The Inheritance Cycle
began with a novel that wasn’t so much as bad but moreover suffering from being
written by a teenager and thus relying on several earlier works for its plot
and characters. The second installment, Eldest,
was written after Eragon had been picked up by Alfred A. Knopf for
publication and Christopher Paolini had entered his twenties. Knowing this going in brought some hope that
Paolini would have evolved as an author and moved beyond a retelling of Star
Wars. Reading Eldest then
became disappointing, since Paolini’s text begins to show some of the
structural problems with the series due to basing the first novel so heavily on
Star Wars and creating a magic system based around aspects of other
novel’s magic systems. This is a book
where Eragon, our main character, spends the entire book on the same trajectory
as Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, after an opening battle he
travels to meet a wide teacher who will teach him in the ways of the world’s
old mystic order, the teacher not being what Eragon and Saphira might expect,
and after time spent training eventually going back to the resistance group
where one final battle ends with a twist about Eragon’s parentage and the
stakes are raised due to a great loss.
This decision from Paolini makes it so much of the novel falls down and
becomes difficult to continue as the actual training is essentially what Eragon
is doing for the majority of the page count.
While it isn’t terrible, it does bring the pacing of Eldest to an
almost screeching halt, though there are some light spots. Paolini does do a good enough job of
exploring how Eragon is maturing as a person, learning about how life is
interconnected and there is a particularly effective sequence where he vows to
give up meat. The actual teacher
character is also essentially a stock character with the big twist being that
he still is a Dragon Rider and there is another, older Dragon still alive.
This is where we get to
some aspects of the novel that have aged quite poorly, mainly the way that
Paolini writes romantic subplots. There
is a trope with fantasy novels (especially those written by men) where romantic
subplots will just suddenly appear and it was there in Eragon with
Eragon and Arya which continues here and gets especially annoying since the
beats are following a fairly obvious formula but it also happens with Saphira
and Glaedr, the other surviving dragon.
While Paolini does show both Eragon and Saphira as incredibly brash as
characters they both continuously pursue partners who have made it very clear
that the interest is not mutual. Paolini
does attempt to show both characters being in the wrong, Saphira especially,
but it is a plot line that doesn’t really need to be there. Eragon’s plot line of the book, however, does
shine in one aspect, Paolini’s commentary against the ideas of biological
essentialism being a thing in fantasy (outside of races created by dark
magic). In fantasy and especially
Dungeons & Dragons, there are races such as dark elves which have been
portrayed as having an implicitly evil morality. This is something that players and readers
have always had a predilection against, with perhaps the most famous D&D
novel series being about a drow who is good.
There are also issues with racism wrapped into the trope due to coding
with how orcs are often portrayed in fantasy (generally pre-2000s, however
these tropes are not totally gone). Paolini in Eldest uses the Urgals,
which are his orcs, as a point to go against this, while they are certainly a
people based around war, they are not a monolith nor are implicitly allied with
the Empire. Eragon as a character has
some moments of confronting his own prejudices, having to meet with an Urgal
under a white flag late in the novel and enter his mind, sharing his life
experiences. It isn’t perfect and
probably could have used more instances and direction to help Eragon develop,
but it’s admirable for Paolini to include this in the book and as a point going
forward. It’s also contrasted with how
Eragon spends much of the novel integrating and familiarizing himself with the
culture of the elves, and to a lesser extent in the early chapters of the
novel, the dwarves. It does set him up
to act as an ambassador to different cultures and first provides the
possibility, however slim, of nonviolent solutions to conflict. There’s also the twist with Murtagh becoming a
villain with a dragon of his own, Thorn who is essentially a genetic
experiment, but this almost comes as an afterthought as it is the twist of the
climax and Paolini really doesn’t go into enough detail as to why Murtagh has
switched sides, though it is almost implied to be part of torture done on Thorn
to make him grow large.
There is also the buffer
that as a novel, Eldest joins the rest of the epic fantasy genre by
introducing multiple points of view.
Okay this is still a book aimed at a younger audience and as such it’s
only two new points of view but they do allow subplots to happen outside of
Eragon as a character. They are both
related to him and his character, but outside of being the inciting incident of
one where he magically blesses a baby but screws up the language causing the
child to age rapidly and become a prophet in her own right, he really doesn’t have
influence upon them. The one with the
child is told through the viewpoint of Nasuada and is perhaps the shortest, she
is now the leader of the Varden, elected after her father dies in the aftermath
of Eragon. It’s a nice parallel
of having someone learn to lead in parallel to Eragon’s arc but this is
something that doesn’t get as much time as it only comes up a couple of times
in the book. Roran, Eragon’s cousin, who
was a minor character in Eragon comes home to find his father dead,
cousin missing, and hometown soon to be under siege from the empire’s forces. Roran as a character begins an arc of a man
being forced to lead and eventually take his entire community to war throughout
the book while pledging himself to his love.
While it plays around with a lot of classic fantasy tropes, it’s the
first plot line that feels like it can at least stand on its own. Yes it does follow the Hero’s Journey, but it
doesn’t feel like rewriting Star Wars’ main plot beats. There’s also already a love interest for
Roran but the way he convinces those around him to stand up, fight, and
eventually flee is quite compelling and by the time he meets up with the Varden
at the end of the novel, meeting Eragon, the confrontation can actually put
into contrast the changes the characters have undergone, both physical and
mental. He’s a character who has to grow
and change and that makes the plotline the most interesting of the book.
Overall, Eldest is
technically and in several aspects an improvement on Eragon and shows
the seeds of Paolini being able to grow as an author and indeed there are plots
that are actually really good and interesting.
They still are dealing in large part with the baggage of Eragon
being setup on a world that’s already heavily influenced by the work of others
without much to elevate it. It’s better
than Eragon but there is still a long way to go with the final two
installments of The Inheritance Cycle to make it genuinely good. 5.5/10.
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