Eragon pt. fourteen

[kippurbird]

chapters Through a dragon's eye, A song for the road.


Summary

This chapter begins innocuously enough. Eragon gets over his fear of flying with Saphira. He goes flying without any sort of protective clothing and doesn't freeze to death. There's a lovely interlude that seems to be lifted straight from Anne McCaffery's Pern Series, as Saphira and Eragon meld minds and are one. This is similar to what happens when a Pernese dragon and their rider go on a mating flight. But, Eragon loves it. Though, in a lovely bit of contradictoriness, Saphira shows him how she uses hills to hide behind, and they're on the plains. Where, as previously stated, there are no hills. Though I'm not to sure how a flying blue dragon can use a hill to hide behind. As usually, they're up in the sky and not anywhere near a hill. Unless there are hills in the sky in Eragon land. If anything Saphira should stay up in the air, because most people don't generally look up in the sky but if there was something swooping down every once in a while it'd be like someone doing the whole trying not to be seen and going "sneak sneak sneak" at the same time.

Brom tries to get into Eragon's head and then yells at him when Eragon tries to keep him out of his head because he thinks that he's being attacked. Though why would anyone want to go into Ergaon's head is beyond me. Apparently the Ra'zarc have flown the coop and they've lost their trail. Searching around for a while Eragon finds a mysterious flask with the Ra'zac's insignia on it. Though how he knows what that looks like, we're not told. The flask contains a poison that can only harm animal or human flesh. It can stay in the bed sheets or coat a weapon and not harm it. Apparently it's made from a regular if expensive imported jewelers oil.

Eragon figures that since it's so expensive that only a certain amount of people would be able to have it. And if they can discover who bought it and where it went they can discover where the Ra'zac are. Now, this is assuming that the records of this oil is kept. And if it is kept, that the oil they bought all came from the same place. Of course, if these Ra'zac were really intelligent they would have smuggled the oil in so there'd be no record of the oil at all.

Brom thinks this is a brilliant idea and wonders why he never thought of this before. Perhaps because he never knew that the Ra'zac used this oil? In any case, they decide to go to Terim which controls most of the trade. They're going to go see an old friend of Brom's who conveniently lives there named Jeod. Jeod, according to naming conventions, is important.

We get a brief history lesson of the elves about how they came from over the sea and that they retain a great fascination for the ocean. Tolkien anyone? Brom then chants a song for Eragon, that's from the elves. I reproduce it for you in all it's... glory.

O liquid temptress 'neath the azure sky,
Your gilded expanse calls me, calls me
For I would sail ever on,
Were it not for the elven maid
who calls me, calls me
She binds my heart with a lily-white tie,
Never to be broke, save by the sea,
Ever to be torn twixt the trees and the waves.

First off, if this is a song sung by elves to elves, why would they call someone an elven maid? It'd be like singing a love song and saying "that human girl" as opposed to "that girl". I suppose it's so that we know that elves are involved. Then there is no scheme, rhyming or otherwise. It doesn't fit into meter system. It doesn't scan at all. It's just... pretentious and bad.

Brom teaches Eragon how to hunt using magic. Apparently he shoots a small rock at the prey and it never misses. Never, ever misses. Never. This also apparently saves time with hunting. How does it do this, I don't know. Apparently the prey are just walking up to Eragon and saying hit me with a rock please! That's the only way it could work.

Mean while Eragon loses what fat he had and becomes lean with muscles. Personally I want to know where he got the fat in the first place. He worked on a farm and went hunting. Not much fat is going to be found on a body who works all the day long. Unless he was just lazing about the place to have the fat. This also happens within a couple of weeks.

That is a classical Stu trait, to become all ripped like that (And yes, he uses the word rippled) lean with muscles. Especially in such short amount of time.

As a final note, Brom says that they'll have to be more careful about going into towns because news of who Eragon is would have reached everyone. The Ra'zoc have been maybe two days ahead of them. It takes a while for them to get back to the king and then a while for the messengers to get to EVERY city and town. Information isn't transmitted instantaneously. It should take months, at least, for places, especially the ones farthest away from where the king lives (where ever that is) to learn about Eragon.

Comments

[madamsnape.livejournal.com]

*Giggles* Well done *in total envy of sporking abilities*

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

*grins* It's easy, just go through something and say, "This is wrong, and this is why it's wrong".

[madamsnape.livejournal.com]

that's the easy part... it's the added wit that never wants to come *shakes head*

[thelittlebudgie.livejournal.com]

We can't even complain about the poetry, because he can just say "But it rhymes/scans in the ancient tongue!"

You knows, Galby might be importing the poison-oil for them, or spelling it to make it fatal to living beings. He wouldn't have any reason to keep records, and if he did, wouldn't Eragon have to go and find Galby first?

*snorts* The rock hunting is silly. And if it's something like saying "Kill that" in the ancient language, then why hasn't someone done it to Galby?

Somehow I can see young Galby, surrounded by his peers, saying, "Why am I surrounded by idiots?"

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the whole records keeping thing didn't make any sense to me. I mean why do it legally? You don't want people to know you have it, so smuggle it. Eragon is awfully naive to think that they'd go above the board with the oil. (Of course, since this is Eragon, he's going to turn out right.)

There's only one spell that I know of that never misses, and that's magic missile, it's a first level spell in D&D and it has nothing to do with shooting rocks.

I could see that. If Paolini was trying to make him like Voldemort. But so far I haven't seen any indication of that.

[eva]

*delurks*

I've been lurking a while and read your Eragon summaries - very good and to the point! I read the book in German and had hoped that at least the language issues were the translator's fault, but this seems not to be the case. And plot-wise - eugh. The only redeeming thing about this book is that the movie is even worse.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

*waves to the lurker*

I think that language is the least of this books problems. The story just doesn't hold water plot-wise. It's got so many holes it's a sieve.

You can't really make a good movie when the source material is terrible.

Love your icon!

Difference of opinion

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

I find that amusing because I have the opposite opinion. Then again, I haven't ever gotten past the first few pages of the book and I saw the movie in full. (I love your icon. It's very true. Though the actor for Brom was the only one who had anything to work with, so you can't blame the rest of the cast entirely.)

While I agree that it's hard to make a good movie out of a book that is bad to begin with I felt, after reading Kippur's sporkings of it, that they altered some small details for the better. (Such as Brom explaining about magic a bit when he first lit the fire. Eragon being more observant. The shade tricking Eragon through a dream involving Arya.) I'm not saying they made it perfect. They still left in some other things I felt were stupid, unbelievable, or pointless. And left out points that Paolini might have explained in Eldest but which should have been explained in Eragon. They also aged Sapphira even faster than in the book, which made sense when it came to keeping the movie shorter but which had no in-story logic behind it.

So I think that in a number of ways the movie was better, if only because it was shorter and seemed less painful. But I'm probably insanely biased because, as I mentioned earlier, I never really read the books (though I skimmed Wikipedia entries afterwards to see if more things had been explained there. Some were but Paolini's writing is still garbage.) :D

[gjohnsonkoehn.livejournal.com]

Between the spoors and the flask and the slaughtered village (any reason given for that, by the way?) and the rare and notable oil, these minions are even more hapless than your average band of Stormtroopers. It's a wonder Eragon hasn't stumbled over a perfectly detailed map with a little dotted-line trail and a big X labelled 'this is where we're going' by now.

Personally I want to know where he got the fat in the first place. He worked on a farm and went hunting.

Now, now. We know he was such a crappy hunter that he had to try and trade a rock for meat, so he may not have been trying all that hard there.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

It was a random urgal attack. I suppose so we could see how horrible the urgals were. They randomly attack villages and leave no one alive. It reminded me almost of the slaughter seen in Terry Goodkind's books. The baby on the spear point was a bit gratutitus.

This is a good point.

[gjohnsonkoehn.livejournal.com]

So, did the villagers fight back or anything? Were there urgal corpses mixed in with the humans? Because it seems like, if these things are vicious enough to raze whole villages and numerous enough to manage it, that the village folk might have invested rather heavily in your basic feudal militia training.

Thank you. I mean, how crappy a hunter do you have to be to resort to buying meat from the butcher? Really?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

They were all killed. Dead dead dead. Not an urgal body in sight. Quite dead. It was a slaughter.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

Dude! The Urgals are actually Reavers! O_O It'ssotrue! u_u

[emily-goddess.livejournal.com]

[OT] I've seen that icon before, and I've often wondered: what does the Geico gecko have to do with Autism?

In other news, I'm really enjoying your sporking. I don't think I would have noticed half the details you picked up on. The more you spork, the more I'm glad I let you read the book for me instead of trying to slog through it myself (I quit after the first paragraph). Gods, why does crap like this become popular?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

The gecko is not the Geico gecko. It is just a regular gecko that I found under a google search. I had just gotten back from Hawaii and was a wee bit obsessed with Geckos at the time when I made the icon. There's absolutely no reason why it's there. I just liked it.

And thank you. I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm certainly enjoying sporking it.

[hiyami.livejournal.com]

Unless there are hills in the sky in Eragon land.

Of course there is. You established in Chapter 9 or 10 that in Eragon's world, the heavier you are, the more likely you are to get swooped in the air.

Ergo, hills are in the sky.

[sonic-sues.livejournal.com]

Mean while Eragon loses what fat he had and becomes lean with muscles. Personally I want to know where he got the fat in the first place. He worked on a farm and went hunting. Not much fat is going to be found on a body who works all the day long. Unless he was just lazing about the place to have the fat.

It's from all the meat.

[shikomekidomi.livejournal.com]

Ah, but we don't share the world with other sentient races.
This whole song would make more sense if it was originally in some other language, say Elven. Rhyme schemes and meters rarely stay after translation.
Perhaps the elven language has ways of distinguishing between elves and nonelves-- that is an elven maid is "Blah" and a nonelven maid would be "Blahblah". The second is longer because some sort of nonelven specifier gets added, but in translation, "Blah" becomes "elven maid" because it never means anything else.
Yes, I do tend to over-think things.
What I like is the assumption that, even if these records exist, one can easily access them.