Brisingr

Overall score:

I remember a few years back enjoying Eragon and Eldest. I distinctly recall my shock when I spent more time perusing various forums; people accused Eragon of being derivative in nature, along with just being poor writing. At the time, being a young teenager, I couldn't believe them bashing my new favorite books! They had some nerve!

And so, opening Brisingr a few years later, I was horrified to realize that those who bashed on Inheritance were completely right.

I'm not saying Brisingr had some vast, sweeping alteration in style from the first two books which caused me to hate it--after all, I really did like Eragon and Eldest. Rather, I think all three of the books were lackluster and I didn't realize it until reading Book Three. Splitting what was originally Book Three into Brisingr and the untitled fourth book is a colossal mistake on Paolini's part.

Perhaps I simply aged past Paolini's target group, and having read other truly fantastic books, Brisingr felt wholly lacking. I expected an exquisitely written opening scene with Eragon and Roran assaulting Helgrind, but what I got was a narrative that plodded along, and I never felt any real tension at any moment in the book. I noticed that, in lieu of really invoking emotion and tension, Paolini uses a bunch of figurative language, hoping that it will be enough. It saddened me as a fan of Inheritance that it was, in fact, never enough.

The book's subtitle is “The Seven Promises of Eragon Shadeslayer and Saphira Bjartskular”, and that subtitle is, unfortunately, extremely accurate. Instead of dynamic battles in an epic war--which was what I had wanted--there are a bunch of oaths to fulfill with stunningly few action scenes. The action scenes I received, while being a breath of fresh air after all of the boredom, were uninspired and lacked tension.

I hear a lot of complaints about the section where Eragon goes back to Farthen Dur to help elect the new dwarf king and how boring it was, but I really thought it was a better portion of the book. At least in that section, there is a clear conflict and some tension, whereas most of the book fails in that regard. The distinct lack of tension is disturbing, considering there is supposed to be this epic war to overthrow Galbatorix occurring all around us.

An example of one of Paolini's failings is that he needed to start scenes close to a point of action. Instead, when we get a viewpoint, Paolini doesn't skip around. At all. He insists on telling every conceivable thing that happens. There was a time where Eragon, after the Helgrind sequence, sat around in the Empire not doing a whole lot, and I had to read a sentence like, “Then Eragon ate a large meal.” After a hundred pages, I stopped caring about what anyone did because it was so superfluous. I could open the book and note that three-fourths of the plodding narrative could be cut. If a zealous editor had done that, then I wouldn't be inflicted with this painful book and Book Three would not have needed to be split up. I would've gotten the dynamic book I wanted. Alas, my hopes were in vain.

There are some parts of the book that were worth reading, and true to the core appeal of Inheritance, it had to do with dragons. When there was a section with Saphira's viewpoint, it was genuinely interesting (and funny, something I think Paolini attempted quite a few times in Brisingr but never worked until I got a Saphira viewpoint). When Dragon Riders fought, it was still cool, albeit with some clunky writing, but I forgave it because Dragon Riders are so cool. You could essentially distill whether a section of Brisingr is good by looking to see if dragons are doing anything in a chapter. 

My boredom with the book definitely impacted my response to the ending. There's a plot twist towards the end, but I wasn't surprised. You finally get to realize what Solembum's prophecy about the Menoa Tree meant, but the way it was revealed gave me no satisfaction because I didn't feel much tension. A character dies in the end (this isn't really a spoiler, because Paolini already hinted at this), but this death is in no way surprising. The only fresh piece was the revelation of Galbatorix and Murtagh's source of power. Unfortunately, the final battle in the book seems nearly forced, simply existing because it was the end of the book, and the end needed a final battle of sorts.

If you can forgive Paolini for poor prose, I guess you would want to read the book for the sake of the cool dragons. I can only hope that Book Four, with the third dragon egg hatching and Galbatorix actually stepping up to be a real villain, will give me more dragons and more Dragon Rider battle scenes. That is what saves Brisingr from being a complete failure, so pile it on, Paolini.

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Written by Chaos2651 on October 06th, 2008