On the other hand, Cersei deserves whatever is in store.
A pretty good weekend. The first Mage: The Ascension game of the year, a bit of hanging out with friends, plenty of Sara time. (At the moment, we're Netflixing The Gilmore Girls, and streaming Red Dwarf) Yesterday, Sara, Becky and I went to the Montgomery Mall for shoes and sundries. And while Sara was trying on some pants in Torrid, Becky and I went into the Borders Express.
Oh, I thought to myself, looking at the sizable displays of dragon-coated hardcovers. Brisingr is out.
Becky, it turns out, owns a copy of both Eragon and Eldest, and had gotten halfway through the first one before giving up in disgust. I'd done somewhat better (for a certain value of "better), reading all of Eragon while in Montana. And while we waited for Sara, we discussed the manifold failings of the novel. Some of them were, perhaps, somewhat silly: Becky pointing out, for example, that Brisingr breaks the E____ pattern established by the first novels. Other failings were something more egregious. I commented that Eragon himself, the titular character, was dull and not someone that you really feel compelled to name a novel after. Becky claimed to have lost track of the number of side characters that the book introduced. I remembered the werecat, and muttered dark threats. Neither of us, clearly, showed any intrest in investigating the Inheritance books any further.
Before you say anything: Yes, Christopher Paolini was 15 when he had the first book published. Yes, hitting the New York Times bestseller's at 19 is a feat. But from the perspective of a reader, this does no more than excuse the transparant lack of craftmanship to the novel. And an excuse is no patch.
So we have a novel with a simple dichotomy between good and evil, without the mythicized, otherworldly Evil that a Tolkin or an Alexander would provide; Galbatorix is an entirely mortal but unseen Emperor who inspired neither dread nor anger nor any reactgion at all other than some degree over his ridiculous name. We have a hero who is boringly overcompetent. We have enough random fantasy monsters to populate a D&D campaigin (including the aforementioned werecat), and four different magic systems, two elements which I personally found obnoxious. And at the end, we have a true thud of a battle which evokes neither a cinematic view of near defeat turning to desperate triumph, nor the chaos of a battle where you can see no farther into the distance than the next sword being raised up against you, where victory or defeat is meaningless compared to the need to survive a few breaths more. (I'm reminded of a moment from To Green Angel Tower, at the Lake of Glass, where Simon, attempting to catch his breath, looks around and wonders who is winning).
And above all, we have the utter lack of any novel theme, or novel view of a theme. There's Destiny and Justice and Freedom and some implied True Love or something, but it all develops into nothing we haven't seen befoe, except perhaps the argument (voiced in argument to Eragon) that killing men who surender or flee is no worse than killing an armed man in a "fair fight" that he has no possible chance of winning. Maybe that's an innovation; it certainly isn't an idea I've explicitly heard, although the idea of tying your metaphic hand behind your back to give the enemy a "chance" is vaugly analogous.
So, total crap. Which makes it all the more depressing that this weekend tens of thousands of people (not all of them kids) are going to be putting down thirty bucks for the latest in this literary trudge through medicrity.
When they could reach for something much better.
OK. I'm certainly not about to suggest that the target audience of Eragon should be reading A Song of Ice and Fire; I'm still vauguly uncomfortable with the knowlege that my 13-year-old sister has finished the first books that George R. R. Martin has written, a discomfort which stems only in part from the fact that she finished them before I could. Because Westeros is not Happy Fun Sunshine Land; Martin writes about hideious betrayal and hopeless honor and fatal love and sex, sex, sex-violent, incestuous, certainly "unwholesome"-which may not really make him the best choice for the pre-teen sect, or even for most of the teenagers.
But that's the nature of the story he's telling: a story where there is no Evil Empire, no Dark Lord. It's fantasy, yes, filled with the shadows of maegi and wights, abuzz with the flame of dragons and the light of unknown gods. But the core of the story, in truth, could have existed in Europe five hundered years ago: a war for a kingdom which is tearing that kingdom to splinters. And Martin shines in this. Because there is no such thing as safety here, no character shields other than the assumption that a story is not yet finished.
There's a moment in the third book of the series, A Storm of Swords, which is both a narrative pivot and an emotional cannon to the gut. If you read it, you will be shaken. There are dozens of moments that will probably evoke thrill or anger or (in a rare instance) some jot of desperate joy. But Martin has written what may the the closest thing to certain I've ever read. And this kind of "certain" is pretty rare. There's nothing of that in Eragon, a novel where the certainties are the survival of the main character and the probable death of a mentor or two and revelations about his parentage and some angst at the start of the novel which has nothing to do with anything.
So, why should you be reading A Song of Ice and Fire? Why shouldn't you give Eragon a try? Because the only emotion that George R. R. Martin fails to provoke is disintrest. And the only thing interestng about Paolini is wondering how he became a success in the first place.
Food now, I think.