Eragon Chapter Fifty Four

So what’s with Chris slamming regular jobs? Sure it’s subtle but he has Saphira, who serves as one of his many mouth pieces, talk about that girl never working in common jobs. Either Chris wants to spin her off into her own series one awful day or he’s just picking on blue collar work. Either way is not winning me over an iota.

What’s even worse is that Chris could flesh Eragon out by making him like that. If Eragon showed nothing but scorn for simple folk like farmers and blacksmiths, it would make him more believable. Not likeable, but that would be better. Not everyone you meet in real life is going to be a likable person. Nice in their own way perhaps or even decent but something about them grates on you like a scalpel over the cornea. Eragon being a genuinely bad person would still be genuine rather than the cardboard cutout he is now.

And a special tip for you Chris, if you’re going to stick us with long, drawn out chapters then give us a little action. These last few are double, sometimes longer, than the previous ones. Those were boring enough to make a sloth cut a Chris. But these, these are a level of mind numbingly dull I was sure only existed in the work of Otis.

It’s like standing in line at a gas station in rural Norway in the middle of a blizzard while the person at the front chats with the cashier about their fishing trip to lake Randsfjorden and the only music coming from the speakers is a bizarre, folk instrumental version of ‘C’mon Feel the Noise’ by Quiet Riot and you can’t even pass the moments by reading the headlines on the tabloids or the directions on the travel sized bottle of shampoo because you don’t read Norwegian and you told you roommate it was stupid to go travel Europe in the middle of December but he said it was great because it was cheap and dear god are they still talking about fish, I mean, you really don’t want to say anything but how long can they just go on ignoring the growing queue that you’re part of, damn it!

This chapter is called ‘mandrake root and newt’s tongue’. Just once I’d like the title of these chapters to be more metaphoric. Just a touch of imagery instead of this dry, literal heading that has to tie in with what’s going on. I can only speculate on who uses such ingredients. Either the shade or the ‘Twins’ because they use ‘dark magic’ I’m sure.

Eragon Wakes : 27

Eragon wakes up next to Saphira and they get in a fight because, once again, she hasn’t made breakfast even though she said she’d do it and he didn’t need to set his alarm. Now he has to go to work on an empty stomach because he hasn’t the time to make even oatmeal. They’ll spend the day mad at each other and Eragon won’t come home late because he’d rather stay at the bar and drink than come home and argue.

Or that would happen if it weren’t for brand new Oatventuremeals breakfast packs. Made with Carvahall turnips and oats, the highest grade eggs, the finest shredded Dras-Leona cheddar, a dash of Jeod’s special breakfast sauce and real, smoke cured puppy bacon to give it an added crunch. They’re ready in minutes and so easy, even Eragon can make them. Avoid domestic disputes with Oatventuremeals, a product of Karek foods, a division of ConHugeCo.

For a moment Eragon allows himself thoughts about Murtagh. These are quickly shoved aside when he sees a cat. ‘Oh, a kitty! I’ve heard your intestines make good violin strings. I’ll use your gut to make a violin which I will use to woo Arya when she awakens.’

Of course this is no ordinary feline. It’s Solemn Bum, the grave vagrant who’s served in Chris’s character army as Colonel Exposition and as Major Plot Device. Eragon pulls a Neo and follows Solemn, who is standing in for the white rabbit, down some stairs to the happy healer Angela. Eragon speaks for us all and asks what she’s doing there.

She says she’ll tell him when he sits down and the conversation proceeds to go in a completely different direction. Angela marvels at Eragon being a rider more than Brom’s death. Apparently his fate was a big joke and he was a major failure. He failed as a rider, in romance, at training tard monkey and only succeeded in killing Morzan.

“Brom never mentioned a woman to me,” retorted Eragon.

Because who else would you share all details of your life with? I would share them all with my dippy apprentice because we’re both equals, after all. It’s not like Brom might have some things that aren’t your business Eragon, not even his PIN number.

Angela wandered out of her pen in order to be near where stuff is happening. And so Chris could tell us in no uncertain terms that stuff has happened. And to warn Eragon about Murtagh, because he’s dangerous for some reason. Then this comes up.

“All the same, be careful.” Angela paused, then said distastefully, “And then there’s the matter of this Shade, Durza. I think he’s the greatest threat to the Varden right now, aside from Galbatorix. I loathe Shades—they practice the most unholy magic, after necromancy. I’d like to dig his heart out with a dull hairpin and feed it to a pig!”

Ok, so there are likely to be more Shades than Sam. But what makes their magic so bloody freaking evil? Is it fueled by the rites of cannibalism? Do they eat shadows and crap magic? Do they crack open a Rick Astley CD and invoke the power of eighties dance? I have the strange urge to teach Chris what evil means using the ancient hands-on techniques of the Inquisition.

Finally he tells us how it works. Apparently Shades happen when someone allows themselves to be possessed by a spirit which only the most evil spirits do. Oh, and only two people in history have ever killed a Shade for real.

So why haven’t the Shades taken over the world? If only two people in history managed to kill them then they don’t have a lot of opposition. And isn’t ruling the world the kind of thing the ‘evil’ spirits would do, because they’re evil you know. And does that mean Gabby is stronger because he can tell a shade what to do? Whenever we get an answer it just generates more questions.

Oh, and Chris wants us to know Angela didn’t let the twins in her head because that’s just how she rolls. And then there’s something about joining a secret group of magic users. Yeah Chris, at this point your crappy knock off Tolkien world is more bloated than a three day old corpse sitting by the highway in Florida in July. And Eragon will keep it secret that she’s there. Don’t care Chris, not a whisker off a catfish.