Eragon and Eldest
January 28th, 2007I re-read Eragon and the sequel, Eldest, at around the same time I saw the movie. Of course half the fun of reading for me is analyzing, and so, while I enjoyed them, I think these books have some problems with time (a pet peeve of mine).
The second book covers a span of approximately four months. We know this because the villager Elain is nearly five months pregnant in the beginning and has not yet given birth by the final battle scene at the end. This means that Murtagh disappears four months before he reappears at the end with Thorn, a dragon “smaller but thicker” than Saphira who flames away as easily as she. Since Murtagh had to finish the journey to the king and undergo punishment before Thorn hatches, Thorn must be less than 4 months old. In Eragon we learn that dragons do not flame before they reach five or six months.
All of Eragon’s training with the elves takes place in a few months. (His earlier training in magic and swordsmanship from Brom during the first book last only a few months as well.) He learns to read in several languages. More than that he becomes a scholar, one who both reads and writes epic poetry. He overcomes his tendancy to focus on one detail and leave everything else out. Things that take years to master are within his grasp in mere months. This is not reasonable. A good education takes time- years, in fact.
Chrstopher Paolini does do a good job of making you feel like time is passing slowly; I just wish the amount of time felt right, too. But the stories are lots of fun…feel free to ignore my complaints and enjoy them.
Wasn’t the author a young teen when he wrote these? In that case I wouldn’t expect his time line to be accurate, especially a guy dealing with pregnancy.
Christopher Paolini was born in 1983. He started Eragon when he was 15 and finished it several years later.
Whether or not his time line would be accurate with pregnancies, the book clearly takes place over a span of months and not years or even a year.
This past week I finished Brisingr, the sequel. I didn’t discover until the end that a decision had been made to extend the series to four books- major let-down. I usually take that sort of thing as a sign of losing control. We’ll see.
Amusingly enough, Elain is apparently still pregnant at the end of the third book. During the course of the book, another villager has gotten pregnant and is starting to show, too. Poor Elain.
Jessica was inclined to be merciful since the writer was a young male. He’s definitely old enough to know better now… in any case his editor really should have caught this one.
He did try to solve the young dragon problem, though the solution felt contrived to me and not carefully planned as it should have been.
I got a little bored in some spots.
I should mention the nice things I’ve thought.
I recently read a fourth book in another series where it seemed to me the writer had sort of lost track of her world…I don’t think Paolini has done that at all. I think he’s completely enjoying his world.
I enjoyed the sword-making scene, where it was clear he had done some research.
Nasuada’s character is becoming really interesting to me. She makes lots of hard decisions.