Brisingr Spork: Chapter 55?: Flight
I'm baaaaaaack! My sporking style has possibly chaaaaanged! Hopefully for the better... My deliberate focus from here on in is to challenge myself not just to recap the chapter's events and snark about it (although snarking is admittedly a lot of fun) but to properly highlight what doesn't work and why, regarding plot, character motivations and prose. That's the plan, anyhow.
With that being said! Let's briefly brief about this chapter's events: Eragon and Saphira depart from Oromis and Glaedr in the air and head back to the Varden army. They chat along the way. On the forth day of travel in the early dawn they arrive, only for Trianna the sorceress to mentally tell them in a panic that Arya and another elf are in mortal danger and the chapter leaves off with that cliffhanger.
That's about it for plot, for a chapter that runs about 1800 words and can easily be recapped in 70. Many have said it better beforehand but the problem lies with how much is integral information which drives the plot along blow-by-blow and how much is simply recapped in the prose. Padding, in other words. This chapter could have simply been a recap nested in the previous, then the cliffhanger could have neatly brought us out of 'recap mode' and drum up excitement for the next chapter.
Brisingr suffers all the way through with padding. (Are you sick of hearing us bring it up yet?) Whether it's endless details on objects that don't affect the story in any way, or tangential scenes that really make no difference to the plot's momentum, or conversations that educate neither characters nor readers... it beggars belief that Paolini said that the third book in the trilogy had to be split into two simply to fit everything in. These padding chapters simply don't have to be here. This is why a good and firm editor is worth their weight in gold.
Our chapter starts thusly:
From Ellesméra, Saphira and Glaedr flew without stopping over the ancient forest of the elves, soaring high above the tall, dark pine trees. Sometimes the forest would break, and Eragon would see a lake or a contorted river winding across the land.
This paragraph immediately raises some serious problems - most of which I've complained about beforehand, but nonetheless! time to complain about them again:
Flew without stopping. Well, duh. They've only just started out on their journey and are flying over trees, which would likely hinder any attempts at landing. What did Paolini actually mean when he wrote this? If he's foreshadowing how much actual marathon flying they do over the entire chapter, that's one thing (hold that thought) but we've only just established the mood and set the scene in the first place so we don't have to necessarily 'think ahead' at this stage in the opening paragraph. So what does it mean? Is it just thoughtless words? (Padding, perchance?)
Sometimes the forest would break... I absolutely understand what Paolini means here, but this word choice seems a little off to me. This is followed up by the very odd contorted river description which (once again, I know what he's trying to say) really doesn't properly fit the imagery. It's close to the mark! and your mileage may very well vary! and it's certainly evocative which normally would score him some points in my humble opinion because I like playing around and seeing others play around with vocab...? but 'contorted' brings to mind something unnaturally bent out of shape and rivers are formed naturally no matter how winding or bending they end up. (Unless the elves sing them into contorting their shapes like they do trees? Who knows!)
In the meantime, Eragon is not looking at the scenery. (The reader is forced to, but not our MC?) He's cramming the Ancient Language for his end of term finals:
[He] was busy reciting within his mind every word of the ancient language Oromis had taught him, and if he forgot any or made a mistake in pronunciation, Oromis would have him repeat the word until he had memorised it.
"This is the letter A. Learn it," said Brom. It occurs to me that "poor ol'" Eragon has had a rather bad innings with teachers and their lack of methods to assist in learning. One wonders if Chris just learned things by rote and repetition his whole life? I cannot make any comment on Mummy and Daddy Paolini's teaching methods but... look, one just wonders, ok?
They arrived at the edge of Du Weldenvarden by late afternoon of the first day.
Keep count with me, my friends. Chris will assist with this, thank goodness. That's about a three-quarter day of flying straight? Zombie Dragons commence! Neither Saphira nor Glaedr land. They circle one another and say their pretentiously-out-of-proper-order goodbyes:
Keep safe your heart, Saphira, and mine as well.
Yoda promises to meet up with Luke Skywalker and R2 before the gates of Mount Doom, and he departs.
Saphira flies on without landing to rest until night falls. Let's face it right here right now: she's just Eragon's shiny blue car. He drives her through the entire night and only pulls over to refill her tank and take a piss stop at the dodgy highway servo before heading on straight away.
Day two: and Eragon's cruising through the desert. Night two and - oh, ugh:
And by the time darkness had again engulfed the land and sky and held them in its cold embrace, Saphira and Eragon were beyond the confines of the sandy wastes and were again soaring over the verdant fields of the Empire, their course such that they would pass between Urû’baen and Lake Tüdosten on their way to the city of Feinster.
Starting sentence with 'and'. Pretentious as all hell way of saying 'night had fallen'. Locations that mean nothing unless you flip back and forth to the handy dandy map simply to give you some contextual reference that assists you in absolutely no way really... Never change, Paolini!
After flying for two days and two nights without sleep, Saphira was unable to continue.
The ute cruises to a standstill and idles whilst the sunburned, singleted man leans out with a stubby in hand and a gold-toothed grin.
"Y'roight, mate?"
"Yeah nah she's fucked, mate," the teenager says, gesturing at his bejewelled blue beetle on the side of the road.
"Pop the bonnet. Let's have a look at her Eldunari."
Saphira sleeps her exhaustion off for a few hours whilst Eragon practices his moves with his new shiny sword. Paolini then practices his moves with telling and showing. It's quite... telling (hur hur) that this doesn't quite work:
Ever since they had parted with Oromis and Glaedr, a sense of constant anxiety had troubled Eragon as he pondered what awaited him and Saphira at Feinster. He knew that they were better protected than most from death and injury, but when he [...] remembered the sight of blood spurting from severed limbs and the screams of wounded men and the white-hot lash of a sword slicing through his own flesh, then Eragon’s gut would roil and his muscles would shake with suppressed energy, and he did not know whether he wished to fight every soldier in the land or flee in the opposite direction and hide in a deep, dark hole.
there was an attempt
We hear 'show, don't tell' ad nauseum, and it is true generally speaking (worth mentioning that some telling is necessary sometimes) and there is a good amount of show in the latter half of the paragraph what with the roiling guts and shaking with nervous energy... but! And it's a big BUT!
I'm trying to figure out and explain just why this still feels like it's missing the mark, and I think I sort of understand why. The reader is kept extremely distant from Eragon's emotions because of the tense: "his guts would roil, his muscles would shake" rather than just something like "Eragon's stomach twisted as the screams of dying men echoed through his mind" rather than just defaulting to "he didn't know whether he wanted to fight or fly" which is basically the least common denominator unimaginative/cliched response to a crisis. It just seems... wanting.
Also... there's a massive Eragonaphant in the room, trying to hide in the corner. In another telling-showing way: we've been told that Eragon cares about the lives of others and hates fighting and war and violence but what we're shown as his character develops throughout the four books is a completely different beast. So much so that around the community Eragon is headcanonically a sociopath. This is why this sort of 'last ditch effort' styled writing feels deliberately placed here in order to remind the reader: "See? He cares! He has human emotions!" If you can feel that there's machinations behind the prose there's a chance it's clunky, out of place, badly written or all of the above.
In short, it's a vicious cycle. Paolini's not feeling what he's writing (or at least not putting it forward in the text) so Eragon's not feeling what he's feeling so I'm not feeling what he's meant to be feeling. Nobody's emotionally invested and so a bad time is had by all. More 'dread' and feeling 'sickened' and a clinical reaction that very nearly mentions Eragon's Thumbs again:
His dread only worsened when he and Saphira resumed their journey and spotted lines of armed men marching over the fields below. Here and there, pillars of pale smoke rose from sacked villages. The sight of so much wanton destruction sickened him. Averting his gaze, he squeezed the neck spike in front of him and squinted until the only thing visible through the bars of his blurry eyelashes was the white calluses on his knuckles.
I half shut my eyes every-which-way to test this out and can say I didn't see bars of eyelashes. Sure, it gets blurry but that's about it. Maybe it's an elven senses thing...?
Saphira calls him 'little one' and tells him not to get upset about it. She shares some 'wisdom' and then asks him to tell her a riddle to keep her awake. Just microsleep already, Saphira, put us all out of our misery.
Very well, he said after a moment. I am coloured red and blue and yellow and every other hue of the rainbow. I am long and short, thick and thin, and I often rest coiled up. I can eat a hundred sheep in a row and still be hungry. What am I?
A dragon, of course, she said without hesitation.
No, a woollen rug.
Bah!
Hah! Hah! Hah. Hah... huh. Not funny. But very Pao-esque. I think it's made less unfunny by the tone of the entire exchange - it feels like Paolini thought it was brilliant and is patting himself on the back.
The third day, and Saphira is burningly tired; but she won't accept a spell or two. This part is very boring. This is where a nifty ol' timecut would work wonders. Their next conversation is completely irrelevant and unimportant. Not even worth taking time over. It doesn't characterise them in any way. It doesn't lend much - if any - vital information. It might as well be robots talking to each other for how soulless the entire exchange feels.
And so it was. Later that night, when dawn was only a few hours away, a dull red glow appeared upon the western horizon.
And so it was? How very Gloria Tesch. Eragon equips his gear from the Inventory menu, and drinks a restorative potion. His HP now back to 90% - but his inventory count now down to 2x left - they survey the war efforts below. Eragon asks Saphira to announce them both, so she roars and flames the sky in front of them. Eragon's left with retinal burn and complains that he can't see anything. (Sadly, it is only temporary. I must admit to enjoying the idea of our hero having to deal with the same shit Sloan has been going through...)
Saphira apologises, rather than arguing back that it was his freakin' idea to announce their arrival. Eragon didn't specify, after all, just how to do that.
Still blinking, he said, The first thing we should do is find a horse that just died, or some other animal, so that I can replenish your strength with theirs.
Is it possible to take energy from a deceased animal? But... they're dead...? How does that work?
Saphira is about to reply when Trianna makes mental contact:
Eragon, Saphira! cried the sorceress. You’re just in time! Arya and another elf scaled the walls, but they were trapped by a large group of soldiers. They won’t survive another minute unless someone helps them! Hurry!
Oh, it is to laugh. She's not more than capable of looking after herself when the plot calls for a stupid cliffhanger, is she? Also the author doesn't seem to know - or care - what the other elf's name is; so nobody else does in the story?
What an absolute waste of a chapter.