TV Tropes. I waste too much time on this site, but I keep finding little gems like these.

[rhyson]

Xenofiction: Literature: "A couple chapters in the third book in The Inheritance Cycle takes place from the perspective of Saphira, a sapient dragon. Attempts are made to convey an alien mindset, such as Saphira giving descriptive metaphoric names to man-made objects, but the main effect is that Saphira comes across as a self-absorbed sociopath who

Comments

[immortal_drayk]

Not to mention a little confusing with all the hyphens XD

[swankivy]

Oh yeah. Definitely. Paolini was trying SO hard to make the thoughts non-human, but they just came off as ridiculous. Some things I said about the Saphira chapters in my essays:

If I add hyphens to stuff and mush up images, it will sound unique.I also found Saphira's narration obnoxious. I think lots of people are saying this, too, but Paolini's attempt to give Saphira's narration its own flavor came out really awkwardly. He made her half unspeakably arrogant and half ridiculously naïve, and he attempted to create a non-human mode of thought by having her conceive of certain concepts in lumped-together ways (indicated by awkward hyphen-bound phrases). It doesn't really result in making her perspective unique so much as it is full of distractingly pointless rearrangings. Stuff like "soft-hard-ground" or "wind-of-morning-heat-above-hills," and she has these dumb thoughts about how silly she thinks it is that humans don't fly and how she just can't figure out why not. It just kinda fails all around. I think it was a really poor