Murtagh and Thorn

(Warning: There are spoilers here about Christopher Paolini's Eldest!)

I have just finished reading Book Two of Inheritance by Christopher Paolini. The last part of the book was about a great battle between Galbatorix's army and the armies of the Varden and of Surda. The whole battle reminded me of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in the Lord of the Rings. The Varden and Surda's army were the soldiers of Gondor, the dwarves were the Riders of Rohan, and Roran and the other people of Carvahall coming up the Jiet River were Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli with the Dead coming up the Anduin. Again, Paolini seems to have liberally borrowed from the Lord of the Rings.

I was right all along. The Twins were the traitors. They fought for Galbatorix against the Varden. Murtagh IS the older brother of Eragon (he is Morzan's ELDEST son) and Murtagh betrays his brother by serving Galbatorix. Murtagh is an enemy Rider and Thorn is his terrible red dragon. The twist I didn't expect is that Murtagh was actually kidnapped, tricked, and coerced by Galbatorix to serve him.

I think Inheritance is predictable because of Eragon's fortune being told by Angela. All the reader has to do is fit together/connect the fortune to other parts of the plot to be able to predict certain things in the story. That is all I needed to do to predict the truth about Murtagh.

Arya keeps rejecting Eragon. But we know from Angela's forecast of Eragon's future that Arya will soon fall in love with Eragon. Where is the fun in that? In knowing almost for certain what will happen and just waiting for it to happen?

Despite all this criticism, the bottomline is that Eldest is an exciting book and I enjoyed reading it. Inheritance is a good story and already I cannot wait until Book Three! The ending of Book Two, like the ending of Book One, leaves you hanging. (There isn't even a semblance of closure.) I can't help wondering: What will happen next??? =)

P.S. Now I'm reading A Wrinkle In Time.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I came across your blog by chance and noticed you're reading A Wrinkle in Time. That is one of my favourite books of all time. I hope you like it too. BTW, don't watch the movie. It's not very good, and takes away from the wonder induced by the book. I hope you like it as much as I did.