Eragon Rewrite chapter 2

[ultramega10]

Well here we have chapter 2.

[Spoiler (click to open)]Chapter Two: Palancar ValleyA deer had been through this meadow half an hour before. Or so Eragon guessed from the tracks as he kneeled there, bow clutched in one hand. She’d walked for miles with a limp and neither wolf or bear had yet caught her. He was actually impressed

Comments

[anonymous]

I agree with Anon 4 for the most part, your rewrite is fantastic and feels more natural than Paolini. Its better in every way and really characterizes the region and characters. I really liked the part where Eragon feels like someone is speaking to him when he's about to hand over the stone to Sloan. I only have two complaints:

1) The pawn shop part feels out of place for a story set in medieval times (though I do not know enough about medieval European history to know if pawn shops existed during that time period). When I read He decided that he’d approach the pawn shop owner I thought this rewrite was going to be satirical or just joking. It pulled me right out of the story. I feel like keeping Sloan as a butcher (or some other occupation that works with meat) would both fit his canonical character better and not be anachronistic. I get that making him a pawn shop owner would explain why Eragon tries to give Sloan the stone, but maybe you could explain that Eragon always tries to buy meat from Sloan with items he finds in the mountains, which is why Sloan dislikes him: he feels that Eragon repeatedly tries to cheat him.

2) This second complaint is far more minor than the first but, it feels weird to see Eragon being religious. I kinda wish that you kept him as this non-religious person, maybe explaining the reason that he doesn't believe what the villagers believe is because he is treated as an outcast, having no known father and a dead mother who left the area for years, and is therefore kinda distant to the village customs.

[syntinen_laulu]

I kinda wish that you kept him as this non-religious person, maybe explaining the reason that he doesn't believe what the villagers believe is because he is treated as an outcast, having no known father and a dead mother who left the area for years, and is therefore kinda distant to the village customs.

That doesn't sound plausible at all. You might hate the villagers for treating you as an outcast (but do they? In the bricks, is anyone other than Sloan unpleasant to him?) but the belief system and assumptions you've grown up with are still the only ones you know, and it absolutely does not follow that you will jettison them in favour of, er, nothing. Unless Garrow is a freethinker, and has taught his boys his own ideas, which seems out of character.