Eragon: Map and Prologue: Shade of Fear
So, I've decided to do a new sporking. I'll still work on the House of Night series, especialy since the clusterfuck that is book 12 came out, but I wanted to do something a bit different. And that is Eragon! A four brick, I mean book, series full of Mary Sues, Legolas wannabes and quite a bit of fail. We start out with a map.
Yep, it's a fantasy book like that folks. be very afraid. Now, I cannot attest to reading the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, but I know this series is full of Middle-Earth ripoffs and all of that's been commented on. I'm actually going to compare this stupid book to a much, much better one. A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin and adapted by HBO into a highly successful television series. I can't recite elvish, but I can sing you "The Rains of Castamere". So, compared to the maps from A Game of Thrones, seen below, this map fails pretty bad. The region seems to suffer from random mountains in the middle of what I assume are plains. And the river that descends from Gil'ead ends randomly in the plains. Rivers need to drain, whether into a lake or into the ocean, they need to empty. Now, maybe I've got it wrong and the river actually travels north and empties into the lake, but usually rivers don't run up mountains. And there is a random desert in the middle of the map. I mean, there really is no reason why it's there. I don't think there should be a massive forest, but maybe just continued plains. The mountains in the forest make no sense, because you typically don't find bare rocky mountains around lush forest life. Usually you find soft rolling hills, or a mountain that slowly climbs up, but they're usually covered with vegetation.
Here is the map from A Game of Thrones.
Now see, that's much more logical. Forests give way to hills, that give way to mountains and slowly form into plains. The rivers all empty into lakes or oceans, or in the case of the Neck, a marsh.
Enough of map fail, let's start the story fail.
Our first lne Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world. Pardon me while I go throw up. Looks like we've got Purple Prose people, be afraid. We meet our villain, a Shade with a bunch of Urgals, who you might as well just call Orcs. The Shade also has a wire-thin scratch along his sword. Now, I like to blacksmith, and I can tell you that it is very hard to scratch steel. Mar it, give it a hammermark, that's easy. But a scratch, assuming it came from another sword, that's quite a stretch. In fact, it's almost like bullshit.
So the Shade has his nose thrust up in the air, sniffing like a bloodhound when an Urgal breaks a twig and the Shade gets pissed. The Urgals shrank back, motionless. That is quite a bit of writing fail. It makes it sound like the Urgals suddenly froze and were pulled backward by stagehands. I get what he means, they moved backa nd then stood still, but the phrasing is so awkward that it renders the whole thing ridiculous. So three elves come into the clearing, all on horses, and one is compared to a rapier. which will be strange because as we read on, it seems that this world only has broadswords and other heavy hitters. There are two male elves guarding a Mary Sue, I mean female elf. You can tell she'd a Mary Sue because she get's a whole paragraph of description. So the bad guys attack and the Shade yells Garjzla!
Gesundheit.
So the bad guys kill the two male elves and the horses and the Shade follows her. Mary Sue decides to pull out the Macguffin and sends it away in a burst of light. Shadey gets pissed and knocks her out, then kills his minions. He then utters prophecies of revenge, which I think just means that he said what he was going to do to her. That's not a prophecy. So he ties her to his horse, and leaves a burning forest behind.
This is going to be painful.
Yep, it's a fantasy book like that folks. be very afraid. Now, I cannot attest to reading the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, but I know this series is full of Middle-Earth ripoffs and all of that's been commented on. I'm actually going to compare this stupid book to a much, much better one. A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin and adapted by HBO into a highly successful television series. I can't recite elvish, but I can sing you "The Rains of Castamere". So, compared to the maps from A Game of Thrones, seen below, this map fails pretty bad. The region seems to suffer from random mountains in the middle of what I assume are plains. And the river that descends from Gil'ead ends randomly in the plains. Rivers need to drain, whether into a lake or into the ocean, they need to empty. Now, maybe I've got it wrong and the river actually travels north and empties into the lake, but usually rivers don't run up mountains. And there is a random desert in the middle of the map. I mean, there really is no reason why it's there. I don't think there should be a massive forest, but maybe just continued plains. The mountains in the forest make no sense, because you typically don't find bare rocky mountains around lush forest life. Usually you find soft rolling hills, or a mountain that slowly climbs up, but they're usually covered with vegetation.
Here is the map from A Game of Thrones.
Now see, that's much more logical. Forests give way to hills, that give way to mountains and slowly form into plains. The rivers all empty into lakes or oceans, or in the case of the Neck, a marsh.
Enough of map fail, let's start the story fail.
Our first lne Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world. Pardon me while I go throw up. Looks like we've got Purple Prose people, be afraid. We meet our villain, a Shade with a bunch of Urgals, who you might as well just call Orcs. The Shade also has a wire-thin scratch along his sword. Now, I like to blacksmith, and I can tell you that it is very hard to scratch steel. Mar it, give it a hammermark, that's easy. But a scratch, assuming it came from another sword, that's quite a stretch. In fact, it's almost like bullshit.
So the Shade has his nose thrust up in the air, sniffing like a bloodhound when an Urgal breaks a twig and the Shade gets pissed. The Urgals shrank back, motionless. That is quite a bit of writing fail. It makes it sound like the Urgals suddenly froze and were pulled backward by stagehands. I get what he means, they moved backa nd then stood still, but the phrasing is so awkward that it renders the whole thing ridiculous. So three elves come into the clearing, all on horses, and one is compared to a rapier. which will be strange because as we read on, it seems that this world only has broadswords and other heavy hitters. There are two male elves guarding a Mary Sue, I mean female elf. You can tell she'd a Mary Sue because she get's a whole paragraph of description. So the bad guys attack and the Shade yells Garjzla!
Gesundheit.
So the bad guys kill the two male elves and the horses and the Shade follows her. Mary Sue decides to pull out the Macguffin and sends it away in a burst of light. Shadey gets pissed and knocks her out, then kills his minions. He then utters prophecies of revenge, which I think just means that he said what he was going to do to her. That's not a prophecy. So he ties her to his horse, and leaves a burning forest behind.
This is going to be painful.