Murtagh (Part 3)
STATS
Title: Murtagh
Series: N/A
Author(s): Christopher Paolini
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy (Epic)
First Printing: November 2023
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
SPOILERS
Mild spoilers for Murtagh will be included throughout this review, through I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labelled sections.
Heavy spoilers for the Inheritance Cycle will be included throughout the review. These shall not be marked.
PLOT
The plot of Murtagh isn’t bad at a conceptual level. If I were to lay out the events of this story in 60 seconds, it would sound like a fitting sequel to the Inheritance Cycle. Paolini had good ideas here.
Execution is another matter entirely.
I don’t think Paolini used AI to write this book. However, I do wonder if perhaps he’s forgotten his own work. The flaws in this book’s plot are what you’d expect from an amateur writer whose entire writing process is dictated by the phrase, “Well, this other author did it, so I’ll do it, too,” without any deper understanding of why the other author did things that way.
Murtagh is long, painfully slow, derivative, and telegraphs every major development. The Inheritance Cycle was all these things, too, but at least there were smaller stories woven through this frameworks to keep things interesting. Instead of those smaller stories, Murtagh has filler and side quests, as if our main character lives in a video game and needs to grind EXP before he’s ready for the boss fight. More than half of this book could be cut outright with minimal impact on the overall narrative. What’s more, Paolini takes something that could have been an interesting character arc to drive the narrative in new directions and botches it to an absurd degree, exposing the hand of the author steering events (slowly, oh so very slowly) towards his desired climax.
Organization
Paolini made the decision to split the narrative of Murtagh into parts, with each part compromised of Murtagh’s adventures in a specific location (plus some of his travel time from the previous location / to the next location):
Part I: Cenuon
Part II: Gil’ead
Part III: Nal Gorgoth
Part IV: Oth Orum
Part V Reunion (set in Ilirea)
For the most part, this is a stylistic element that doesn’t impact the overall narrative. Each part except Part V is accompanied by some sort of location map detailing the general area. Some people will appreciate this; others won’t. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or the other.
One thing I will gripe about is how Paolini resets the chapter numbers at the start of each part. This book have five chapters that are “Chapter 1”. This baffles me. As someone reading the e-book, I can easily pop open a menu and scroll to any chapter I choose, but it must be a nightmare to look up a specific chapter or scene in a physical copy. The advantage of sequential chapter numbers across an entire book is that you can tell you are relative to the chapter you want to visit by looking at the other chapter numbers. Unless the hard copies reiterate the part number on each page (or, at least, every chapter heading), you could be looking for Chapter 15, open the book to Chapter 4, and have no idea whether you need to flip forward or backwards to reach your intended destination.
Part of me wonders if Paolini organized the book like this to make the story seem like more of an epic adventure than it actually is. Murtagh spends the whole book in one small corner of the world map and visits four locations in total (I personally don’t count Oth Orum as being separate from Nal Gorgoth, as the former is a cave system under the latter.) Splitting each major location into its own part and restarting chapter numbers each time makes the locations feel like books unto themselves.
Pacing
What Eragon Did
Nearly the entire plot of Eragon is one long grind to transition Eragon from a naïve farm boy to a fledgling hero fighting alongside the Varden. Multiple chapters are spent in Carvahall with Eragon going about his everyday life while Saphira is still in her egg, and then more chapters are spent on him taking care of the newly hatched Saphira until the Ra’zac arrive. We then spend the bulk of the book on Eragon wandering around Alagaësia and acquiring skills, first with Brom and then with Murtagh, going on various side quests as he learns to read, fight, ride Saphira safely, and use magic. It isn’t until Arya is rescued from Gil’ead and Eragon has to flee back across the continent to hide with the Varden that the pace properly picks up, and even then, we get multiple chapters on the headlong flight and on him and Murtagh getting into trouble in the Beor Mountains. We then get a few more chapters on Eragon dealing with Varden politics and preparing for the final battle.
This book is long. There’s a lot of excess meat that could be trimmed off to produce something less bloated.
However, note that I said “meat”, not “fat”. For as long as Eragon is, Paolini is always making productive use of that time. Eragon always has a reason, both within his characterization and in the framework of the narrative, to be taking the time that he does. What’s more, Paolini fills this time with smaller conflicts that keep the audience engaged.
When Saphira is still in her egg, Eragon’s primary focus is how he can make a little extra money for his family, since he and his uncle will soon have to manage their farm without the aid of his cousin.
When Saphira is born, Eragon’s focus shifts to the tasks of taking care of her and keeping her hidden.
After the Ra’zac arrive, his uncle dies, and Brom reveals himself as Eragon’s mentor, the story becomes a tale of revenge. Eragon and Brom are journeying across the continent because they are trying to find the lair of the Ra’zac by gathering information. This ultimately leads to Brom’s death.
After Brom’s death, Eragon’s dreams of Arya inspire him to find and rescue her.
After Arya’s rescue, he and Saphira have no choice but to go to the Varden, both to protect themselves and to save Arya’s life.
Each of these stories tapers into the next. In a sense, Eragon is a string of short stories and novellas that have been collected together to cover a larger story arc. Critically, as soon as Brom properly reveals himself, Paolini acknowledges that Eragon needs to go to the Varden sooner or later - but now is not the time. Brom wanted to train Eragon personally before exposing him to the Varden’s politics. Combine this with Eragon wanting revenge, and the result was that the adventure was prolonged for character-based reasons by the majority of the core cast. Later, when Brom dies and Murtagh joins the group, Eragon is prioritizing the rescue of the woman in his dreams, while Murtagh wants nothing to do with the Varden. The reasons change, but the character-based opposition to skipping ahead remains.
The long and short of it is that, while Eragon is a very long book, it isn’t long for the sake of being long or because Paolini is bad at editing. It’s long because the stories being told necessitate that it be that long. This translates into a sense of constant forward momentum. It never feel like the pace had ground to a halt while the narrative sounds its wheels. Eragon always has a reason to do what he is doing, and those reasons, in and of themselves, make it feel like the time is being well-spent.
What Murtagh Did
The story of Murtagh spans 563 pages in e-book format (with the opening of Part I, including the map of Ceunon, being on page 14 of the book, while the last page before Addendum is on 576). The breakdown by parts is:
Part I: 63 pages
Part II: 203 pages
Part III: 238 pages
Part IV: 41 pages
Part V: 16 pages
Parts I and V are as long as they need to be. Their pace is slow, but that fits the pacing one would expect from the opening and closing of a book. Part IV is also mostly okay. I feel like sinking six pages into drama over Zar’roc’s name was a pointless exercise, but the slower chapters in this part are being used by Paolini to build up an otherworldly atmosphere prior to the final fight. Tightening the pace here would damage another aspect of the story.
Part II should have been cut ourtight. What little it accomplishes for the narrative could be accomplished by adding a few chapters (50 pages, at the absolute most) to Part I. The wasted pages produce the very wheel-spinning that Paolini managed to avoid in Eragon. The reason Murtagh goes to Gil’ead is because, after the opening encounter with thugs loyal to the Dreamers, he wants to know who this Bachel person they’re working for is and where he can find her. He has a contact in the court whom he believes can help him. Instead of meeting her, he gets roped into a chain of side quests so that another character (whose role in the story ends when he leaves Gil’aed) can deliver all the necessary information in a single conversation. As he is trying to leave, he encounters Lyreth, resulting in a mini-mission before Thorn rescues him and they flee. Paolini tries to use this time to explore Murtagh’s and Thorn’s trauma, but as we covered on October 25th, the handling of Murtagh’s trauma is too disjointed to feel meaningful. As a result, this whole chain of events feels like Paolini outlined objectives that he wanted Murtagh to achieve in Gil’ead and then wrote backwards to hit a word count. The story would be vastly improved by simply relocating the Lyreth mini-mission and its fallout to Part I and then having Lyreth spout the exposition that Murtagh went to Gil’ead for.
Part III is only a little better than Part II. This part can’t be ripped out wholesale. What’s more, at a conceptual level, it does make sense for Paolini to include all the things that he does. At first, Murtagh is biding his time so that he can wring as much information out of Bachel and the Dreamers as possible before he flies off and warns Eragon and Nasuada; then he spends a chunk of the story as a prisoner. Again, Paolini uses this time to explore more of Murtagh’s trauma. There’s also a narrative device, namely the visions from Azlagûr, that takes time to play out. The problem here is that Paolini takes way too much time to do these things. Did we really need to have multiple scenes of Bachel stonewalling Murtagh? Did we really need to see Murtagh go on a boar hunt with Bachel? Did we really need multiple scenes of Murtagh being tortured and then struggling with the effects of his mind control / trauma (it’s not clear which is actually holding him back from finishing the book)? The pace is sacrificed due to a series of deliberate choices by the author, and unlike with Part IV, there’s not even a worthwhile payoff to that sacrifice. The simple fact of the matter is that the substantive content of Part III could reasonably be collapsed into just 60% of the total page count. If Paolini really wanted to take as much time as he did, he needed to give Murtagh stronger objectives and more agency in achieving those objectives so that the pace wouldn't feel like it had ground to a halt.
Alín (Heavy Spoilers)
I’ve made some potentially incendiary comments over the past few weeks regarding Paolini’s handling of, and potential bias regarding, religion. This wasn’t something I was eager to do, given that it strays away from objective literary analysis, but I promise that this is where things come full circle.
As mentioned on November 8th, Alín’s role within the story was telegraphed soon after her appearance. She is the one good person in a mad cult, a pure soul exploited by wicked religious leadership, a naïve child who needs the rational man to enlighten her. It was obvious that she would betray the Dreamers in some capacity to aid Murtagh.
Paolini very clearly wrote Alín based upon an archetype, copying the work of other writers rather than developing his own approach to this character concept, yet that didn’t necessary mean that Alín’s contribution to the plot would break it. The man wrote an entire series of good books based on derivations. Surely, he could pull this off.
Unfortunately, he chose to have Alín betray the Dreamers on the basis of a crisis of faith that makes no sense.
Setting the Stage
Alín is a “temple chosen” - effectively a Vestal Virgin, right down to the severe penalties for any man who smeks physical contact with her - and wears white robes to signify her purified state. She is first introduced as a serving girl at a feast where Bachel welcomes Murtagh to Nal Gorgoth and then serves as Murtagh's guide. She shows immense reverence for Murtagh, as the prophesized champion would would lead Azlagûr’s cleansing of the world, and Thorn, who is an aspect of Azlagûr. When Thorn touches her mind with his, it is a deeply spiritual experience for her. The only thing that outweighs her reverence of them is her fear of Bachel's wrath.
Alarm Bells Started Ringing
After Murtagh trespasses in a holy place of the Dreamers, Bachel to subdues him and Thorn with the Breath, imprisons Murtagh, and then tortures them both until they break and submit to her will. After the break, we get a scene where Alín brings Murtagh food, leading to the following interaction.
A flame flickered to life in the lantern at the head of the hall, and then Alín hurried to Murtagh’s cell, carrying a bowl of watery soup with half a loaf of bread in it. She hesitated upon seeing him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and thrust the bowl between the iron bars. “It was never supposed to be like this.” And she rushed away, her footsteps light as feathers on the stones.
My initial reaction note read as follows:
Like what? In what way are things not going according to plan (outside of things that, from your POV, are the fault of Murtaugh and Thorn)?
I know that the Dreamers are Alagaësia’s version of the Cult of Cthulhu. Even readers who don’t recognize what Paolini is copying can see that the Dreamers are a sinister organization with dark ambitions for Alagaësia. It’s also a little hard for us to ignore the visions and dreams Murtagh keeps having of Azlagûr destroying the world. It is safe to say that we all know that the Dreamers and Azlagûr are an unambiguous force of evil.
From Alín’s perspective, though, Murtagh should unambiguously be in the wrong. She should perceive him as the evil one here.
Murtagh came to the Dreamers and was welcomed as their champion. In return, he trespassed in a place sacred to the Dreamers in the dead of night, assaulting several guards along the way. Thorn was his accomplice in these deeds, even if he didn't enter the sacred space himself. Bachel and her right-hand man caught Murtagh in said sacred space. Despite the penalty for his sin being death, Bachel offered Murtagh a chance to repent; Murtagh chose to fight his way out. (This can't be argued as self-defense, much like how fighting off police who have legal grounds to forcibly arrest you isn't self-defense.) Bear in mind that all of this assumes that Bachel told the Dreamers the truth of what Murtagh did. Given that the only other witness in the sacred space was her right-hand man, she could have claimed that Murtagh came there to assassinate her, or that Azlagûr had awoken and decreed that Murtagh needed to be cleansed of sin through servitude and physical suffering, or anything that would erase any doubts about why he and Thorn needed to be punished.
On top of this, Paolini chose to establish that the Dreamers are no strangers to harsh suffering as a punishment for sin. One of Paolini’s efforts to make the Dreamers seem creepy is that Murtagh witnesses a dream-sharing session. A woman was sentenced to what was implied to be agonizing punishment for having a dream that was out of alignment with the visions from Azlagûr. In another effort by Paolini, Alín is whipped for not deflecting Murtagh’s questions about the Dreamers effectively enough. Nothing that is happening to Murtagh or Thorn should be considered extreme for a Dreamer, especially given the gravity of their offense.
At this point in the story, based upon what Paolini himself has chosen to share with the audience, Alín should not be apologizing to Murtagh for anything. She should be absolutely furious at him for his treachery. He was supposed to be their champion. She showed him and Thorn all due reverence. In exchange, he betrayed the Dreamers’ hospitality. He should swallow his punishment and be grateful that it is not worse. When he has truly repented, he will understand his transgression.
But Paolini couldn’t write that. He needed Alín to waver in her convictions so that his plot can progress. What's more, because he cannot empathize with religious people, he cannot fathom how any rational human being would not immediately side with Murtagh in this situation. He therefore failed to write Alín in a way that would justify this reaction.
It All Burned Down
Within two chapters of the above outburst from Alín, the plot snaps like a twig.
Paolini wrote himself into a corner when he imprisoned Murtagh. He resorted to layers of naked contrivance to get Murtagh back out. I’ll break down that disaster separately in a moment. For how, let’s focus on Alín’s pivotal contribution to the catastrophe.
As part of his imprisonment, Murtagh is fed the drug that prevents the use of magic. This continues even after he submits to Bachel’s will. This drug is laced into his food and water; he needs to get off this drug for an extended period so that it will leave his system, thereby restoring his access to magic. His plan to accomplish this is to use Alín.
This is how he goes about it. (For brevity’s sake, I am removing all the ellipses that Paolini included in the dialogue to reflect how the Breath makes it harder for Murtagh to speak.)
Finally … footsteps at the end of the hall.
Alín, come to retrieve the bowl she had brought him earlier. As he had hoped. The white-robed woman gave him only a brief, concerned glance before kneeling and reaching between the bars for the bowl.
“Wait,” Murtagh said, and moved to touch her wrist. At the last moment, an instinct halted his hand, though he could not have said why.
She paused, arm outstretched, her eyes wide and round, like those of a frightened doe.
“Will you talk with Bachel [and] arrange to bring me all my meals?”
He could see her tremble. “Why, Kingkiller?” she whispered.
“So you can leave out the drug.” He stared her straight in the eyes, as earnest ashe could be. “So Thorn and I can escape.”
Her trembling increased, and she shook her head, as if to deny his words, but still she did not pull back her arm. “I—I can’t.”
“Please help. Bachel will wash the world with blood if she can.”
Alín shook her head again, and then she did withdraw, and she fled back up the hallway, robe flying behind her.
This failure makes sense. Of course Murtagh wasn't to succeed throughout such a blunt approach. He is asking a devout follower of this religion to release the man who violated a place she finds holy because, if she doesn't, the prophet of her god will … deliver on the future that she has prayed for. It would be nonsense if this worked.
… of course, Paolini can’t process how ludicrous this is, so the next chapter opens with Alín coming back to explain why she will betray everyone and everything she’s ever known for Murtagh's sake.
Alín hugged herself. Then she said, “You don’t understand…. How could you? But you don’t. You can’t.” Her countenance grew pleading. “I believed in Bachel. I believe. She is no false prophet. She speaks with the authority of Azlagûr, and how can any question Azlagûr when we live with His dreams? We all share in the dream of Nal Gorgoth and the vision of what may come. And when that vision becomes manifest…” She shivered violently. “The world will be remade according to Azlagûr’s will.” She rubbed her arms as if cold. “Always I wondered at what lay beyond this valley. Always Bachel has told us of the evils that inhabit Alagaësia, of the war and injustices.” She shook her head. “But you are not evil, Kingkiller. Nor is Thorn. And the way in which Bachel has treated Thorn…It goes against everything I know. Every tenet I believe. Everything she has preached to us over the years!”
She turned and paced between the cells, distraught. Still, Murtagh held his tongue. With a wild look, she spun back to him, her small teeth bared like those of a cornered animal. “Dragons are the lifeblood of the land, Kingkiller! They are the source of all that is good, the font of life and magic and…and…They are to be worshipped. Revered. Honored. Served. And yet Bachel says this mistreatment of Thorn is necessary. Needed. According to Azlagûr’s will! I…I—” She broke off and shivered again as if with fever.
What is she rambling about? Murtagh and Thorn are absolutely evil, at least by the morality Alín was raised with. Imagine, if you would, that you were told for your entire life that your next-door neighbors were thieves and criminals, and when one finally visited, you caught that person red-handed in an effort to hack into the family computer to steal personal information. Which would be more realistic in this scenario: that you’d say, “So it’s true! You really are a thief and a criminal!” or would you fight tooth and nail to help this person escape?
The idea that Bachel is contradicting the faith of the Dreamers by punishing Thorn falls flat. First, Paolini doesn’t spell out what, exactly, Bachel says to justify punishing Thorn, but it should be very easy for her to rationalize the situation to a sufficient degree to convince, say, a member of the temple chosen.
She could say that Thorn has been corrupted by his time in the outside world, that his transgressions were not his fault but that he must nonetheless be purified.
She could say that Thorn requested an accelerated spiritual purification so that his and Murtagh’s dreams could more rapidly align with Azlagûr’s, with any protests they now made being moments of spiritual weakness that they had to ride out.
She could claim that Azlagûr was testing or punishing the Dreamers as a whole, that the emotional pain they all felt in hurting this dragon was meant to steel their hearts for the inevitable task of fighting the fallen dragons under the thrall of other Riders.
Second … the Dreamers DON’T believe that the dragons are celestial beings who fill the world with life. Bachel outrights says as much in the climax.
“All my life, we worshipped the dragons, as you taught us. You said -”
“The dragons?” said Bachel, her voice so loud that Alín quailed into submission. The witch laughed, and there was nothing pleasant in the sound. “You wish to understand that which is above your station, wretch, but I will indulge you this once. Azlagûr has no regard for the little worms. They may serve Him or not, and if not, the calamity of His arrival shall sweep them aside. That is as He desires. That is as it shall be. The little worms are not gods. They are noisome spawn, weak, blind, benighted.”
The twelve staff-wielding Draumar seemed unsurprised. Murtagh wondered if they were Bachel’s inner circle, privy to information kept from the rest of the cult.
Bachel didn’t tell the Dreamers this pivotal information? She didn’t tell the people who were chosen to work within the temple itself? She kept the secret to these twelve random people who were not previously established as being in any way important?
There’s an episode of The Twilight Zone titled, “The Howling Man.” A man named David Ellington stumbles upon a strange monastery, where the monks keep a prisoner who howls through the night. The monk who is serving as David’s guide, Brother Jerome, says that this Howling Man is the Devil, imprisoned in the monastery to minimize the evil he inflicts upon the world. David is, naturally, skeptical. He sneaks over to the Howling Man’s door to hear his side of things, where he is fed a sob story about how Brother Jerome imprisoned the Howling Man so that he could seduce the Howling Man’s lover. David finds this the more likely story, so he lets the Howling Man out … only for the Howling Man to immediately reveal that he is indeed the Devil. David spends the next decades tracking the Devil down. When he imprisons him in his closet, he warns his housekeeper not to let the Howling Man out … whereupon she doesn’t believe his story and lets the Devil out again.
Imagine if, instead of this tale of deception and suspicion, David was a monk at the monastery, Brother Jerome insisted that the Howling Man was actually the Archangel Gabriel, and then when David let him out, Jerome screamed, “You fool! Didn’t you know that was the Devil?”
Bachel is open about Azlagûr’s plans to bathe the world in blood. If she’s going to tell the truth about that, she has no reason to lie about the true nature of dragons to her faithful. Even if the Dreamers had somehow lost their way and forgotten how Azlagûr felt about modern dragons, Bachel has been in power for more than a century. She was alive before Galbatorix wiped out the riders. She had plenty of time to sway the opinions of her faithful, the bulk of whom were human and thus were pretty much guaranteed to die out and be replaced by impressionable new cultists over the course of a hundred years. There is absolutely no way that Bachel would keep this fundamental information secret from her followers, especially if the Dragon Riders would be a potential obstacle to Azlagûr’s return.
In other words, Paolini is trying to cover up his failure to write a convincing crisis of faith by assassinating another character. He is shifting the blame and hoping that we won’t notice. It’s not all that different from how Yarros lies to and gaslights her audience.
The Bias
It would not have been impossible for Paolini to write a convincing and meaningful story about a member of the Dreamer cult betraying everything she has ever known to help Murtagh and Thorn. There are glimmers, here and there, of something that could have worked. Later in this scene, there’s actually a line that might have justified Alín’s decision.
“I want to see the truth of the world before Azlagûr washes it clean.”
Later in this scene, Alín will also ask Murtagh to take her with him when he leaves Nal Gorgoth, as a final condition for her freeing him.
Imagine if Alín had approached Murtagh as soon as he arrived in the village and begged him to take her to see the world. There could be a line about her having tried and failed to convince Bachel to send her out into the world to serve the Dreamers’ objectives, with her hoping that Murtagh will have enough sway, as the promised champion, to change Bachel’s mind. Murtagh uses the charm he showed in earlier chapters to manipulate Alín, getting her to help him sneak around the village. When he breaks into the holy place and is then caught, Alín initially feels betrayed, but Murtagh eventually convinces her that freeing him is her only hope to see the world before Azlagûr destroys it. She has to chose between the religion she has embraced her whole life or her heart’s desire.
This is something Paolini could have written, regardless of any biases he may hold about religion. Not only would it have been an easier character to write overall, but it would allow him to make use of a character trait of Murtagh's that he set up in Part II and then abandoned in Part III.
He chose not to do this. Instead, he chose to have Alín turn upon the Dreamers because … That’s Good.
“Then … help us.”
“It is not that simple, Kingkiller. Bachel is the Speaker. She is our mehtra! I have sworn oaths to her and to Azlagûr. I cannot break them, and if I did, oh! I I did, my soul would be forever forsaken.” Her skin glistened with a sheen of sweat, and he could smell the sour stench of her fear. “You ask me to cast away my life and condemn my eternal future for this.”
“… for what is right.” The words struck home. He could see it in the misery of her expression.
I could make excuses for Paolini prior to this point, but this snippet is what ultimately convinced me, upon comparing it to the Inheritance Cycle, that Paolini is incapable of or unwilling to empathize with religious people.
First, one aspect of many religions rooted in belief in a higher power is that morality is derived from the authority of that higher power - or, put another way, morality is good because of its association with the higher power, rather than the higher power being good because of association with human morality. Paolini has very clearly established the Dreamers are the type of religious people who believe this. Azlagûr is their axis of morality. Alín herself believes this - her crisis of faith is supposedly rooted in Bachel violating the Dreamers’ teachings. Telling her to do what is “right” should be the worst thing Murtagh could say. He is actively encouraging her to ignore her own desires (which would lead her to help him) and fall back in line.
Second … by what authority is Murtagh asserting his morality? Perhaps I am misremembering, yet I recall there being a line in the atheist manifesto from Eldest about how everyone has their own gods, so no one has a foundation to claim their gods are the only true gods. This line of thinking also applies to morality. By the thematic logic injected into this setting by Paolini himself, the Dreamers have just as much authority to assert that they are in the right as Murtagh does - more, really. At least their assertion is backed up by a very real dragon of godlike proportions, while Murtagh’s credibility is undermined by him betraying the Dreamers’ hospitality and assaulting their people.
The long and short of this is, this mistake is utterly nonsensical for any competent writer to make. Whatever Paolini’s flaws may be as a writer, he is at least competent. I can see no way that he could have messed this up except that his personal biases kept him from stepping back and objectively assessing what he has spelled out to the audience. He can’t or won’t acknowledge that religious people are every bit as rational as those with secular beliefs, merely framing that rationality around different variables. He therefore ruined a character arc that could have driven the plot forward in a compelling way. He broke Alín and made her act with stupefying irrationality because of his blind faith that his non-religious POV character was the only possible voice of rationality and morality.
Speaking of irrationality, here is the emotional note Paolini tries to end this interaction on.
Tears rolled down her face. In a whisper, she said, “I want…I want a better dream, one of cheer and hope and love.”
As far as Alín knows, the awakening of her god cannot be stopped. The Cthulhu dragon will rise and obliterate the world. How does she think that freeing the guy who has detailed no plan of action for stopping her god is going to get her in any way closer to “cheer and hope and love”? From the perspective, the world is doomed regardless of whether Murtagh is freed. Also, do the Dreamers not have all these things already, in some form? Surely they anticipate holding onto them once Azlagûr destroys everyone else. Or is Paolini implying that every cultist who is not Alín is a psychopath?
The Takeaway
The breaking of Alín to force Paolini’s plot is a sobbering reminder of the importance of reflecting upon whether the writer's interpretation of a story aligns with that of the audience (or even just the facts of the page).
Paolini has demonstrated here how our personal biases can blind us to these problems. However, this also applies to cases when a writer is hyper-fixated on an intended narrative and fails to consider how that narrative is undermined by details that are left out (or included). I could pull an example from Fourth Wing or Iron Flame, but I think Shadow of the Conqueror is a better point of comparison here.
Shad Brooks was so focussed on his redemption narrative about a thoroughly hateable villain that he failed to consider how the combination of Daylen’s anti-social personality and excessively vile past would destroy the audience’s investment in that narrative (and problem further exacerbated by the power fantasy elements). The story he wanted to tell is on the page. Had he down more restraint, perhaps more people would recognize that. As it is, Shad overlooked glaring issues that made is impossible for many people to connect with the material.
The Plot Shatters (Heavy Spoilers)
Now, what necessitated this needless and lazy breaking of a character? What grand purpose did Paolini hope to serve when he exposed the artificiality of his narrative?
Brace yourselves. It gets wilder from here, and the payoff is not worth it.
The Grind
On page 401, Murtagh is incapacitated by the Breath and taken prisoner. This deprives him of his agency. From here until the climax, he is Bachel’s slave to torture, take along on a boar hunt, send to slaughter innocent nomads, and sit around looking pretty at feasts.
He does not get free until page 497.
Roughly 17% of this book is Murtagh wandering around in a daze, helpless to do anything about his situation.
He works with Uvek to enact an escape plan, but that plan is dead in the water until he has access to magic again. He doesn't ask Alín to leave out the drug until page 468. She doesn't agree until page 473. It takes the remaining pages (days in-world) for the drug to work its way out of his system.
So … yeah. 17% of the book is us being dragged along with a POV who has no desire to be in his situation but literally no willpower to do anything about it. 12% of the book is waiting for him to do anything proactive. The remaining 5% is waiting for Paolini to restore Murtagh’s magic at the moment of greatest possible tension.
As we discussed back in Themes, I think Paolini’s objective here was to recreate Murtagh’s trauma of being Galbatorix’s slave so that he could overcome this trauma. The rough outline of this idea is on the page. The problem is that Paolini didn’t consider the narrative implications of Bachel using the Breath on Murtagh and how that would synergize with Murtagh breaking under torture.
Prior to Murtagh breaking, the use of the Breath makes sense. It is how Bachel prevents him from fighting back. However, after he breaks - after we are meant to believe that Murtagh is now her slave, rather than merely her prisoner - she keeps using the Breath. It’s not impossible to justify this from a character perspective (though the logic behind that causes other problems). From a narrative perspective, though, this is disastrous.
If Bachel never bothered to torture and break Murtagh, simply using the Breath on him continuously, the Breath could be seen symbolically as a representation of trauma, and Murtagh's struggles to overcome it could likewise be seen as symbolic. If Bachel has stopped using the Breath after Murtagh broke, then he could struggle with trauma directly. By doing both, it creates with bizarre Schrodinger's trauma situation. Murtagh both overcomes his trauma early on and is a slave to it; he plots his escape when Bachel isn’t paying attention to him and then won’t put up the least amount of resistance when she looks his way.
Maybe Paolini meant to say something about the apathy trauma can inflict upon a person, but on the page, it just reads like Murtagh has zero investment in the story. Why should the audience be invested if the POV character isn't, especially when he is like this for such a massive number of pages?
The Overcomplicated Mess
Bachel keeps Murtagh and Thorn imprisoned through three elements:
They both submitted to her will under torture. This one resolves itself when Murtagh just decides he is over it, and since nothing is mentioned about it from Thorn, we have to assume that he just got over it, too.
She subdues their will with regular doses of the Breath.
Murtagh is drugged to prevent him from using magic, which also severs him from Thorn.
Paolini chose to establish all of these things. He could have just had Bachel control Murtagh with the Breath and the drug, skipping the torture and the braking entirely. He could have had Bachel stop using the Breath and the drug once Murtagh broke and became her thrall. He could have had Bachel extract Murtagh's true name through the use of the Breath, the torture, or by simply asking that he reveal it after he and Thorn broke. There were multiple ways to make this less complicated, but this is the path he chose.
Once Murtagh and Thorn just get over being tortured into submission, we are left with the Breath and the vapors. Murtagh must get off the drug and recover access to his magic. From there, he can cast a healing spell on himself. Based upon some rather clunky foreshadowing (we will get to that) earlier in the book, a basic healing spell can cure diseases. We are meant to think that the Breath can be flushed out in the same manner.
There we have it, then. Paolini broke Alín’s character so Murtagh could slip out of this overcomplicated trap. That's the end of it.
… right?
Unfortunately, this is only one of the three keys to Murtagh's release.
Key #2
Apparently, Murtagh can't just use the standard healing spell that Paolini had him use earlier in the book. He has to use an Urgal healing charm.
Uvek just … has … this healing charm on his person, despite being imprisoned in the same prison as Murtagh.
From his rough leather belt, Uvek produced a small object: a piece of carved blackstone tied with a thin strip of woven cord. “You see? I have charm here. Hornless did not take because they think just rock. Hrr-hrr-hrr.” It took Murtagh a moment to realize the Urgal was laughing. Then Uvek held the stone up so that it caught the lantern light. The surface glittered as if embedded with flecks of gold. “Charm is for healing. Could help with Breath, but…”
“…but?”
“But no strength in charm, Murtagh-man. Charm empty. I used to heal deer with broken leg. I try give charm strength, but”—Uvek shook his head—“weirding not work. But maybe work for you. You are Rider.”
The presence of this charm is a massive plot hole.
This is a setting where common objects can be enchanted to allow the holders of those objects to use spells. Bachel knows this, because she mass-produces protective charms out of crow skulls and distributes them to every petty thug who indirectly serves the Dreamers. They know Uvek is a spellcaster, given that he is also being dosed with the magic-suppression drug (as hinted in this passage and stated elsewhere). Even if they didn’t know, a rock is a weapon that a prisoner can use to his advantage. Uvek is an Urgal, with superhuman strength that can make said rock very dangerous. There is no way they would let him keep the rock.
Is Paolini implying that the Dreamers are as devoid of credibility as the rider leadership in Iron Flame? That’s contradicted by Bachel keeping Murtagh on the Breath after he broke. She may be an arrogant character, but not to such a degree that she would allow prisoners to keep obvious weapons. It’s not like she let Murtagh keep Zar’roc, after all.
Key #3
Murtagh now has this healing charm. He just has to get off the drug, and he can use it.
Except … no … even before they get that far, Murtagh decides they need to use a diamond infused with magical energy.
What diamond, you ask?
The one tucked in his cloak, which the Dreamers took away from him and then gave back after his imprisonment.
In this setting where magically-imbued gemstones are a known means to powering magical items or fortifying a spellcaster's power, the Dreamers made no effort to search his clothes, and therefore completely missed a gemstone the size of a “hazelnut”.
And where did this gem come from, you ask?
Foreshadowing
The foreshadowing in this book is every bit as bad as Iron Flame, reading as though Paolini made up his first draft as he went along and then lazily slapped in foreshadowing in the second. Let’s just focus on the four examples that feed into this nonsense plan.
How do we know healing spells can expunge the Breath? Well, in Part II, there was a brief scene where Murtagh starts to feel sick, so despite his weak vocabulary in the Ancient Language, he tries to cure himself with a basic healing spell. He succeeds on the first try, and it doesn’t come up again until now.
Where did this diamond come from? Well, during the side quest chain in Part II, Murtagh walked through a magical laboratory, saw “a small ornate box full of faceted gems”, and pocketed just the one diamond. He had no reason not to take more. The same reasoning that applied to him taking just the one should have led him to stuff his pockets with gems. However, he took just the one.
Where did this Urgal healing charm come from? I’d say Uvek pulled it out of his ass, but that would actually be a valid explanation for how a small item could be smuggled into a prison. Paolini just made the Dreamers act like idiots and allow this dangerous prisoner to keep a dangerous object.
How does Murtagh know he can turn Alín to his side? Earlier in this chapter, she spouted that nonsensical, “It was never supposed to be like this,” line.
As I said back in Iron Flame, it doesn’t matter whether this element of the story was truly planned out and carefully edited or not. It reads like it was half-assed. When the author can’t be bothered to put in the minimum of effort to set up things in an organic manner, why should we not assume that all conflicts will conveniently resolve themselves once Paolini is done with them?
The Payoff
Once this disaster is set in motion, the conclusion is inevitable.
The drug doesn't fully wear off until the precise moment that Murtagh is about perform a human sacrifice at Bachel's command. Paolini takes so long to build up the tension that it’s obvious Murtagh will break free at the last second. Murtagh then uses the charm to heal Thorn and Uvek as well, and they proceed to lay waste to the Dreamers.
What's so frustrating about this scene is that Paolini parades the flayed skin of what could have been in front of us. He frames Murtagh breaking free as deliberate choice to disobey Bachel, despite being under the influence of the Breath. Somehow, despite being under the influence of the Breath and the drug, he joins his mind with Uvek’s and Thorn’s to muster the will to fight back. However, as we covered up above, the disjointed combination of Murtagh both breaking and being on the Breath makes it feel like he just couldn’t be bothered to break free on his own.
The climax that followed was entertaining enough, but the damage was done. The story was just on autopilot at this point. Between the time wasted and the enormous amount of contrivance, it was clear that Paolini wasn't going to do anything unexpected or even all that exciting with the ending.
The Takeaway
Murtagh's imprisonment had so much thematic and narrative potential. That’s why it is so frustrating that Paolini wrote it so badly. He could have taken all of the pieces he’s laid out and assembled them into something meaningful. Instead, it cobbled together an absolutely nightmare that reads like a first draft.
SYNERGY
Murtagh exists within the same setting and the same continuity as the books of the Inheritance Cycle. It has likewise been set up as a bridge to Book V. It is therefore in the same position as a sequel like Iron Flame. Contradictions or retroactive damage to previous stories are potential issues that wouldn’t exist in the first book within a given continuity.
Right off the bat, I will say that Paolini had a lot more room to work with than he would with a pure sequel. He is starting a new story, rather than continuing a previous one. This minimizes the damage that could be caused by a bad plot. Case and point, he wrote a bad plot, and the Inheritance Cycle is still mostly (emphasis on mostly) unscathed. What’s more, Murtagh and Thorn are the only returning characters (save one other, who is only on the page for Part V). The risk of assassinating a existing character is therefore reasonably low to start with.
Furthermore, Paolini mostly sticks to things he previously established. He prefers to extrapolate, rather than adding wholly new ideas. While this isn’t done perfectly, as we covered back in Worldbuilding, it is still mostly successful.
Why doesn’t Murtagh bring Eragon, Arya, and/or Nasuada into the adventure? He’s a fugitive, and in the case of Eragon, he still has a chip on his shoulder. He doesn’t want to involve any of them until he has the full measure of the Dreamer threat. What’s more, when he does realize what he and Thorn are dealing with, he realizes that he should have gone to them a lot sooner. It works in both directions: Murtagh is not being an idiot by not involving them, and none of these heroes come across as uncaring about the world-ending threat on the horizon.
Why haven’t we heard about the Dreamers before? Well, we have. The Soothsayer was part of the cult. What’s more, the modern cult operates in the shadows, so it makes sense that Eragon wouldn’t have had the chance to bump into them while fighting Galbatorix.
Why is there a Great Old One now? It’s just a really old dragon.
Why can’t Murtagh solve every problem with the Name of Names? Paolini did tell us its limits back in Inheritance, so it’s not impossible that Murtagh would stumble into a situation where he can’t use it.
That being said, Paolini does make some glaring mistakes that do damage the Inheritance Cycle. He even manages to proactively damage Book V.
Memberberries
Paolini manages to mostly avoid pointless fan service. Most the the time, references to past material make sense and feel natural. Even when he shoehorns in a reference to Angela having visited Nal Gorgoth or tells us that a monstrous fish was enchanted by Durza, it’s the sort of thing that only really warrants a shrug. He’s going out of his way to reference these characters, but their involvement does make sense.
This is Paolini, though. He had to take things a few steps too far.
The Grass Ship
Those of you who read Brisingr may recall that Arya wove a ship out of grass and enchanted it to sail on the winds forever. It was throwaway moment that got referenced later in the book when the ship wandered in Roran’s tent in the Varden camp. This later reference was something of a payoff. Roran and Katrina were pondering the future, and this little magical boat distracted them from their worries for a moment.
This ship just … happens upon Murtagh in the third chapter. It interjects itself into a scene of Murtagh fleeing the scene of a brawl. The moment fits about as well as if the Kool-Aid Man exploded through a wall and tried to offer Murtagh a cool beverage. The ship doesn’t even have an impact of the scene. Murtagh just shakes the moment off and goes back to what he was doing.
The Dauthdaert
Those of you who read Inheritance will recall that Paolini introduced a means to kill Shruikan at the very opening of the book: an ancient magical spear that is immune to any magic originating from dragons. The lore is that there were once twelve of these Dauthdaerts, with this being the only one that was not lost or destroyed.
The Dreamers have the Dauthdaert now. Not a Dauthdaert - the same Dauthdaert. Bachel wields it as her weapon of choice whenever she battles with Murtagh.
Just a reminder: this Dauthdaert was buried under a mountain. Arya lost it in the process of killing Shruikan, and then Galbatorix blew himself up in an atomic fireball, causing his citadel to partially collapse. This included the area where the Dauthdaert was. For the Dreamers to have this specific spear, they would need to have either been incredibly luck while picking through the irradiated rubble or somehow known exactly where it was. (Paolini does hint at an explanation for how they recovered it, but that explanation still requires the Dreamers to be extremely lucky that it was found by one of their people without any word or it leaking out to Nasuada or Eragon.)
It is not impossible that the Dreamers could have this Dauthdaert. This is a contrivance, not a plot hole. The issue is that Paolini very clearly chose to have the Dreamers possess this specific spear because of its association with the previous book. We are supposed to be impressed that they possess this specific weapon that previously was gift-wrapped for the heroes.
What makes the memberberries so aggregious here is that it would make far more sense and have more impact if the Dreamers had a different Dauthdaert. They are an ancient and secret cult with a strong reason to want to be able to kill dragons. One of the other eleven Dauthdaerts could reasonably have been recorded as lost because it fell into their possession. Having this is other ancient weapon would add to the idea that they have deep roots, whereas recycling the previously established weapon just feels forced and reiterates what we already knew about their modern-day reach.
The True Villain (Heavy Spoilers)
While Paolini is mostly successful in folding in the Dreamers and Azlagûr into the story, he oversteps with Bachel, thereby damaging both the faction and the Inheritance Cycle.
Remember how I previously said that both Galbatorix and Durza has spent time with the Dreamers?
By itself, that didn't cause problems. We knew Galbatorix hid somewhere after stealing Shruikan, and Durza was this inhuman and terrifying being. Paolini was just building on what came before.
What does cause problem is his decision to parasitize Galbatorix to give Bachel credibility as an antagonist, complete with abandoning all subtlety to beat the audience over the head with his intentions.
Bachel gave a curt nod. “Galbatorix came wandering back through the Spine, alone and half mad. As such, he found us, and it was as such we took him in. At first he distrusted us, even as you have, and he blamed us for the death of Jarnunvösk, but I ministered him with what attentions were needed, and in time, he came to understand that it was the Riders who were to blame for his loss.”
“You turned him against them,” Murtagh breathed. “And then you sent him back to confront them.”
Again, Bachel nodded. “It was a test. Were the Riders as kind and compassionate as they claimed, they would have taken pity upon Galbatorix and given him another dragon. But they were not, and they did not, and so Galbatorix came to understand the truth of them.”
Fear hollowed out Murtagh. It was hard for him to imagine Galbatorix being anythingless than the most powerful person in the land, elves included. If Bachel had done what she claimed—whether through the force of her words or the strength of her magic.or a combination thereof—then by some measure, she surmounted even the king.
In a low voice, he said, “Do you mean to say Galbatorix and the Forsworn were your thralls?”
“In part. They were useful instruments to a needed end.”
He cocked his head. “Which was?”
“The eradication of the Riders.”
So … Galbatorix was not the Big Bad of the Inheritance Cycle. Bachel was. All of the villainy Galbatorix perpetrated was ultimately hers. She created him. All the evils he unleashed were done at her bidding, for her own ends.
I don't want to say that this invalidates the entire Inheritance Cycle. Galbatorix was a direct threat to all of the protagonists, for one reason or another. They had to overthrow him to eliminate immediate danger to themselves and their loved ones.
In the grand scheme of things, though? The Inheritance Cycle meant NOTHING. Eragon and the others accomplished NOTHING. All they did was eliminate a puppet who had already fulfilled his purpose. Regardless of whether Galbatorix sits on the throne, Azlagûr is still coming, and Galbatorix has already done what Azlagûr required.
(In fact, saying that Eragon and the others accomplished nothing is an understatement. They made things worse. As Murtagh figures out a mere two pages later, Galbatorix was not a true believer of the Dreamers. He turned on them and tried to wipe them out. By resisting Galbatorix, our “heroes” just destabilized the world and eliminated the single strongest opponent to Azlagûr’s rise.)
Paolini leeched off his past work to make Bachel, and by extension Azlagûr and the Dreamers, into a more crediblit threat … and he didn’t need to. This is already the Cult of Cthulu. It already has been established to have infiltrated institutions across Alagaësia. Azlagûr is sending people visions to forewarn them that he is going to destroy the world. Bachel’s wordless magic makes her incredibly formidable.
All that Paolini accomplishes by crediting her with Galbatorix’s accomplishments is to rip the foundations out from under his past work and to reveal how little faith he has that we’ll take his new antagonists seriously.
It Was … The Guy! (Heavy Spoilers)
In Part V, we get a heavy-handed and laughable attempt to set up intrigue for Book V.
Murtagh wakes up in Ilirea after the events of the climax and debriefs Nasuada on everything that happened to him. During the conversation, this happens.
A frown drew together Nasuada’s brows. “You did not explain how [the Dauthdaert] ended up in the clutches of the Draumar.”
“If I knew, I would have— Ah!” Murtagh made a face as another memory rose to the front of his mind. “Wait.” He carefully placed the lance on the floor, next to Ithring. “I saw someone among the visitors who came to Nal Gorgoth. Someone I recognized from among the Varden. Someone in your circle of advisers.”
Nasuada’s frown deepened. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t. I’ve tried to remember, but I can’t. The effects of the Breath were too strong. Thorn, do you—”
The dragon shook his long head. “No. I know the one you speak of, but I can no more name him than can you.”
“Barzûl,” said Nasuada. She stood and paced before the sill, forearms crossed, picking at the lace cuffs on her shortened sleeves.
“Has anyone in your court gone traveling in the past month?”
Nasuada stopped by her chair. “Far too many, I’m afraid. And I can hardly go around accusing my most trusted ministers without an ironclad reason. Are you sure you can’t remember?”
Murtagh spread his hands. “If I could, I would.”
She tapped the sill. “Were you to see this man again, do you think you could point him out?”
Murtagh considered. “I think I might.”
Nasuada nodded. “Then I will see about finding a place of concealment from which you.can view my court.”
This is nonsense on a couple levels.
Pronoun Game
In the buildup to the climax of this book, Murtagh did recognize this man. Paolini deliberately kept the physical description vague, with the only clear attribute of this character being that he had a “grim” face. It is done in such a way that it could not be more clear that we, the audience, were meant to remember this character. However, Murtagh did not dwell on this obviously important character in a moment. As a result, this feels like a repeat of the overly complicated method by which Murtagh escaped captivity. It reads like Paolini made this up while doing the first draft of Part V and then added the bare minimum to previous scenes to claim he had foreshadowed it.
He shouldn't have even bothered with the foreshadowing if this was going to be the reveal. What weight does the concept of Dreamers in Nasuada’s court actually have? We already know that they are a shadowy group with followers everywhere, including among the military and nobility. It would be more shocking if they didn’t have allies in her court. So why not just have Murtagh recognize this man as a member of the Varden when he first saw him, thereby conveying the same information without blowing it out of proportion?
Also, this is the Amber pronoun game form Fourth Wing all over again. It makes slightly more sense, but given how Murtagh had no trouble recognizing other people or remembering Urgala words while under the influence of the Breath, it is painfully, nonsensically contrived.
Where is Paolini even going to go with this? He can’t hide this man's identity from the audience going forward without outright lying to us with a misleading physical description. Murtagh will identify him on sight. Maybe he plans to reveal who this man is right off the bat and play with dramatic tension as he avoids being seen by Murtagh, but after what I’ve seen in this book, I have no faith in Paolini’s ability to even think of this possibility, let alone his ability to execute it.
How Does He Even Know This Man?
Murtagh should have no idea who Nasuada’s advisors among the Varden were, let alone who her advisors are now. He had minimal contact with anyone in the Varden in Eragon and prior to the start of Eldest, spending most of his time either in a prison cell or on the battlefield. This was back when Ajihad was still in charge of the Varden. Once Murtagh was abducted and taken to Galbatorix, he wasn't anywhere close to Nasuada’s advisors until Inheritance, when he infiltrated the Varden camp to abduct her in the dead of night. Galbatorix couldn’t have told him. Even if Galbatorix’s spies identified this man as one of Nasuada’s advisors and Galbatorix passed the information to Murtagh, it’s not like there would have been a photgraph. Did Murtagh snatch the identities of Nasuada’s advisors from her memories while torturing her in Inheritance? If so, why couldn’t she consent to him accessing her thoughts so that he could identify this man here and now?
CONCLUSION
Murtagh is an unworthy successor to the Inheritance Cycle … and it really didn’t have to be.
All of the criticisms that I leveled at this book could have been corrected with some fairly simple edits. This book isn’t an ouroboros of self-destructive writing. None of the ideas that Paolini had here were fundamentally bad ones, and indeed, he could have written something great if he just revised the book a little more thoroughly.
A part of me wonders if this book might have turned out better if Paolini stuck to his original conception of “an old-fashioned adventure novel that Edgar Rice Burroughs might have produced.” What if he hadn’t attempted to write this limp and incredibly confusing narrative about trauma, or perhaps merely limited the trauma exploration to Thorn’s character arc? What if, rather than focusing on setting things up for Book V, he simply had Murtagh happen upon this cult, learn of their reach and intentions, and use his charisma to convince a lifelong member to turn on the others and help him?
If Paolini had carved out Part II and compressed the slog of Murtagh’s captivity into just a chapter or two, what’s left is a fairly fast-paced adventure. The exploration of Murtagh’s trauma could then be saved for a more appropriate story. With a little more planning, Paolini could even have written a whole series of shorter adventures that keep the focus on the adventure while also allowing Murtagh and Thron deal with their trauma a little bit at a time - the key phrase being “a little bit.”
As it is, though, this book feels incredibly sloppy. Paolini can do better than this. It feels like Paolini didn’t actually care if this book was actually any good, like he wrote it purely for his own enjoyment. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. However, if he was going to publish it, if he was going to associate it with the series that gave him a career and set it up as a bridge between the Inheritance Cycle and Book V, he should have cared if it was good. He should have taken the effort to ensure that the fans who loved the original story could enjoy it, too.
For a closing thought, I’d like to draw attention to Onyx Storm. The cover for that book (which you can get a clear view of on the Barnes & Noble website) features an endorsement quote by Christopher Paolini right at the top.
Rebecca Yarros has created some awesome dragons! Proud, beautiful, and full of unique magics.
Once I saw this cover, I shared it on the Bastion Discord server, joking how Paolini’s credibility had now taken a hit in my eyes. That was supposed to have been a joke. In hindsight, it was prophetic. Murtagh demonstrates such a remarkable deterioration of Paolini’s writing ability that I wouldn’t be surprised if that endorsement was heartfelt. Perhaps he really can’t tell the difference between his past work and the sludge that imitates it.
I hope I’m wrong about both Paolini and Onyx Storm. I just don’t have an optimism about either of them anymore.
And on that note …
ON THE HORIZON
We are now just two months out from the release of Onyx Storm. Barnes & Noble has posted the premise of the book; what’s more, there have been a couple of additional developments, one related to Yarros specifically and one to the TV adaptation that Amazon is planning to do for The Empyrean. Now is as good a time as any to cover all of these items.
On December 6th, we will look ahead towards Onyx Storm. We’ll start by discussing the premise of the book and its content warning. After that, we will discuss why my hope for this third installment has taken a nosedive. We’ll cap things off by calling out Yarros for using the Amazon TV adaptation for more virtue signaling before concluding with my thoughts on the adaptation as it ow stands.
December 20th will see us jaunt back into the world of YA. The subject of this one-part review will be The Eye of Minds, authored by James Dashner (the same author behind The Maze Runner series). This was a book that I found very unfulfilling, and not in a way that I could chalk up to my not being in the target demographic. This book takes issues that we saw back in Caraval and Blood Heir and amplifies them to an unpleasant degree.
While I had planned to move on to Hereticus after that, I’ve been having some trouble getting my hands on a copy of that book. Did you know that the only e-book Barnes & Noble has for the entire Eisenhorn series is a Spanish translation of the Eisenhorn Omnibus? Since I don’t want to pay international shipping, I am going to hold on the Hereticus review for the time being.
Don’t worry, though - a replacement has already been lined up. Book-Off has delivered an entire trilogy box set of The War of Souls, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, into my hands. I don’t have an exact schedule as to when those reviews will be up, but my goal is to do them all in a row (that is to say, filling in the alternating weeks not taken up by the main biweekly series).
All this is to say that there’s plenty of content coming your way. Don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter if you want links to the latest posts delivered straight to your inbox (I have indeed worked out the kinks in the e-mail campaigns by now). Thank you all for sticking with me. I hope you have a great week.
