Eragon: Prologue
ERAGON
Prologue - Shade of Fear
In Which Princess Leia Sends R2D2 to Deliver an Invaluable Message
A long time ago, in a world far from ours, an ambush lay in wait.
Dark forces lunge from the void as the princess made her way down the route, and in doing so destroyed her guardians. However, before they could confiscate her smuggled goods, which contain something invaluable to the evil Empire, she successfully manages to send it off to a guardian before being captured herself. Little would she know that her desperate attempt to prevent the Empire from receiving this vital item would not make it quite to the man she intended...
But enough about Star Wars. Let's talk about the opening scene of Eragon.
A long time ago, in a world far from ours, an ambush lay in wait.
Dark forces lunge from the void as the princess made her way down the route, and in doing so destroyed her guardians. However, before they could confiscate her smuggled goods, which contain something invaluable to the evil Empire, she successfully manages to send it off to a guardian before being captured herself. Little would she know that her desperate attempt to prevent the Empire from receiving this vital item would not make it quite to the man she intended...
There we go.
No, folks, there's no error here. Eragon literally starts out with a princess being captured by the foot-soldiers of the Empire and spiriting off a valuable item that she stole from them before they can reach it.
Let's establish something immediately: Eragon has often been called "Star Wars, with some dragons". This is, in fact, woefully, terribly true. You might be inclined to give it some credit; Star Wars is a pretty archetypal Hero's Journey, Eragon is as well, there are bound to be similarities. Fine. And the fact that Eragon opens with a princess being kidnapped? A well-established cliche, frustratingly common but not in and of itself a bad thing.
But when you can write two identical summaries that explain the details of each story, there is something wrong.
But we're only at the prologue. You'll understand what I mean as we go on, if you haven't had the pleasure of experiencing this story yourself yet. I would urge you to simply bear this in mind as we carry on our sojourn through the Wonderful World of Alagaesia.
All that said, let's delve into the nitty-gritty.
When you open this book and head to the Prologue, this is the first sentence that greets you:
Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world. (pg 1)
Whoo. Lentils.
Interestingly, rather than just being some introductory flower language, it turns out that a literal scent is being carried on the wind. Changing the world? I guess technically, any scent will change the world, as its previous absence is inherently undone by its presence. In other words, this is a really silly opening (and yet not as silly as the opening of Eldest. Oh my god).
This scent happens to flow to the waiting nostrils of a Shade. As the text promptly tells us, "He looked human except for his crimson hair and maroon eyes." This is supposed to be keywords for Terrifying Evil. Just trust me on this. Dye and contacts makes you fit for the devil's army.
Anyway, the Shade picks up the scent that will change the world and orders his small group of troops to fan out and "Stop whoever is coming... or die." SHAKING IN MY BOOTS, Paolini. Surely this is a creature to fear.
His troops, as it turns out, are orcs Urgals, which are totally not orcs. This'll prove it:
They resembled men with bowed legs and thick, brutish arms made for crushing. A pair of twisted horns grew above their small ears. The monsters hurried into the brush, grunting as they hid. (pg 1)
not!Orcs have VERY. DAINTY. EARS.
They scatter into the forest. We learn a bit about the Shade's evil nature, which is set in stone (again) when it turns out he can see in the dark. Much like cats, which, as we all know, are also inherently evil. He also has a sword that, I kid you not, gets more description than the Urgals and the Shade COMBINED.
He remained unnaturally quiet, a long pale sword in his hand. A wire-thin scratch curved on the blade. The weapon was thin enough to slip between a pair of ribs, yet stout enough to hakc through the hardest armor. (pg 2)
I could never have trusted he had a usable sword without knowing all of this, especially the bit about the wire-thin scratch. Thank you, Paolini, for provding me with this vital information, else I would have asked myself! "Is this sword thin enought slip twixt a pair of ribs, yet still capable of hacking through armor? Shall I ever know!?" The answer is yes. Yes I shall.
And then the group hangs out for hours in the forest.
Yes. The Scent That Changes the World was carried dozens of miles ahead on the breeze. What's the point of this? Why couldn't we start in medias res? Why couldn't we start maybe a couple of minutes before the ambush springs, which would actually make sense? We don't even get a huge mention about how long this is except to establish that the Shade is an impatient asshole and the Urgals get cold while they're waiitng. Poor babies.
But finally, after waiting for hours, they hear the incoming sound of their prey, and see them arrived, 'cantering' in on white horses, whose... oh god. "Their coats rippl[ed] in the moonlight like liquid silver."
What can I possibly say to such evocative, beautiful imagery? Other than the fact that those horses should probaby have been purple to match the prose. Oh, sorry. I mean "pale lavender".
And then we get positively bombarded with completely unnecessary description of the approaching creatures, two of whom are going to be dead within the next two pages and the last of whom is going to disappear for half of the book. To save you the need to read about these characters that we won't be seeing in earnest for a long while (or not at all), it's a trio of elves. The two male guards are cannon fodder. The lady elf riding between them, however, is our designated princess.
(Please note that her identity as royalty is supposed to be a big plot twist, but I trust your intelligence enough to recognize royalty from a mile away and I'm not going to dick aroun pretending we don't know she's a princess.)
She is also adorned with "raven" hair (which is described one sentence after this as "block locks", just in case you didn't know), and eyes that shine with a "driving force", whatever the hell that is; perhaps she can fix cars by looking at them? Also she's armed, so you know she's going to be an Action Lady (that is, the kind of Action Lady that looks like she's supposed to be able to handle herself but turns out to be in desperate need of A Mayuhn to save her ass). And she's carrying a pouch, which she keeps looking at REALLY CONSPICULOUSLY.
There's a pointless bit where she shifts her guards around (and does so "with obvious authority", in case you didn't know who wears the pants around here), and hen we finally get around to the Shade and the Urgals hurling themselves out of their hiding places and attacking!
Princess get separated from her guards (because their horses are extremely poorly trained), and the Shade tries to kill her by-- shouting gibberish.
Specifically, "Garjzla!"
And if anybody can pronounce that, you have my undying respect. And by respect I mean I will laugh at you forever because that has to sound utterly ridiculous. (Note: Guy in the movie did give this a try, so yes, there is actual, absolute evidence that this sounds utterly moronic.)
Garjzla apparently means "Light" in ancient Norse (we'll discuss that later), and apparently 'light' allows him to Hadoken the horse, which squeals (which I'm mostly certain a horse can't do) and dies, and the elf chick "leaps off the animal with inhuman speed [and] lands lightly", because we can't start too early with the mantra about how much better elves are than everybody else.
Well, we can wait a bit. Remember how I mentioned how much description the elves got? It was a full paragraph each, going on about what they were wearing and what weapons they had and how sexy they were. We get precisely two sentences about how the Urgals shoot them with bows and then they die.
Well, that was time well wasted.
The Shade screams that they need to get the girl, and we get some running chicks, stupid orcs, and more gibberish ("Istalri boetk!" this time, which apparently means "Broad fire!", so he's almost justified in not just shouting English instead because that sounds pretty stupid, too) and the forest erupts into a circular inferno... in fact, one might call it--
Click to viewLike you didn't see that coming.
Anyhow, his gambit of SETTING THE FOREST ON FIRE successfully traps the elf lady, who regards him with "regal disdain" (no, seriously, it's supposed to be a shock when it turns out this chick is a princess). Realizing she's trapped, the elf lady begins muttering under her breath, and the Shade finally realizes that, you know, maybe he should have just killed her because what he's trying to retrieve is probably pretty well FIREPROOF so why not just immolate the girl? He tried to Hadoken her, but too late, and she teleports the egg to a desert planet the middle of a conveniently-placed mountain range. And then, in his frustration, he murders the Urgals (NOT the elf chick-- I repeat, NOT the elf chick) and drags her off to... wherever.
Oh, this is a hell of a line:
"Her beauty, which would have entranced any mortal man, held no charm for him." (pg 7)
This is almost the pinnacle of elven superiority, encapsulated in one sentence. But Eldest will give us another sentence that makes it even more sickening.
Anyway, Shade picks up the elf chick, mounts his own horse (which has gone completely unmentioned until now), and rides off into the darkness. And just so we know he's evil, he leaves the forest to burn behind him.
Yes. It gets more ridiculous.
- - - || Table of Contents || Chapter 1: Discovery