Brisingr Chapters 3 & 4

These chapters are called ‘assault on helgrind’ and ‘divergence’.

Eragon Wakes: 1

I figured out why Chris decided that Eragon doesn’t need sleep. First, he thinks it makes him cooler. I’m guessing he once heard about the Uberman sleep schedule, via his best friend the TV, and thought it was awesome but couldn’t quite get the hang of it. Still, that’s no reason his avatar shouldn’t get it figured out. Secondly he probably got enough crap about the sleeping transitions from the first book to fill his house so he said ‘fine, now he’s not sleeping, he’s resting!’. I’m still counting it, dickweed.

Daybreak was fifteen minutes away when Eragon rolled upright. He snapped his fingers twice to wake Roran and then scooped up his blankets and knotted them into a tight bundle.

Really? As opposed to last time when Eragon slipped under the covers and nibbled on Roran’s ear? That was so much more effective though and when Roran awoke, the pure horror was a better jolt than any cup of coffee. These are details I don’t need to know Chris, stop sharing. Oh, and Roran has some instructions for Eragon in case he dies during this attack.

“Tell her then that I went into battle with joy in my heart and her name upon my lips.”

So, lie to her. Okay, Roran. If that’s how you want it. Shall we also tell her that you had probably been weakened by those injuries you sustained saving the orphans and their kittens from Galbatorix? And maybe we should tell her you were made general of the Varden army as well. You just want some medieval lovin’ and if you can’t get that, someone to remember you as more than just the son of a drunkard.

Eragon puts on armor and, yes, Chris does tell us all about it then Roran does the same. They get on Saphira, Saphira leaps into the air, Roran holds tightly onto his cousin and Eragon tells him to loosen his grip. But he feels so safe with you, you’re not like the others. They land and take a look at Dras Leona.

And somewhere in the landscape that rushed past below, Eragon knew, were the remnants of the campsite where the Ra’zac had mortally wounded Brom. He allowed all of his anger and grief over the events of that day—as well as Garrow’s murder and the destruction of their farm—to surge forth and give him the courage, nay, the desire, to face the Ra’zac in combat.

I can see that. I mean, before you wouldn’t have had any reason to be mad at the Ra’zac. They killed your uncle but even Roran readily admits that Garrow only had a couple of years left in him, especially once he’d decided to start distilling his own wood alcohol. But thinking about Brom, that should get you all fired up and ready to go. They fly towards the large stone spire and then stumble through an illusion that hides the cave that the Ra’zac and their parents hang out in. Then this line appears in the cave description.

Like mysterious keyholes, five low tunnels pierced the sides of the cave, as did a lancet passageway large enough to accommodate Saphira.

‘No, wait. Not keyholes. I mean like five mysterious grapefruits, the tunnels. No, like five mysterious Higgs-Boson particles. That’s not right either. Ohh, I know. Five mysterious packets of sugar, bound in clogs! Maybe I shouldn’t be writing after a head injury.’

Newsflash, tard-monkey, keyholes aren’t mysterious! Keys go in them and they unlock something, typically a door. There is no bloody mystery about it! There wasn’t a ‘Sherlock and the Keyway’ story nor was there ever a ‘Nancy Drew and the mystery of the funny looking hole in the locked door’ nor ‘The Girl who found the keyhole Mind Boggling’.

Surprise, there’s somebody home. One of the Lethrblaka attacks Eragon and he cracks his head on the wall and sits dumbly while Saphira does his job for him. Then the second Lethrblaka shows up and Saphira gets double teamed. She takes a few hits but the Lethrblaka take far worse because, even though there’s two of them, she’s a dragon. Oh, and then Chris tries to bludgeon us with the thesaurus again.

The Lethrblaka’s blood, to Eragon’s astonishment, was a metallic blue-green, not unlike the verdigris that forms on aged copper.

Verdigris? Did you just use that word, Chris? You know, most people know that green oxidization as a patina but that was just too pedestrian for you, wasn’t it? You had to dredge up word that typically refers to the artificial patina created by applying acid to copper. Your vocabulary does not impress me and your attempt at being sesquipedalian only furthers your shallowness, Chris.

The Ra’zac flee into the tunnels and the Lethrblaka, having a touch of propriety, decide to take the fight outside. That way Chris doesn’t have to narrate something that takes focus away from his precious action figure. Eragon and Roran chase after the Ra’zac and then Saphira shows up saying the Ra’zac are now orphans.

Eragon’s spidey senses tingle and he jumps back as an arrows flies past his cheek. He blinds the Ra’zac with a spell and Roran kills one of them while the other flees. Being so very heroic, Eragon swats the corpse of the Ra’zac, that he didn’t kill mind you, and says he always wanted to do that.

They move along to the cells, because what decent and respectable villain doesn’t have a county lock up in their base. Eragon searches through them and opens one of the doors and finds Sloan. Cue dramatic riff as the chapters closes.

And open the next chapter with description of pitiful man in chains having got his comeuppance. Sloan is starving, pale, wearing rags, had his eyes pecked out by the Ra’zac and he’s chained up. Eragon considers killing him because Sloan did bad things and he likens it to Murtagh killing the slaver in the first book.

No, those are not the same. The slaver was a man who traded on people’s lives for wealth. Sloan was doing what he thought was right and what he thought would protect his family. The slaver would have posed an immediate threat were he left alive, Sloan is a weak, blind man who’s no threat to anybody.

Eragon is supposed to be at a moral crossroad but Chris doesn’t realize that Eragon’s in the right lane and it’s signed as a must turn. He decides not to kill Sloan. A good thing too because the suspense was killing me. Instead he knocks the guy out and tells Roran and Katrina that he was already dead. I have a feeling that Sloan is going to wake up and find he’s missing a couple more organs.

Neither Roran nor Katrina show even the slightest emotion at him being dead. Well, Katrina leaks a single tear, because that’s just good drama, but other than that she might as well be a mannequin. Eragon, for some reason, still pretends he’s hardcore and tells us he’s trying to think of a way to dispose of Sloan. If you were going to ‘dispose’ of him you’d have killed him already. Stop trying to fool us.

Roran and Katrina make kissy faces at each other and Eragon feels sad. To take his mind off the caterwauling of chipmunks, he spends forever healing Saphira. Then he puts the two lovers on Saphira and sends them off on a Hawaiian cruise. He claims he’s going to kill the one last Ra’zac but he’s really there to torture a blind man for not instinctually knowing that Eragon was one of the good guys and giving him free sausage. ‘Deprive me of bratwurst will you! Take that, Sloan!’ ‘No please, I can’t bear it anymore! Stop forcing naked pictures of Jorge Garcia into my head!’ ‘Not until I get the fill of revenge I never got of delicious, reasonably priced meats, for which I never offered to pay.’

Eragon sends Saphira off in a huff and goes into the cave. Quick, Gollum, jump him! He’s a Baggins and he has the precious! And Eragon’s body was never found. We could be so lucky.