The Inheritance Cycle
Hello, all. As previously promised, I have read Murtagh, the latest of Christopher Paolini’s books set in Alagaësia. The review for that, which will be a third-part analysis in the style of The City of Brass and A Master of Djinn, is scheduled for later this month and into November. However, given that Murtagh builds upon the original Inheritance Cycle (which I have often referred to by the title of the first book, Eragon, in previous reviews), and given that Murtagh is meant to serve as a bridge between the Inheritance Cycle and what Paolini refers to as “Book V”, it seems prudent to first summarize my thoughts about that original series.
As a disclaimer: I have not read the Inheritance Cycle in full in many years, nor do I currently have either hard copies or the e-books on hand for reference. I did read most of the first chapter of Eragon last year, but at you can probably gather from the picture above, that was for language practice, rather than reading the story itself. I also have not read The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm. You can therefore consider the following summary to be a reflection of a person who are a big fan of the original series when it came out, has since fallen away from it, and who has now been brought back in by Murtaugh.
With that established, let’s get to it.
STATS
Title: Eragon (Book 1, 2002), Eldest (Book 2, 2003), Brisingr (Book 3, 2008), Inheritance (Book 4, 2011)
Series: The Inheritance Cycle
Author(s): Christopher Paolini
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy (Epic)
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (Eragon was self-published through Paolini International, LLC in 2002 and then re-released by Alfred A. Knopf in 2003)
SPOILERS
I will be heavily spoiling everything in the books of the Inheritance Cycle. There will be some light spoilers for Murtagh when we discuss Commentary, as the Commentary in Inheritance Cycle lends important context to a critical flaw in Murtagh. There will be no spoilers for The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm.
RATING: 8/ 10
Back when the Inheritance Cycle was ongoing, and increasingly in the decade since its conclusion, I’ve heard a lot of criticism leveled towards these books. The most commonly reiterated point I’ve heard is the derivative nature of the series, particularly the criticism that the series is just Star Wars with dragons. The dragons themselves are also ripoff of the dragons from Pern, just with more magic and without the Riders being compelled to have sex when their dragons mate. I personally am very frustrated by Paolini’s lack of subtlety, particularly with how he bludgeons his audience with his commentary to the point that no amount of in-world justification can protect reader immersion.
Nevertheless, this series has its strengths, and those strengths are enough to balance out the flaws.
Paolini set out to write an Epic Fantasy aimed at YA audience, and he achieved this goal. His prose is incredibly easy to digest; exposition is fed to the audience at a steady pace that makes it easy for us to wrap our heads around the complexity and depth of the setting. What’s more, there’s a definite sense that Paolini both is passionate about and understands the Fantasy genre as a whole and Epic Fantasy in particular. He doesn’t write his characters like stereotypes of certain American demographics and then slap dragons and magic on top of that; he takes the time to explore how the world and the people living within it are shaped by coexistence with the fantastical. Even in the elements where his work is weakest, it is at least functional.
DERIVATIVE WORK
Mocking stories for being derivative is good fun. However, a work being derivative is not an objective flaw unless the derivative nature damages immersion. Derivation, in and of itself, is so commonplace in story telling that it’s practically a fundamental element of it.
Back when I first read Fourth Wing, I liberally mocked it on the Shadiversity Discord server (or, as we are calling it now, the “iverse” Discord server) for everything Yarros stole from the Inheritance Cycle and from Divergent. (In hindsight, I should also have been mocked it for what Yarros stole from Lightlark.) However, as I said back in that review series, Fourth Wing didn’t nosedive until after Chapter 16. For as much fun as I was having with the mockery prior to that point, I was fully prepared to write a glowing review that defended the book’s derivative nature.
“Good artists borrow, great artists steal” is a quote that is commonly echoed in writing. There’s nothing wrong with an idea being derivative if the author puts in the legwork to integrate the derivative elements into the story in a manner that feels natural to that story. Yarros was initially successful at this, only falling apart as she failed to build out an adequate foundation for the ideas she was copying. Paolini, by contrast, puts in the legwork to make his derivative ideas stand on their own. Yes, his epic is Star Wars with the dragons of Pern mixed in, but he’s not banking on the audience understanding and liking those other stories to make his book work, nor does he lay it on so thick that it feels like a Star Wars story instead of an Epic Fantasy set in Paolini’s world.
PLOT
The plot of the Inheritance Cycle is about as cliché as possible. A farm boy hears a call to adventure, both earns and is granted great power, and overthrows an unambiguously evil force with the help of his various magical friends. This journey is stretched out across four very long books with pacing that is, at times, painfully slow.
Paolini manages to turn these potential weaknesses into strengths. Yes, the story is nothing original, yet he uses this well-trodden narrative path as a framework around which he can build more intimate stories of loss, revenge, political intrigue, and heroism. Yes, the series is long, yet it never feels like Paolini is wasting our time or trying to hit a word count; he is making the most of every page. Yes, the pacing is slow, yet Paolini uses this slow pace for a constant build of the world and character. It never feels like he’s spinning his wheels in search of a story to tell.
The only unambiguous downside that I can name with the plot is that Paolini establishes too many subplots and can’t resolve all of them, at least not in a satisfying manner. The Menoa Tree is the example that jumps to mind. Brisingr, a book all about Eragon’s various oaths coming back to bite him in the ass, sets up something big involving the Tree when Eragon secured her help in exchange for swearing an oath to fulfill any one request of her desire. Then, in Inheritance, when the story is effectively over, Eragon goes back to the Tree to fulfill his oath … and all she wants is for him to go away (something he was already doing). It’s a dramatic setup that leads to zero payoff, giving the impression that Paolini didn’t actually have a plan for the Tree in mind when he had Eragon give that oath.
Ultimately, I think that the plot of this series is very successful in what Paolini sets out to do. The barrier to entry here is not the quality of the narrative but rather whether the reader is prepared for the type of story being told. If you don’t enjoy slow-burn epics, I don’t think you’ll enjoy this series; if you’re at least open to them, I think there’s more than enough here to make it worthy of your time.
PROSE
Paolini’s prose is very easy to digest. It’s what I consider to be the gold standard for “accessible prose” (to use the term that gets lobbed around the publishing industry a lot these days). He doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence or rely on appeals to our basest impulses to keep us invested. Rather, he simply delivers information in a manner that is very easy to absorb and connect with. I suspect that this is a huge factor in why the series was so successful. Paolini writes in a way that is easy for YA audiences and people who aren’t into Fantasy to engage with the story while also keeping things fantastical enough for devoted Fantasy readers to maintain their immersion.
One thing I will note is that Paolini is not good at subtlety. His blunt delivery goes beyond what can be justified by a YA target audience. As far as I can remember, this primarily manifested in the Inheritance Cycle through his handling of commentary, but after reading Murtagh, it’s possible that I’d simply forgotten how much this problem suffuses the rest of the prose. Until I reread the Inheritance Cycle, I will give Paolini the benefit of the doubt and assume that the problem was indeed confined to the commentary. Just understand that my rating of 8/10 for the series is contingent upon that assumption. (If the prose is as unsubtle as it is in Murtagh, I’d shave the score down to a 7/10.)
CHARACTERS
I don’t feel like any of Paolini’s characters are particularly deep or complex, outside of perhaps Nasuada, Murtagh, and Elva. (Angela is not complex, just quirky.) However, they are functional, fit the world in which they exist, and are as likeable or interesting as they need to be to keep us invested in the story.
POVs
Eragon is more or less a blank slate. I’m also certain that he is Paolini’s self-insert, partially due to the handling of commentary and partially due to some issues with character voice that we’ll get to in the Murtagh review. However, I don’t feel like either of these is detrimental to the narrative. In the case of Eragon being a blank slate, I feel like this falls into a similar situation as Scarlett in Caraval: it allows the audience to project themselves into Eragon, experience the adventure with him, and learn about the world through his eyes. As for him being Paolini’s self-insert, this comes with an element of power fantasy, but it is never so strong that it actively undermines the narrative. At no point did I feel like Paolini was breaking the plot, world, or characters to keep Eragon in the right. He still makes meaningful mistakes and faces the consequences for those mistakes.
Roran has a little more complexity - not a lot, but enough to make him a little more compelling. His desire to protect and care for Katrina and the wider village of Carvahall is a consistent motivation through his story, and it drives him to take risks and engage in acts of heroism that are far more dangerous for him than they would be for Eragon. He’s harder to project into, but that’s because he has more substance to him, and the substance makes him relatable in a different sense.
Nasuada is the POV with the most substance to her, which was most likely a result of the practical necessity on Paolini’s part. She takes the lead in the political stories of the series, having to put out various fires within the Varden while prosecuting a campaign against the Empire and maintaining her own health. She’s not a character one can just casually project into, but her struggles are presented in a way that make it very easy to sympathize with her, even when she does things that the audience might otherwise reject. For example, during Brisingr, she extorts Eragon into separating from Saphira for a chunk of the plot and has Roran whipped because he committed mutiny to save some troops from an incompetent comander. Neither of the scenes in which these occurred were from Nasuada’s POV, yet because Paolini characterized her so effectively, we could understand and relate with the difficult positions she’d been put into to make the decisions that she did.
I’m not going to analyze Saphira as POV, since she only gets a few chapters. I will instead lump her in with …
Dragons
A criticism I hammered on for Iron Flame is that the dragons in The Empyrean aren’t characters. They’re overgrown pets. Their agency is ambiguous at best, and Yarros goes out of her way to avoid writing dialogue for them. What little dialogue they get is so flaccid that Violet could have easily made it all up to make sense of animalistic vocalizations and body language.
The dragons in the Inheritance Cycle are characters. They’re among the shallowest characters in the series, but they have agency, clearly defined and consistent motivations and opinions, and the ability to challenge their Riders when the situation demands it. There are two dragon characters who approach the non-character status of The Empyrean’s dragons, but in both cases, this state is a deliberate choice.
Thorn, much like Murtagh, is bound to Galbatorix by oaths in the Ancient Language, not to mention Galbatorix knowing his True Name. When we finally hear dialogue from him, it is after Galbatorix’s death, making his dialogue into a symbol of his restored agency.
Shruikan is Galborix’s slave, warped in mind and body from a very young age to do nothing but kill on Galbatorix’s behalf. He is a physical embodiment of the evil Galbatorix has inflicted and continues to inflict upon the world.
My only major criticism of the dragon characters is that Paolini is inconsistent about their intelligence. Whenever we are in Saphira’s POV, he has her describe objects and people in strings of words, implying that she is very animalistic and can only grasp complex ideas through the use of simpler, familiar ideas. However, her dialogue isn’t like this. She’s able to discuss philosophy and theology with Eragon in reasonably eloquent terms, implying that her vocabulary is more than large enough to describe things as a human would. If ever she did use these strings of words to describe things in dialogue, it is so vanishingly rare that seeing it in her narrative voice is jarring.
WORLDBUILDING
The world of the Inheritance Cycle, from the continent of Alagaësia to the races that dwell within it to common cultural practices, is the most baseline Fantasy setting imaginable. Nothing here is new or original, either in concept or delivery, nor do any of these elements reflect a deep understanding of their source material (whether that be the dragons of Pern, the mystical warriors of Star Wars, or copies of copies of copies of things that Tolkien took from mythology and transformed into the bedrock of modern Fantasy literature). If you are looking for a standard template world in which an epic involving magic and dragons and Dark Lords can occur without having to think too hard about any of it, this is about as standard as they come.
That said, while I don’t think Paolini has any deep insight into the things he’s copying, he understands his own world very well. His passion has translated into a remarkable degree of internal consistency. You can certainly look at any given element and say, “Hey, I’ve seen that before in another story,” but that element will still feel like a natural part of this story. There isn’t a point where a character comes across an unhinged lunatic or where the entire premise of the story collapses because Paolini rammed in something new without considering the ripple effect (and there certainly aren’t instances of this happening every few chapters). He did the work to create a world that could hold up well enough for readers to remain immersed.
CONCLUSION OF THE INHERITANCE CYCLE REVIEW
The Inheritance Cycle is not perfect. However, on the whole, I feel that the positives of these books far outweigh the negatives. Maybe if I reread them as an adult, I would have more to criticize, but as it stands, I highly recommend the entire series. If you are a fan of YA, if you are a fan of Epic Fantasy, or if you’re just looking for an accessible story to get into the Fantasy genre, give Eragon a try and then see where things go from there.
Now, you may have noticed that you’re only about halfway down this post. That’s because, while the review of the Inheritance Cycle of complete, I do want to discuss Paolini’s attempts to inject commentary into the series.
The reason that I separate this from the rest of the analysis is because, quite frankly, it doesn’t impact my overall rating. Much like with how Fonda Lee handled Anden’s sexuality in Jade City, the commentary in the Inheritance Cycle is a blip in what is otherwise a fantastic story. It’s annoying, but not objectively damaging. I questioned whether I should even bring it up at all. Ultimately, the reason I want to analysis this aspect of the series in because of Murtagh.
Murtagh is a book with several flaws. However, there were two glaring issues that I couldn’t wrap my head around:
Paolini exhibits a lack of subtlety to rival that of Yarros in Iron Flame.
The implosion of the plot around the 80% mark is facilitated by a nonsensical break in character.
The Paolini I remembered was not one of the greatest writers of all time, but he wasn’t this bad. How could an author with his passion and experience make these mistakes?
However, then I started writing this series summary for the Inheritance Cycle, and it hit me: Paolini did make these mistakes before. His commentary spelled out his worldview, and thus his biases, and thus his limitations as a writer. What’s more, his delivery of said commentary demonstrated that he was willing to beat the audience out of any semblance of immersion if doing so ensured that we paid attention to the ideas he wanted to share. We need to talk about the commentary in the Inheritance Cycle - or, rather, the worst examples of commentary - to understand why Murtagh fell apart.
If you don’t care for this sort of analysis, or if you want to go into Murtagh blind, please feel free to skip down the Schedule at the very bottom of this post, where you will find the dates (and, after they release, links) for the three parts of the Murtagh review. Everyone else, buckle in.
COMMENTARY
Three Flaws
Within the Inheritance Cycle, Paolini’s efforts at commentary suffered from three significant flaws.
He lacked subtlety, spilling morals and manifestos onto the page even when he had laid a strong foundation within the worldbuilding to express the ideas for him.
His commentary was incredibly shallow.
The narrative of the series was not actually structured to support the commentary. At best, this meant that we got wonky lines where it felt like Paolini was turning and winking at the audience. At worst, whole scenes were derailed or tacked on so that Paolini could indulge in messaging that wouldn’t otherwise fit.
Given that Paolini was writing for YA, I don’t think at any or even all of these are bad in principle. YA writing is often less subtle, doesn’t dig as deep as more adult content, and indulges in tangents. It can get away with these more thinks more readily than New Adult or adult Fantasy because the target audience doesn’t value subtlety, depth, or coherency to quite the same degree. The issue with Paolini doing it is that he always takes things a few steps too far.
The Three Crowbars
Three specific issues that Paolini has commented upon have stuck through me throughout the years. These are his views on:
Puberty
Vegetarianism
Atheism
The last is the one that is most relevant to Murtagh, but it is not the worst within the context of the Inheritance Cycle. That dubious honor goes to the vegetarianism commentary. Before we get into it, I do want to reiterate my usual disclaimers and include a note about terminology:
I do not know Paolini personally, nor have I ever interacted with him. Any conclusions I draw based upon his beliefs or character are based upon the image of himself he choses to present through how he crowbars certain ideas into his story.
I’m here to discuss the literary experience, not to discuss the issues being commented upon. Any comments I make here are intended to criticize the delivery of commentary within the literary medium, not to present counter-commentary. Even if you agree with Paolini’s messages, I ask you to please engage with this discussion of his flawed delivery with an open mind.
Much like with my recycling of Fonda Lee’s use of “queer” as an umbrella term for non-heterosexual characters, I am using “atheism” to cover any secular belief system that excludes belief in higher powers. This will include, but is not limited to, atheism, agnosticism, the Cult of Reason, and any other ideology or worldview derived from the above. These things are not identical, of course, but for the purposes of this literary analysis, the specific identity of the secular beliefs Paolini preaches doesn't impact the literary criticism.
Puberty
The plot of the Inheritance Cycle takes place over about two years, starting when Eragon is 15 and ending when he is about 17. He is therefore undergoing puberty even as he hones his body through training, is altered through his bond with Saphira, and is later magically transformed to have the physique of an elf during the Blood-Oath Celebration. The parallels between his body changing due to plot reasons and his body changing due to puberty is quite clear … but Paolini insists on making it more clear by having Eragon make innuendos about erections, navigate the challenges of shaving, and reflect on his conflicted feelings about his changing body.
Of the bluntly delivered ideas, this is the one that comes closest to being supported by the narrative. The delivery of these ideas is more or less what one would expect for a YA audience. It’s just something that annoyed me as early as my university years. The concept is not so complicated that it needs to be spelled out for the audience’s sake. As a result, every time Paolni shines a spotlight on it, it reads as though a high school student thought mistook his mundane experiences for something profound and original and expected people to praise him for sharing his story.
The Vegetarian Manifesto
As a refresher for those who might have forgotten, the elves of Alagaësia are strict ovo-lacto vegetarians. This is due to their inherently magical nature. Elves can touch the minds of other living entities more easily then humans, and thus they perceive killing animals for food as needless murder.
Eragon is originally confused by this perspective, but in Eldest, he hones his magical senses to the point that he perceives the world as the elves do. We get this overwrought scene where he flips on a dime and is suddenly horrified by the idea of eating meat, to the point of physical revulsion (despite it not being all that long since he last ate meat). Saphira reminds him that this is part of the circle of life. Despite being in the throes of this massive emotional upheaval, Eragon has the wherewithal to tell her that he won’t force his beliefs onto other people (a statement that is rather level-headed for the emotional context and makes no sense as a statement coming from a Rider, whose job is to be judge, jury, and executioner for the world order). We later get a similar situation with Roran in the opening of Brisingr, where Eragon refuses to share any of the meat that Roran is cooking and reiterates the “won’t force myself onto others” position. Then, a few chapters later, Eragon has to kill and eat lizards to feed himself and Sloan. We get another overwrought scene of him forcing himself to eat meat, which ends with him settling upon a policy of moderation. This is presented as some grand and mature insight.
This whole subplot is laughable. This reads as though a high school or university student jumped on vegetarianism based upon morals that he didn’t fully understand and felt compelled to tell the world about his new, enlightened state … only to learn over the next three years that vegetarianism requires discipline and sacrifice, so he walked back his previous stance without admitting to his personal failure to uphold the morals he had so recently preached about.
The Atheist Manifesto
Understanding the religious views of a fantasy world gives immense insight into the cultures of that world, and Alagaësia is no exception. The dwarves are are devoutly religious, with a pantheon of gods that is integral to their everyday lives; the elves are devout atheists; the humans have vague pantheons and a handful of superstitions. It makes sense that, as Eragon rubs elbows with these people and learns more about the world, he will make observations and judgments about their beliefs. For the most part, Paolini does this very naturally, without it feeling like he preaching to the audience.
The problem come from three scenes where Paolini overplays his hand and exposes that the judgments Eragon makes are actually coming from him.
The first of these scenes is in Eldest. Eragon has sworn an oath that makes him an honorary dwarf, and as part of that, he is taken to a dwarf temple to learn about their gods. Arya arrives to retrieve Eragon - and, without provocation, begins to nettle the priest about his religious beliefs. She doesn’t engage in dialogue, merely hurls shallow criticism after shallow criticism to rile the priest up, and then arbitrarily ends the conversation to say, “Let’s agree to disagree - at least my beliefs can be proven” (ignoring the fact that, within Alagaësia, at least one of the dwarf gods reliable manifests during major political events). Paolini had this character go out of her way to criticize religion and then swerved to avoid having to acknowledge the any defense against those criticisms. Just imagine someone walking into a synagogue / mosque, harassed a rabbi / imam in this fashion before shutting down the conversation and walking away, and then posting said video to YouTube to crow about one-upping the Jews / Muslims. (Arya never faces any accountability for this, so we are clearly meant to ignore the implications of this scene.)
The second scene is later Eldest. It opens with Eragon asking Oromis, “Hey, what are the religious beliefs of the elves?” Oromis delivers an atheist manifesto so shallow and paint-by-numbers that you could be forgiven for thinking that Paolini was actually strawmanning atheism … only to Eragon to submit to and wholeheartedly embrace this ideology with no further questions. This scene contributes absolutely nothing to the larger narrative. You can skip it in its entirety and miss nothing. Much like with the overwrought scene about the sacred lives of animals, it could not be more obvious that Paolini discovered atheism in high school or university, though that this inherently made him into an intellectual, and wanted to tell people how enlightened he was.
The real nail in the coffin, though, comes at the very end of Inheritance, when Paolini tries to pretend that Eragon has completed some spiritual journey. In Eragon’s last scene with Nasuada, she suddenly decides, with no prompting, to ask if he believes in gods, with the flimsy justification being that she wants to know how Eragon can be held morally accountable for his actions. Eragon then gives a compressed version of Oromis’s manifesto before telling Nasuada that she just needs to trust that he’s a good person. It’s framed as though Eragon has seen the world and completed some journey of enlightenment.
Except … Eragon hasn’t earned this. He hasn’t undergone any arc. Eragon started the series without religious beliefs. His exposure to the dwarf gods was his first glimpse of any sort of religion. Before he could develop any understanding of this foreign perspective, he was whisked into a civilization of atheists, who proceeded to shape his entire understanding of the world based upon their perspective. From that point onward, his only experiences with religion are to observe the practices and beliefs of others as something foreign and to then rationalize away the dwarf god that manifests right in front of him (despite the fact that the mere existence of this being upends Oromis’s manifesto). If any character development has occurred here, it is that Eragon has gone from living in ignorance of other worldviews due to circumstance to a state of willful ignorance that allows him to assert whatever morality serves his own interests.
Or, in other words … this reads as though it was written by a high school or university student who grew up in a nonreligious household, clung to atheism as his sole claim to being an intellectual, and then proceeded to loudly tell people how intellectual and moral he was while maintain distance from anything that might undermine his self-image.
The Takeaway
Neither blunt messaging nor shallow messaging are inherently bad things. They simply require that a narrative be structured to accommodate them. The issue with what Paolini did in the Inheritance Cycle is that he spent unnecessary time and and effort to soapbox about messages that he hadn’t written the series to support. In doing so, he ruined immersion, shifting away from the narrative and putting focus on himself.
To reiterate what I said above, I don’t think that any of this commentary damages the objective quality of the work. It’s also worth noting that the immature delivery of this commentary aligns with Paolini’s age at the time of writing these books. He wasn’t quite as young as people often cite (people say he published Eragon when he was 15, but that was actually the age he started writing it, so he was nearly 20 when Eragon released and pushing 30 when Inheritance came out), but he nonetheless began this endeavor while at an age when this sort of behavior is not uncommon. Finding massive success at a young age will also make anyone overconfident and prone to preaching their perspectives instead of making an effort to open dialogue.
The flip side of this is that the manner in which an author delivers commentary can build expectations within the audience. I approached Murtagh with a degree of apprehension, expecting to be clubbed about the head with some sort of message again. While that fear did not manifest, it turns out that there was something else revealed by this commentary that I should have been worried about instead.
Why This Matters (Light Spoilers for Murtagh)
If you’re still reading, you’re probably wondering: so what?
An author’s worldview does not make or break his or her ability to write a story. Paolini has already written great stories that people of all backgrounds and worldviews can appreciate; add in a decade to grow into intellectual and emotional maturity and hone his writing skills, and it’s only logical assume that he will continue to tell great stories. Perhaps he will even learn to do commentary in a manner that is subtle, or at the very least, properly supported by his chosen narrative. (I should note that I haven’t read his Science Fiction books, so if there are flaws in those that would disprove this assumption, I simply don’t know about them.)
It should not matter whether Paolini is a vegetarian, an atheist, or simply has an overinflated sense of self-importance when it comes to sharing basic concepts. However, while Paolini’s worldview should not be counted as a flaw against his writing, his lack of subtlety and his willingness to jump rails or tack things on to force are flaws. What’s more, his worldview provides context for how he could make a baffling obvious characterization mistake that breaks his narrative.
Ask Me What It Means! Ask Me What It Means!
The way in which Paolini breaks or tacks on scenes to force his commentary demonstrates that he is a writer who is unwilling to risk the audience forming their own opinions.
To an extent, I can empathize with this. Sometimes a writer has a really great story in mind, but something goes wrong in the execution, given the audience a very different take. Likewise, if you are trying to get a message across, it is somewhat self-defeating if people walk away with the exact opposite ideas. A nudge here and there can ensure that the audience is perceiving events in the way that the author intended.
However, there is a vast difference between a nudge here and there and breaking the audience’s immersion to either tell them what to think or to remind them of things they can put together for themselves. At its worst, this can result in repeating previously established information or obliterating any attempt at subtlety.
Murtagh is, unfortunately, an example of that worst-case scenario. Paolini repeats exposition and over-emphasizes character beats in a way that gets incredibly grating. I started to feel like he was talking down to the audience. What’s more, there are entire scenes that are redundant, with Paolini establishing ideas only to re-establish them more efficiently later or adding moments that go nowhere just to remind us that a problem we saw a chapter or two earlier still exists.
What I find so frustrating about Paolini’s lack of subtlety is how easy it would be to dial things back. Both of the manifestos we’ve covered could have been salvaged with minimal edits. If Paolini removed the out-of-place, “I won’t force my beliefs onto others,” line from the vegetarianism manifesto and streamlined both Eragon’s initial rejection of meat and his later concession to moderation, it would have better blended into the story around it. As for the atheism manifesto, I think that cutting that last interaction with Nasuada would have gone a long way to fix things. Without Paolini making a big deal about a character arc he didn’t write, the Arya and Oromis scenes could be smoothed out with just slight edits to the dialogue.
This is something we will definitely get into more in two weeks, when the Murtagh review kicks off properly. For now, I’ll just say that how Paolini preached his messages in the Inheritance Cycle should have been taken as a strong warning of the bluntness of the prose we could expect in this newest book.
Author Bias
For years, I assumed that Paolini’s atheist manifesto in the Inheritance Cycle was shallow due to his priorities. He wasn’t truly interested in writing a character arc, opening dialogue with others, or saying anything meaningful about this topic. Rather, his purpose was to soapbox about his beliefs. That’s why he made sure to include a variation of the, “I won’t force my beliefs on others,” line in both the atheist manifesto and the vegetarian manifesto, despite that line not making much sense in light of how people behave in his setting. He was preemptively trying to shut down counter-arguments by implying that pushing back against his soapboxing would force our own beliefs onto him.
After reading Murtaugh … well, I haven’t seen anything to refute my original interpretation, but there’s now a far more likely possibility. I ow suspect the reason Paolini’s atheist manifesto is so shallow and fails to properly engage with any other worldview is because Paolini either refuses to or is incapable of empathizing with religious people.
He can’t show a dwarf priest as being anything but irrationally angry because he cannot comprehend how any rational person could shrug off the shallow arguments Arya used in her harassment of said priest, nor can he understand how Arya’s conduct would be grating to the person she harassed.
He can’t have a POV character entertain the possibility of genuine faith in a higher power because he can’t wrap his head around how any person could actually do that.
He can’t have Eragon and Saphira give even the slightest credibility to the physical manifestation of one of the dwarf gods because his worldview can’t adjust to accommodate such an even, even in the hypothetical realms of fiction.
This is a bias, but it doesn’t necessary have to hinder Paolini’s writing. It’s just a limitation that Paolini needs to work around. Paolini is equipped to engage with religion in superficial terms - to stereotype it, to observe its practitioners as something alien, or demonize it - but he shouldn’t try to take things any farther than that, at least, not until he’s expanded his understanding of different worldviews.
While the Inheritance Cycle was not equipped to support Paolini’s commentary on atheism, the flip side of the coin is that Paolini worked within his limits. He didn’t tell a story that was actually about religion, nor did he put heavy focus on any character who was religious. References to religion were mostly kept to passing statements or rituals that would come up in everyday life, surface culture elements that are work with even if one doesn’t understand the deep culture behind them, sort of like how you don’t need a deep appreciation of Japanese culture to eat sushi.
Going into Murtagh, Paolini could have continued to stick to this approach. He could have written a narrative where religion continued to be a background detail, where it was something Murtagh was aware up but never had to engage with in any capacity. Alternatively, maybe he has taken the past decade to learn about and understand the perspectives of people different from himself. By this, I don’t meant that he treats it as something foreign to dissect and understand at an arm’s length; I mean that maybe he actually has developed empathy for religious people, even if he’s not religious himself.
…
Murtagh is a story about Murtagh facing off against Alagaësia’s version of the Cult of Cthulhu. Said cult begins with being generally sinister, creepy, and impossible to understand. They never get any deeper than that. Murtagh holds them at arm’s length, observes them as something alien, and passes judgment accordingly. Paolini had time to do more with them - Murtagh spends half the book with them - but he chose to keep things shallow. Not helping matters is the fact that the entity this cult worships is real, but said entity is a force of unambiguous evil that is the enemy of all free folk.
This is a faction of D&D villains. I’m not talking about good villains, either, just the sort of people a party would casually massacre in a one-shot adventure and not feel bad about it. My players mowed through such a cult just last weekend. The difference is that part of the joy of D&D is derived from the mechanics of the game, which helps to offset weak storytelling. You can’t translate the villains of a one-shot into a novel of hundreds of pages without taking time to actually consider how they fit into the world around them.
What you really shouldn’t do is set them up to be the main antagonists for a potential series of books - which is what Paolini has done. The cult is not destroyed at the end of Murtagh. They are very obviously being set up to be the main antagonists for Book V and beyond. We are going to have to deal with a lot more characters from this group.
This isn’t as bad as if Paolini tried to write a story wholly dedicated to commentary on religion, but it is pretty close. He is setting himself up for failure. He’s not ready to write about this cult or its members, and thus, any series with them as the antagonists is going to be built on a shaky foundation. Galbatorix and Durza were one-note evil villains, too, but at least their origins established them as once-sympathetic people who made the wrong choices. This cult, but contrast, as just a bunch of people whom we’re not supposed to feel the slightest bit of empathy for. Pity, perhaps, but not anything deeper than that.
As bad as all of this is though, it isn’t even the real reason I wanted to write this analysis. It’s a warning of catastrophe down the line, but it’s not a guaranteed death sentence. You can have a faction be unambiguously unsympathetic and evil through long-form stories if the narrative framing is correct. Stars Wars did just fine for decades with the Sith being unambiguously evil. We didn’t need to understand the perspective of the space wizards to grasp that annihilating planets as a means to rule through fear was not a nice thing to do. So long as Paolini doesn’t hang the weight of a story’s plot on, say, the character development and moral journey of a lifelong member of this faction, this shallow representation should suit his narrative just fine.
…
Paolini hung the weight of Murtagh’s plot on a cult member experiencing a crisis of faith. He does this in a manner that is directly contradicted by information he went out of his way to establish. The resulting break in character is so nonsensical that I can only make sense of it by chalking it up to his personal biases. Because Paolini cannot or will not empathize with the perspective of the character he chose to write, he could not understand how he was breaking a character to the point of exposing the artificiality of his narrative.
It’s not the only aspect of Murtagh that’s broken, but it’s one of the most glaring ones.
Final Thoughts
The worldview of an author is not the definitive factor in his or her ability to write a good story. Authors should be judged on the work they actually produce. Paolini can and has written great stories. There is nothing stopping him from writing more,
That said, an author needs to have faith in both the power of prose to convey ideas with a degree of subtlety and in the audience to grasp the ideas being shared. Beating the audience over the head with blunt ideas just damages immersion. Furthermore, “write what you know,” is time-honored writing advice for a good reason. If an author does not know something and either can’t or won’t learn it, and yet decides to write a story about that thing anyway, then he or she has no excuses when the quality of the narrative suffers as a result.
SCHEDULE
I made some pretty big assertions about Paolini and about Murtagh. It’s time I backed them up.
As mentioned at the top, Murtagh will be a multi-part review series that looks at the book overall, broken down into chunks. There will be 3 parts in total.
Part 1 (October 25th): Background, Premise, Rating, Content Warning, Prose, and Themes / Commentary
Part 2 (November 8th): Worldbuilding and Characters
Part 3 (November 22nd): Plot and Synergy with the Inheritance Cycle
I hope you’ll join me for a proper return to the world of Alagaësia. Have a great week, everyone.
