Brisingr (Inheritance, Book 3)

Customer Reviews

• "...events have been dark and bloody of late."  Sep 28, 2008 (347 of 403 found this helpful)

  I'm not your typical Eragon basher. I find the professional Eragon detractors tiringly obsessive, and every time someone clogs up a message board with another hey-this-is kinda-like-Star Wars post he's SURE is pure unprecedented genius insight, I'm certain an angel loses his wings.
  
  Unfortunately, the series is growing into the complaints. Paolini does have talent, but his sales figures and incredible life story have seemingly allowed his manuscripts to go unchecked, and his writing flaws are getting worse, not better.
  
  
  Three major problems with "Brisingr":
  
  1) It's way too violent. It opens on a group of fanatics who slice off their own limbs to prove their faith, whose rituals we observe in loving detail. (The head priest has lopped himself down to just a torso.) We soon continue to a torture victim whose eyes have been pecked - eaten - out of his face. "Gore" is Paolini's favorite word, particularly when it is "smeared" on something, and we get endless graphic depictions of Roran's hammer smashing an enemy soldier's skull/throat/arm/spine, its owner rejoicing in the carnage. I don't expect war to be bowlderized, but the book revels in charnel for its own sake and is too bloody for readers under thirteen.
  
  2) Eragon has become a bit of a sociopath. A reunion with one of his childhood bullies - who's just been through horrific torture - becomes a control-and-humiliate fantasy that's disturbing. When the typically closed Arya touchingly recounts her love's recent death and how it stole all joy from her world, Eragon's heart is unmoved; he feels only irritation and jealousy, fuming that he will "not be discouraged in his suit". (Has he been reading "The Game"?) The book's ruminations on the morality of killing reach only the uninspired conclusion that it's unavoidable in war, and we're thus meant to take a certain satisfaction when Eragon joyfully dispatches even those ordinary men forced into service by Galbatorix. I guess the debate was meant only to free us from our nagging moral reservations.
  
  As in "Eldest", Eragon's praised to high heaven by every single soul, given credit for every achievement. At points, the book seems to have other characters only so that they can sing of their inferiority to its shining star.
  
  3) As nearly every other commenter has noted, it's too bloated, with deadly pacing. Galbatorix's nightmarish Ra'zac servants are dealt with early, leaving Eragon to dither with rebel leader Nasuada and go off on a few preparatory errands for about 600 pages. (A 200-page detour into dwarf politics is particularly deadening.) We keep waiting for the meat to arrive, for some crisis or confrontation, and (save for a quick and inconsequential early battle with Murtagh) it never comes. There is no real climax, save for the easily-accomplished sacking of one city and a death we all long saw coming, albeit not in such meaningless circumstances.
  
  The lack of individual voices in the story makes things drag all the more; every character has an identical manner of speaking, all bloviation and overexplanation in high-fantasy Olde Englishe. Paolini too often substitutes scads of meaningless proper names for the little moments that make bring a fantasy world to life.
  
  A few of those moments slip through, though, like the dotty old man who roosts in the majestic ruins of a half-toppled, tree-like tower, harvesting peas. Or when Arya, on a whim, braids a miniature ship from wild grasses and breathes into it magic that will allow it fly for perpetuity; Eragon wonders what stories people will tell of it in the years to come. I laugh at the self-important magicians' society Du Vrangr Gata, whose study of the ancient language is not as complete as they think and whose name therefore translates into the Alagaesian equivalent of Engrish. I like the atypically crusty elven smith, intolerant of how

• A satisfying fantasy adventure tale  Sep 21, 2008 (299 of 362 found this helpful)

  I enjoyed the first two books of this series, and was eager to read the third. I won't outline the plot, because you can find that elsewhere. I will just tell you what I think about this book.
  
  It is an enjoyable read, and a worthy third installment to the series. I thought that Eragon was a very good story, and Eldest not quite as good, although Paolini's writing had improved. Brisingr is the best of the three. I fell back into the story right away, and I found myself caring about the characters, even worrying about their safety. This is what I look for in fiction: it made me want to pick up the book every chance I got. If it interferes with the rest of my life, it is a very good book. Brisingr is one of those books. I am thankful to my son that he recommended this series to me.
  
  Some reviewers of Eldest were very critical of the fact that the plot is derivative of other epics, like The Lord Of The Rings or Star Wars. I didn't mind this in the least. It is the tale of a hero's journey, complete with absence, devestation and return. It is one of the oldest tales in storytelling. We already know the story, but it is the storytelling that makes it good or bad. Paolini is a good writer. Not as great as Tolkein or LeGuin, but good nevertheless. I was able to suspend my inner critic, and enjoy the read. I recommend that you do the same.

• This should have been the final book.  Sep 21, 2008 (328 of 409 found this helpful)

  I was disappointed when I first heard some months ago that the Inheritance trilogy would, in fact, become longer. Part of me wonders if the 4th book wont also end up being too long, and needing to be split. Eragon certainly has more to do now than he did at the end of Eldest, and Paolini has made it clear that whenever Eragon swears an oath to someone, we're going to devote a whole lot of time to watching him do it. Given that Eragon swears a new oath every 50 pages or so (give or take), it may be a while before he gets caught up.
  
  I have long since given up on the tiresome fantasy series of Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, and the like as I noticed that after about the 3rd or 4th book, nothing new happens. A series should be short, maintain our attention, and always keep in mind the primary conflict between hero and villian.
  
  Books one and two of the Inheritance cycle did this. At the end of Eldest, Eragon has three things that need be done, fulfill his promise to Roran, return to Oromis, and defeat Galbatorix. The first of those is finished in the early pages of the book, but from there, we spiral away from the story and into tiresome cliche. Eragon spends pages moaning and groaning about how he has been forced to kill, but it never amounts to anything. Eragon and Roran spend pages pontificating at each other in conversations that make each of them sound as though they were raised in the hearts of academia, rather than on the farm.
  
  As an aside, the characters talk way too much in this book. For pages. One wonders when they pause to take breath. Even other characters notice this "He certainly talks alot." says Saphira at one point. Yes, I suppose he does. But then, so do you, my dear blue dragon. So do you...
  
  As for the plot, what is there to say? Of the three tasks Eragon had at the beginning, two are completed. But with much else along the way. Eragon visits and then leaves a mysterious hermit who'se only purpose in the book is so we wont be surprised again when he shows up next time, no doubt to give Eragon a crucial piece of information. We spend page after page waiting for the dwarves to elect the ruler we all know well in advance will be elected in a process that isn't the least bit interesting. One hopes that the elected leader is able to cut through the red tape.
  
  We learn things about Eragon's father that don't suprise us in the least, and even dissapoint us, as they make Eragon a far less interesting character, and free him completely of the guilt that was the sole characteristic making him interesting. Galbatorix's and Murtagh's inexplicable strength is explained using a plot device that I'm sure Paolini developed only after making his two villians untouchably strong. And when Glaedr gives Eragon a gift towards the end, I knew it would mean only one thing.
  
  This should have been the final book.
  
  But instead of the planning and fighting against the forces of the empire, we get Eragon brooding whether or not he should eat meat or starve to death. (He eats the meat, but feels real bad about it.) Instead of studying new spells and magic, Eragon asks an Urgal for a bedtime story. And instead of a climactic battle between Eragon and Galbatorix, we get a deeper insight into the dwarven political arena than is needed or even wanted.
  
  At this point, I'm invested in the series, however, and I await the fourth (but will it be the final?) book with the same anticipation as I await a trip to the dentist, or the DMV. It's just one of those things you don't really look forward to, except for the feeling of relief when it's all over.

• Get Paolini a Better Editor  Oct 11, 2008 (25 of 28 found this helpful)

  I read the author's notes at the back of the book before I started and that's where I learned that this book would have been much longer had not an editor worked with Paolini to trim it down.
  
  Time to fire that editor and hire one who will actually do the job.
  
  Paolini's writing and the attendant lack of a competent editor remind me of what happened with Tom Clancy's books: A halfway decent story gets buried in all sorts of bad writing. If it's not the minutiae of how a sword is made (reminded me of one of Clancy's little side-trips in how to make a submarine quiet), it's the endless repetition of information that has already been introduced and death-by-hackneyed-phrases. Really, a simple search and delete of the overused phrase "waking dream" and oft-repeated references to the trial of long blades will likely reduce this book by about 50 pages. Then cut out the gratuitous meandering into useless subplots (such as the cult execution scene at the beginning, dwarf politics, Roran's integration into the Varden warriers, three paragraphs of description every time Saphira needs to poke her head into something small) and Paolini could have hit the salient plot points *and* finished this epic all within 350 pages.
  
  It's a ponderously long and winded tale that doesn't add significantly to what was already known, and then snatches away the payoff by needing another 700-page tome to finish the tale. None of this would be as bothersome if the writing were actually good.
  
  When I first read Eragon and criticized it for these same failings, my friends said, "He's a young author and this is a great achievement for someone in his teens." OK, I'll buy that. But it's been six years since Eragon was published. One would think the boy wonder had actually learned better writing and story telling skills in the intervening years. If nothing else, some one at Knopf should have assigned a competent editor to rein in the ceaseless blather.

• Zip this book please Mr Paolini  Oct 10, 2008 (68 of 84 found this helpful)

  This book is as slow as a tortoise with arthritis, and at the end of the painful slow-march you realize you haven't moved much, from where you stopped in Eldest. It is painfully obvious that Paolini was made to (?) prolong this series. The actual plot can be told in about 100 pages; the rest is either horribly drawn out descriptions or meaningless and repetitive conversations.
  
  Some scenes go like this (not the actual words, but you will get the drift):
  
  Eragon: Saphira, isn't it wrong to kill people?
  Saphira: No young one, sometimes you have to do what you do, for the greater good.
  
  Now, this is blown into a page-long dialogue where they repeat the same question and answer in passive voice, reported speech etc. I felt like stuffing Eragon into Saphira's mouth to shut them both up. When one thinks they have finally reached a consensus and the plot will move on, they move to another track:
  
  Eragon: Saphira, I love you
  Saphira: I love you too, young one.
  Eragon: I can't bear to be separated from you Saphira, not even for a moment
  Saphira: I can't either...
  Eragon: Saphira.....
  Saphira: young one....
  
  I felt like shouting "Get a room!!!", before I remembered they were a dragon and rider, not star-crossed teenage lovers. Then, finally, the coddling was over and I started hoping again that something would happen.
  
  Enter Arya...
  
  Eragon: Arya, baby, how do you feel while killing someone?
  
  I fervently wished she would show him instead of telling him :)