Back, and after a lovely weekend spent with family in Pennsylvania to act as a bumper, I'm ready for the next installment of Brisingr.

Goodness, it goes against the grain to even type out that title. I usually refuse to call it by name and refer to it as the Black Brick as my own way of protesting such an arrogant name. He should have stuck with Empire. But whatever.



Chapter Two: Around The Campfire

[for twenty-five pages, this is about as exciting as it gets]

Brace yourself, because this chapter truly sets the tone for the rest of the book. It's long, tedious, and largely pointless. I'll try to alleviate some of that tedium for you here, but a girl can only do so much.

Eragon and Roran are sitting around their campfire, with Eragon leaning back against the "knobby scales" of Saphira's leg, which I'm sure is comfortable. He informs the reader that prior to their departure, his cousin had given him a metal-spiked hawthorn staff to use as a weapon, since Murtagh took his super special sword Zar'roc.

Now, I happen to approve of staves and the like when it comes to weaponry, but seeing as how Eragon intends to go up against the Ra'zac, who would definitely be kicked out for god-moding in any role play of mine, this seems really dumb. You plan to kill four overly powerful monsters with a polished stick? What are you going to do, kid? Poke them in the eye?

Eragon flashes back a bit, with some dramatic italics, to the most recent battle from Eldest, on the Burning Plains, where Murtagh was revealed as the newest Dragon Rider, which took me completely by surprise.

Okay, not. I've known Murtagh would be a Rider since he first showed up in Eragon. Not only that, but it wasn't hard to guess that he'd get a red dragon, too, since red is Evil [original as always, Paolini], and that he'd be Eragon's brother.

Anyway, he recaps what went down with Murtagh and Thorn, musing that poor ol' Murtagh is a "victim of fate," but also throwing in how despite being forced into Galbatorix's service, he still seemed to relish his power and how he could wield it sadistically. Once again, Paolini is trying to cast Murtagh into the worst light possible as the Bad to Eragon's Good. It's not enough to give this poor guy such a sucky life, he has to make him inherently evil too.

It would have been much better if Pao had kept Murtagh as the anti-hero, a villian, yes, but one who is nevertheless torn within himself and seeking freedom from this slavery and peace from his days of running. Instead he works to make him more generic: selfish, cruel, arrogant, power-hungry, and ruthless.

Murtagh is a Meructio character. I once read an analysis of Romeo and Juliet [I'd get the author's name, but I can't find my book] which stated that Shakespeare had to kill Mercutio off. He was so likable- and it's true I know very few people who don't enjoy Mercutio above anyone else in that play -that he overshadowed Romeo himself, and as the protagonist, Romeo couldn't have anyone stealing the audience's sympathies. Hence, Mercutio's death.

It's the same thing with Murtagh. Most people I've questioned admit to liking Murtagh more, and even I'll say that he's far more interesting and- dare I say it? -developed than Eragon. Everyone enjoys an anti-hero, and Murtagh's flaws were a refreshing break from Eragon the self-righteous Mary Sue. He was human, for gods' sakes, until Paolini realized how popular he was getting, I suppose. Eragon is Romeo, who is really not that logical or interesting, but as he's the main character, he needs to have the most limelight. Hence why Murtagh is dragged through the mud and tarnished further to make Eragon seem brighter in comparison.

After the recaps about Murtagh, Eragon gives the reader a bit of background on his, Roran, and Saphira's leavetaking from the Varden, which Nasuada and Arya greatly opposed, until Saphira roared them down and told them that they had "better things to do than stand around yammering like jackdaws," because like with the winter rutabagas, Paolini assumes that we'll all know what jackdaws are. I guess that they're some type of noisy bird, although I could probably get the full impact more if I knew what they sounded like, or even if they exist beyond these books. Whatever.

The rest of the page is devoted to the whys and wherefores of their motives behind leaving at that time, which I don't care about, and the next one talks about what they did to get there, which I can sum up in one sentence: they flew on Saphira for two days.

See how easy that was, Pao-Pao?

Near the beginning of the next page, Eragon hears a "slithering scraping sound akin to someone drawing a sword" and you think, Hooray! Something's happening! Eragon "flings" himself in the opposite direction, rolls, and comes up into a crouch, for no reason I can see other than he wants to look like a ninja. The beard Roran gets his hammer and shield ready.

However, after a lot of unnecessary description, Eragon reveals on the next page that it was just a rock.

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Note: during the unnecessary description, Eragon uses magic and says "Brisingr raudhr!" to create a werelight. It means "red fire." It's the first spell that's mentioned in the book, and it's Paolini's attempt at being subtle. However, since Brisingr is the title of his novel, it's painfully obvious that he's trying to be clever and use the spell as a literary device by placing so much focus on it. He'll do this a lot in the oncoming chapters, and I'll be making note of it.

Eragon laments that the war has made he and Roran so jumpy, and his cousin goes on an emo streak where he talks about the people he's killed and how he still sees them his dreams or whatever. On the next page Saphira tries to comfort them by saying that they only do what they have to do and they don't have to feel ashamed. Then she talks about how there is a fierce joy in combat and a satisfaction in slaying your enemies, and Eragon doesn't want to admit to that because he doesn't want to despise himself. To make them both feel better he gets out some mead, although I don't know why he brought alcohol on a desperate journey to avenge the murder of his uncle and rescue his cousin's bride-to-be in the first place.

And he just has to say that Roran "also partook in the concoction" instead of just saying he drank the mead when Eragon passed it to him. And another thesaurus lies raped. Better call RAINN.

After drinking, Eragon takes a page to talk about difficulties with magic he thinks they'll have tomorrow fighting the Ra'zac. I didn't really pay attention to what he said other than that Galby might have placed a lot of wards around the Ra'zac that Eragon won't know how to counteract. I'm sorry, but there's such a thing as overkill when it comes to logic. Paolini's magic is way too fucking complicated. Takes the fun out of everything.

Eragon whines to Saphira that he's sure he could kill the Ra'zac himself if he had a sword, but doesn't know how he's going to do it with just a staff- which is what I said in the first place, didn't I? And Saphira, for once saying something remotely interesting and intelligent, tells him that he was the one who "insisted on carrying that dry twig instead of a proper weapon." Well, duh.

Roran remarks on how tricky magic is, which I say is just the tip of the iceberg. He asks if Eragon could make him as strong as fast as he is, and Eragon says no, he doesn't have the energy required for such a spell. Then Roran asks if Eragon will teach him magic one day, and Eragon tosses him a rock and tells him to concentrate on making it rise and say "stenr rïsa." It doesn't work, or as Paolini says, "the stone exhibited a profound lack of movement."

Eragon tells him to be careful if he ever does manage it, and then takes a couple pages to teach Roran how to guard his mind. He tests it, and Roran uses his memories of Katrina as a mental ward. This prompts Eragon to start up a conversation about love and how the two of them came to be, hopeless romantic that he is; emphasis on hopeless.

Roran then switches the subject to Arya, asking what there is between her and Eragon. Eragon, who is apparently blushing, responds with "Nothing! The moon has addled your brain." To which I will give no comment other than that I think it sounds tacky.

Then Roran says that Eragon's "gaze lingers upon her as if you were starving and she were a grand feast arrayed an inch beyond your reach."

To which I will comment with: ew.

Saphira laughs at him and Roran eventually asks outright if Eragon "fancies" Arya, and the sequined horse Saphira says that "If he fancied her any more, I'd be trying to kiss Arya myself." How's that for a crack pairing?

Eragon and Roran talk about Eragon's prospects in love for the next three pages, Eragon getting emo about how he feels about Ayra, but how he can't fall for any human girls because he's immortal, and it would never work, so it's "safer" for him to love Arya because if he were to love anyone else he'd have to watch them die. And literally this goes on for three pages.

After the sobfest, however, it turns into a testosterone-fueled contest as Eragon and Roran show off and try to outdo one another when it comes to who has the most grisly bruise from the last battle. And we have to hear about how Eragon was bruised from the thighs upward when he jumped off of Saphira and was caught by her again in mid-air. Maybe we'll get lucky and he won't be able to reproduce.

Roran then shows a terrible scar the Ra'zac gave him, which makes it so that he can't raise or use his right arm properly, and Eragon grapples with the decision to heal his cousin, for he doesn't have enough energy and can only get it from his bleak surroundings. However, he's loathe to kill the ants to do it, but Saphira badgers him into it. Eragon reluctantly agrees, and "dies" a few times as he takes the energy from some insects and what nearby small animals there are to do it.

I suppose this is Paolini's way of supporting PETA, vegetarianism, and the downsides of using magic, but for the latter I'd rather go with Justine Larbalestier's Magic or Madness trilogy, where if you use magic, it slowly kills you, but if you don't use magic, it drives you insane. More daring, less boring.

Eragon is once again emo over the deaths of the helpless crtters, so he decides to go back to the mead to drown his sorrows in [when did he and alcohol become such good friends?]. But Saphira decides to play bartender and wordlessly threatens to impale his hand on her claw if he reaches for the jar. I guess this would be DADD: Dragons Against Destructive Decisions.

Then Roran tempts the now hungry-from-using-magic Eragon with his leftover pieces of venison, which Eragon valiantly refuses. He became a vegetarian in Eldest after spending time with the hippie elves, for those of you who don't know, and it's one of the more riveting moral battles Eragon faces in himself throughought the book. Saphira doesn't help him at all, always telling him that it's the natural order of things and deliberately enjoying meat in front of him. Eragon's argument is that he can't eat something whose thoughts and feeling's he's shared, which is at least better than the "I won't eat something that had a face" excuse. Saphira eats the venison for him, just to go on about how delicious it is to his face, and then they go to sleep.

Before falling asleep, however, Eragon has a conversation with his pet dragon that infuriates the reader, because he talks about an unidentified person he senses in Helgrind along with Katrina, refering to them only as "he" and asking Saphira what he'll do if then "he" is there. This would really help us if Eragon has just said whose mind he suspected he encountered in the first chapter instead of keeping it a secret. It's not as if it's building up that much suspense....

End of chapter two. Hooray!

Nothing to say here, other than that this whole chapter could have been scrapped and it wouldn't have made the slightest difference to the book.