A Crown of Ice and Snow

Okay, this description, right off the bat, is a bit ridiculous: “When the first pale rays of light streaked across the surface of the dimple sea, illuminating the crests of the translucent waves - which glittered as if carved from crystal…” That bit about being carved from crystal is extraneous for starters. And waves from a height never look translucent to me - but that’s just me. Dimples is just silly. It makes me think of pimples on a teeanger’s face. Other people’s views might very.

Anyway, because they were dipshi…

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There’s one big thing that annoys me about this chapter. The most interesting thing happens at the end and we’re just told about it, not shown. It could just be because I find Murtagh more interesting than some of the other characters, but still.this chapter could have been much better handled if it dealt with this last big instead of what I had to read.

What we get is Galbatorix torturing Nasuada. It seems like he’s making up for all that not evil shit he did in the previous three books by being horribly evil in this book. And really, I can’t very much defend my stance on him not being evil here and instead can only complain about how cliched evil he’s being here. He’s so evil that he’s making other people do his evil for him! In this case it’s Murtagh.

Poor baby.

Read more here

The Torment of Uncertainty and The Hall of the Soothsayer


Two Nasuada chapters for the price of one! Yay?

“Nasuada opened her eyes”. Great opening to the chapter.

She is tie to a flat, cold, smooth and hard surface. She is also in a room with some really interesting designs on the ceiling. However, I’m not exactly sure how she’s able to see them. Especially in such detail. Including the fact that the colors are red, blue and gold. Why? Because it’s very dark in the room.

First of all the tiles covered the dark vaulted ceiling and the little bit of light here is barely bright enough to show the size and shape of the room. The ceiling is dark. The corners are dark. Everything is dark. And as far as we know, Nasuada doesn’t have any low light vision to help her see things better. Yet she could still see those intricate patterns. Why? Because Paolini wanted to have the room be visually interesting and needed to describe it… damn be the fact she wouldn’t be able to see it!

Also, interestingly, she’s only able to feel the cold stone on her heels and the pads of her fingers. Despite the fact that she’s only wearing “a thin white shift” and so her legs and butt and back should be able to feel it.


Follow the link!

I’ve decided I hate this chapter. It’s one of those Dues Ex Machina chapters where the characters miraculously get information without really needing to dig for it and there’s no good explained reason for it to have happened. The characters can’t explain it - just happens.

Also, for some stupid reason Solembum’s eyes change colors. I don’t care if I get an explanation later, I’m sure it’s going to be stupid. Though one thing I do enjoy about this chapter is Solembum’s continual insulting and threatening of Eragon. It’s always nice to see that happen. He threatens at one point to tear Eragon’s face off and feed his guts to the crows.

Happy thoughts.

If only it would happen.


Follow the Cut

In which injury and near death is made into nothing, kings are switching around their characterization for the sake of conflict and just because your leader vanishes automatically means disbanding is on the table even though said leader has been a leader of an organization for less than two years.

Last chapter Ayra was apparently seriously injured. Here when put on the ground - though spitting up blood - she says she’s fine. “I’m only bruised, not broken.” But you’re spitting up blood. Sure. You’re fine. And we see no more of this. Saphira was hurt a lot but that’s okay, the elves heal her. So, injuries? Whut?

To the actual thing!

By the Banks of Lake Leona

Yerah.

So, I started reading the next chapter, being a good little bird and keeping my momentum going… got about two pages in, got seriously pissed off, slammed the book shut and stalked off. But I have returned to the effort! And will get beyond two pages.

What, then, might you ask, had me so incensed?

Eragon’s treatment of Elva.

Read the rest here

The Tolling of the Bell & Black-Shrike-Thorn-Cave

… Wow. This chapter is so short… I mean, I haven’t seen a chapter this short in a while. It’s less a chapter and more of an afterthought. If I realized that I would have included it with the previous chapter, after all it’s mostly a clean up of the battle.

And that’s basically what happens. They go and search the area after killing everyone to recover their weapons which just happen to be laying around the chapel. As you do. Just like in a video game. They find his sword under a bunch of bodies, the ring Brom gave him under a pew and his necklace wrapped around the handles of the bier. Ayra’s sword is also found among the bodies, but the belt wasn’t there. When he tries casting a spell to find the belt he can’t find it. So basically, the bad guys took all of their shiny magical objects but hid only one of them. The others they just left lying around for no particular reason. Why didn’t they hide all the shiny magical objects?

(Follow the Fake Cut)

WHoot. I'm on fire lately.


To Feed a God


The thing I really hate about this chapter is that it reinforces the whole beauty = goodness theme that’s been riding through the series. Because the one person who decides to help Eragon and Arya is one of the beautiful youths novitiates as opposed to the ugly and maimed ones. (Also those oiled slaves from book three show up again.)

Apparently Eragon passed out again. I don’t remember if I’ve been keeping track of these things yet. I guess he failed his jump check. He wakes and discovers he’s been strung up in chains. Also gagged. While this means he can’t talk this entire chapter, we’re stuck in his head. Not that much is going on there. He’s also been stripped to his leggings with all his weapons, armor, shiny magical objects have been taken away from him.

(Follow the fake cut)

First off, for people wondering what happened to the Wikispace site. They decided to start charging for use of the free wikis. I've started moving things over to a wikia which can be found Here however it's very slow going because of having to transfer pages by hand. At least I don't have to type them up all again!

That being said here is our next chapter:

In which we get too much unneeded background about a possible tunnel, Eragon says he’ll go and find the tunnel to try and open up the gates. People think it’s a bad idea. He’ll go anyway. Oh, and he’ll ask a small child to go into a potentially dangerous situation that people don’t want full grown adults who are combat capable to go into.

Read More Here

A heart-to-heart


Oddly, for a chapter called “A heart-to-heart” very little of it is devoted to the conversation. And very little of the conversation could be considered heart-to-heart.

We begin where we left off last time: Glaedr making Eragon and Arya fight until they fall down from exhaustion and can’t fight any more. Literally. They end up lying on the ground heaving for air and only at that point does Glaedr agree that it would be “counterproductive” and possibly “harmful” if they were to continue fighting. Yeahup. There’s not really much you can say about that. He made them do this because he wanted to see who the better warrior was. Oh, and by this point Eragon is able to finally end the duels in a draw with Arya.

(Follow the fake cut)


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