proceeds to get in contact magically with the elven queen, who he tells what he just did to Sloan. She reaches through the mirror and bashes Eragon’s head in for his stupidity admonishes him for his actions and tells him not to do it again or else he’ll get in deep shit.
Meanwhile, Nasuada, the leader of the Varden, turns out to be emo, because she’s busy cutting herself like there’s no tomorrow! Well, actually she’s participating in the Trial of Long Knives against the leader of her ancestral tribe, which means she has to cut her arm open a certain number of times to prove how much of a masochist she is. Chaos cultist in the making, ahoy! Nasuada predictably wins, because she’s more masochistic than the other guy, and just to rub it in our faces how masochistic she is, refuses to let her wounds get healed magically on the grounds that that would be cheating. Which is really really stupid, I mean, if you’re in a world where you can have wounds insta-healed, why the hell do you have a ritual that doesn’t allow you to do that?
Eragon’s girlfriend who’s not quite a girlfriend yet, Arya, somehow manages to find the wayward Dragon Rider (because apparently Eragon’s passing imprints itself on the earth and can be detected by those people who are attuned to such things), and the two of them make their way back to the Varden. When they get back, the Imperial army attacks again, even though they didn’t get the picture when the Varden and dwarves curbstomped their asses in the last battle. No, this time they have a small battalion of soldiers who have been rendered immune to pain through magical means and can only be put down by decapitation, which results in massive confusion for the Varden after their cavalry charge. Look, guys, zombies who aren’t zombies! The Varden kick the asses of the Imperial attackers, while Eragon and his brother Murtagh have a sissy slap-fight manly battle of manliness fight to the death in the skies above the battlefield.
Right after the battle, Nasuada the secret cultist of Slaanesh sends Eragon the jackass Luke Skywalker wannabe off to the dwarven capital of Tronjheim to be her envoy during the election and coronation of the new dwarven king (yes, people, the dwarves are the only people in the history ever to elect anyone to a position of leadership). Of course, she wants Orik, the old king’s nephew, to be the king, because he’s the only dwarf clan leader who would side with the Varden. Saphira is left behind in the Varden camp to keep the Empire from discovering that Eragon has gone running off to Tronjheim, because Nasuada the SCoS is afraid that they’ll attack and overwhelm the Varden in his absence.
While Eragon is in Tronjheim, he is attacked by a group of dwarves who try killing him with magical daggers that disintegrate the flesh of whoever they injure. Eragon overwhelms these assassin dwarves by exploding one of the magical lanterns that illuminate Tronjheim, and immediately goes running off to Orik afterwards to tell him. Orik starts an immediate investigation, which is going on during the meetings of the dwarven clan chiefs to determine who the new king or queen (yes, there is a female clan chief) will be. They eventually discover that it was the chief of Az Sweldn rak Anhuin, the clan who declared a blood feud against Eragon in the last book, who orchestrated the assassination attempt. Orik gets the clan chief banished and ostracized (well, this is gonna come back to bite you in the ass, now isn’t it?), and a similar, but not quite as harsh, punishment applied to the rest of his clan (“Your clan will be redeemed eventually, but you, you son of a bitch, you are never going to be forgiven”). Right afterwards, Orik is elected king because the rest of the clan chiefs have a tremendous crush on him deem him to have a level head.
Eragon immediately contacts Nasuada the cultist and Arya the Princess Leia wannabe to tell them the news. Saphira is dispatched to Tronjheim immediately to reunite herself with Eragon, and, when she arrives, the coronation begins, and the dwarves summon the king of the gods to crown Orik king. I kid you not. A freaking god actually takes time out of his busy ‘ruling the world’ schedule to manifest himself and crown the dwarven king or queen. Oh, and when he doesn’t do this, which is usually when a dwarf seizes the throne by force, that dwarf winds up getting royally screwed over.
Roran, meanwhile, has joined the Varden as a soldier and has been busy participating in raids against the Empire’s supply lines in preparation for an assault against the city of Feinster. On one of Roran’s raids, the Varden realize, a bit too late, that the enemy soldiers guarding the caravan are the same immune-to-pain soldiers who got their asses curbstomped in that battle earlier in the book. The Varden commander loses a hand to the enemy, and after defeating the soldiers and stealing all the supplies they can, the surviving Varden soldiers retreat to their base. Not too long afterwards, Roran is put in command of part of a large attack force aimed at liberating a village from a force of Empire troops (something like 450 or so Varden against about 800 Empire soldiers). It turns out that the Empire soldiers have automatic repeating crossbows (gasp!) and only Roran’s quick thinking manages to save his command from being utterly annihilated. The other groups of Varden troops don’t fare so well, and Roran is forced to help slaughter his way through the Empire’s soldiery to save them (he racks up about 193 kills alone in this battle, sustaining only very very minor injuries in the process, which set my bullshit meter off). Even though he was undeniably badass in this battle, Roran is charged with insubordination due to disobeying his commander’s orders, and is publicly whipped to show the Varden that Nasuada the Cultist of Slaanesh likes watching people get whipped like the dirty dirty girl she is isn’t going to be lax on maintaining discipline.
Nasuada comes to Roran later and offers him command of a mixed group of humans and Urgals, which he accepts a bit warily (someone murdered an Urgal earlier in the book and Nasuada pursued this course of action to improve human-Urgal relations). While the group are out on their mission, the Urgals get all pissed off for some reason or another and one of them challenges Roran to honorable unarmed combat. Roran (because the plot dictates it) defeats the Urgal who’s way bigger and stronger than him and retains command of his unit. They complete their mission without any further hitches and then head back to rendezvous with the Varden, who are massing for their assault on Feinster.
Eragon, meanwhile, has returned to Ellesmera, the elven capital, where he meets with his teacher Oromis again. Along the way they manage to piss off every single elf in Ellesmera when Saphira decides she’s going to breathe fire on the oldest goddamn tree in the entire city just to get its attention (and succeeds, it doesn’t take too kindly to this) so that it can give them a chunk of meteorite metal that’s buried under its roots. It tells them that it’s going to take something from them later, but doesn’t mention what (which really, really unnerves me). Eragon and Saphira then go over to the elven smith Rhunon, who, despite being kinda pissed off at how they obtained the ore, takes control of Eragon’s mind to help forge a sword for the Luke Skywalker wannabe. They spend all night doing this, and, when the sword is finished, Eragon is shocked to discover that he helped produce what can best be described as a master-crafted weapon in about seven hours. When he tries figuring out what he wants to name the sword, he waves it around a bit, yells some names, and then gets inspired and shouts ‘I NAME THEE EXCALIBUR BRISINGR!’ at it, at which point the sword bursts into flames.
Oromis is intrigued when he learns of the sword’s unique properties, but, being the wise old fart he is, chooses not to tell Eragon anything except for where the source of Galbatorix’s power comes from and that Brom, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the story, is Eragon’s REAL DADDY, which means that Murtagh is only his half-brother. Glaedr, Oromis’s dragon, vomits up the biggest goddamn kidney stone in the history of freaking ever his heart of hearts, a perfect golden sphere that contains his soul, and gives it to Eragon for safe-keeping. Which means that you know that they’re going to die in the near future. When this is all said and done, Eragon and Oromis travel side-by-side aboard their partners up to the forest edge; Oromis is bound for Gil’ead to aid the elven army and Eragon is headed for Feinster to join the Varden.
When Eragon arrives, he finds that the Varden are having little luck in storming the gates of Feinster. So, Nasuada the Slaaneshi Cultist orders him to join Arya and Blodhgarm (an elf who altered himself to resemble an anthropomorphic wolf), who have scaled the walls and are pinned down by Empire soldiers. He and Saphira land and proceed to absolutely kick the asses of the enemy soldiers nearby, noticing some enemy spellcasters who proceed to run away like the pansies they are the moment Eragon tries engaging them. The Varden army enters the city, and proceeds to beat the crap out of the Empire’s forces stationed inside, while Eragon fights his way to the keep and uses his sword to melt through the gate like it’s butter. Once inside, he and Arya fight their way up to the chamber that the Lady of Feinster is hiding out in, and witness the birth of a Shade…who is way, way more powerful than Durza from the first book, because this Shade has had dozens of spirits bound into it. The Shade starts kicking their asses, proving powerful enough to immobilize Saphira with a single gesture, and then Eragon has a vision of Glaedr and Oromis dueling Murtagh and Thorn above Gil’ead. Galbatorix takes control of Murtagh’s body and proceeds to absolutely annihilate Oromis. Glaedr is unable to save his Rider’s life, and is promptly killed by the smaller and faster Thorn. However, because Glaedr gave Eragon his heart of hearts, his soul is automatically locked up in there for all eternity. Breaking free of the Shade’s spell, both Eragon and Arya manage to stab the Shade in the heart simultaneously, killing it. The Lady of Feinster thanks the Rider and elven princess for killing the Shade, and is taken into Varden custody.
The end of the book has Eragon revealing Glaedr’s heart of hearts to Roran, Nasuada, and Arya (“The dragons are alive! Oh, how I wish I could tell my people! Then we would all run to the gates of Uru’baen, batter them down, and fight until they were free and the black tyrant was dead, no matter how many of us died in the process!”), which, to me, seems to be a pretty stupid idea, because someone could’ve been listening in at the tent flap or something, I dunno. Anyway, Eragon and Saphira decide that they’re ready to go kick Galbatorix’s ass after they conquer Belatona and Dras-Leona, thus setting up the final book.
My god this book was full of stupid. It, like the rest of the series, is such a blatantly obvious rip-off of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. What didn’t help was the fact that Paolini’s family, instead of casting a critical eye on the script for Eragon when Paolini first wrote it, instead proceeded to declare it the greatest thing in the history of ever and setting up their own publishing company to get the damn thing distributed. I just…bah. This book gets a 4/10 from me.
