50 in '13: #9
Jun. 19th, 2013 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Title: Inheritance
Author: Christopher Paolini
Length: 849 pages
Making up for the brevity of the last book I read, this is one of those neverending tomes. Much like Harry Potter, book 5.
While the writing is generally good, once you get past the first chapter (and there is fortunately a summary of books 1-3 in the front of the volume, for the benefit of those like me who are just not going to go back and reread them, a few years on), the book suffers from Paolini's sense of scale. Which is vast. Very vast. And wherein everything is meaningful and must be described. All battles are given equal weight. All events are of even significance.
BULLPUCKY.
The final battle, against the evil overlord, requires more description than the battles over every individual city on the way to him. A first-year writing student should realize this.
But the moment when the book truly jumped the shark for me was when Eragon and Saphira got blown into the upper atmosphere and realized, shocker of shockers, that the world is round because they were high enough to see the curvature of the Earth. Oh, and then there were the magical nukes. I kid you not. Magical. Nukes. Used twice in the book, which at least I can respect. Introducing the element, then reusing it to (alas, sadly understated) effect. Oh, and there was one moment, which I read aloud to Wonderful Husband, which he also instantly pegged as a complete lift of a scene in The Empire Strikes Back: Luke going off alone to face his fears on Dagobah. Le sigh. At least it was the first obvious rip since the first book?
And, in the end, our hero goes off not-quite-alone into the sunset, leaving the world and all his loved ones, save his dragon, behind because he's too powerful.
Let me repeat: bullpucky. I haven't bought that kind of self-pitying angst-wallowing crap since I was old enough to reread The Valley of Horses and want to smack Jondalar upside the head instead of swooning over his romantic tragedy.
Verdict: Sure, feel free to read it to finish off the quartet. Just be prepared to be either bloody stubborn, or plenty bored in order to make the ploughing through the endless pages an accomplishable task. Otherwise, skip the entire quartet. There's better high fantasy out there.
Author: Christopher Paolini
Length: 849 pages
Making up for the brevity of the last book I read, this is one of those neverending tomes. Much like Harry Potter, book 5.
While the writing is generally good, once you get past the first chapter (and there is fortunately a summary of books 1-3 in the front of the volume, for the benefit of those like me who are just not going to go back and reread them, a few years on), the book suffers from Paolini's sense of scale. Which is vast. Very vast. And wherein everything is meaningful and must be described. All battles are given equal weight. All events are of even significance.
BULLPUCKY.
The final battle, against the evil overlord, requires more description than the battles over every individual city on the way to him. A first-year writing student should realize this.
But the moment when the book truly jumped the shark for me was when Eragon and Saphira got blown into the upper atmosphere and realized, shocker of shockers, that the world is round because they were high enough to see the curvature of the Earth. Oh, and then there were the magical nukes. I kid you not. Magical. Nukes. Used twice in the book, which at least I can respect. Introducing the element, then reusing it to (alas, sadly understated) effect. Oh, and there was one moment, which I read aloud to Wonderful Husband, which he also instantly pegged as a complete lift of a scene in The Empire Strikes Back: Luke going off alone to face his fears on Dagobah. Le sigh. At least it was the first obvious rip since the first book?
And, in the end, our hero goes off not-quite-alone into the sunset, leaving the world and all his loved ones, save his dragon, behind because he's too powerful.
Let me repeat: bullpucky. I haven't bought that kind of self-pitying angst-wallowing crap since I was old enough to reread The Valley of Horses and want to smack Jondalar upside the head instead of swooning over his romantic tragedy.
Verdict: Sure, feel free to read it to finish off the quartet. Just be prepared to be either bloody stubborn, or plenty bored in order to make the ploughing through the endless pages an accomplishable task. Otherwise, skip the entire quartet. There's better high fantasy out there.
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no subject
Date: 2013-06-19 10:31 pm (UTC)I have to say, one thing reading so much fanfic has taught me is to *just stop reading* when I don't like something, even if it is part of a series. I used to be pathologically unable to not complete a series. Case in point: I struggled through Dave Duncan's 'A Good Man' quartet eons ago, and if you didn't like that going-off-alone-too-powerful baloney in Inheritance, you would LOATHE the utterly (is there one word for contrived/lame/ridiculous?) ending there.
If I were reading it today, I would have stopped somewhere in the 2nd book. Spare myself the time wasted and agony of regret at even bothering to read it. Thank you, fanfiction, for all you taught me about terrible writing and what I am willing to endure.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-19 10:50 pm (UTC)And, yes, thank god for fanfiction. It makes it quite easy to broaden one's perspectives. With no financial investment, readers can easily sample a large spectrum of work and learn what is good, and what is not, and develop their tastes.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-19 11:05 pm (UTC)Yep, that was my opinion about 2 chapters into the first book. I was a fanfic connoisseur at that point (haha), and that book read worse than most of the fic I stopped reading.
(Amusingly, the same holds true for 50 Shades of Grey. I tried reading it just to see what all the fuss was about, and made it about 30 pages in before giving up on it being any good.)
no subject
Date: 2013-06-20 06:02 am (UTC)