Jurjen
Since being dragged along to a Paolini book signing 2 years ago, I've been reading these books for the first time around Christmas (replacing my earlier LOTR Christmas tradition). They feel seasonally appropriate, and it's pretty fun seeing Paolini's writing skills grow.
This book is one of the most bloated books I have ever read. You can easily tell the same story in less than half the pages. Not a whole lot of plot progression happens if you compare it to b1 and b2, it's mostly setting up a lot of pieces in the right place for the finale, but it does make it so that there is not a whole lot of “there” there. I also feel like Paolini had several opportunities to make an interest choice to add tension and internal conflict to the narrative, and then every time he went with the very simplistic choice (“good guys = good, bad guys = bad” is the guiding principle basically at all times), which was pretty disappointing to see.
Quite a bit of the character interactions were fun, and there were definitely some entertaining sequences, but as a whole it fell a bit flat. It wasn't boring, though, and generally more skilfully written than Eldest, so I probs rate this somewhere between b1 and b2.
Since being dragged along to a Paolini book signing 2 years ago, I've been reading these books for the first time around Christmas (replacing my earlier LOTR Christmas tradition). They feel seasonally appropriate, and it's pretty fun seeing Paolini's writing skills grow.
This book is one of the most bloated books I have ever read. You can easily tell the same story in less than half the pages. Not a whole lot of plot progression happens if you compare it to b1 and b2, it's mostly setting up a lot of pieces in the right place for the finale, but it does make it so that there is not a whole lot of “there” there. I also feel like Paolini had several opportunities to make an interest choice to add tension and internal conflict to the narrative, and then every time he went with the very simplistic choice (“good guys = good, bad guys = bad” is the guiding principle basically at all times), which was pretty disappointing to see.
Quite a bit of the character interactions were fun, and there were definitely some entertaining sequences, but as a whole it fell a bit flat. It wasn't boring, though, and generally more skilfully written than Eldest, so I probs rate this somewhere between b1 and b2.
