Murtagh

I've like this whole series, and this book was no exception. There was one section that was far too long in my opinion where the same thing kept happening over and over (that's all I'll say to prevent spoilers). I don't think it was needed, we got the point the first time. But over all I would recommend this book I did enjoy it quite a lot.

Character: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Plot: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Prose: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ (I always forget how much Paolini loves making people tttrot~)

OVERALL: ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

My ridiculously long essay about this book, hosted on Substack, can be found at the URL at the end of this review.

Let it be known that, just like Eragon, Murtagh is not very bright. It must be from Mum’s side of the family.

I wanted this to be more than it was.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, but I’ve had mixed feelings on the whole affair since the announcement. Like many, The Inheritance Cycle was my all-time favourite series from when I was about nine to somewhere in my early teens, and Murtagh left such a huge impression on me as a kid that his archetype (the angsty, angry, yet tragic bad boy loner with parental issues) is still one of my favourite things ever; I cannot stress how much the one proper chapter he has in Eldest drove me feral between the two years of my reading it and Brisingr’s release. That being said, I think the magic for the series started fading in my eyes with the release of Inheritance, which I didn’t love, and my admiration for Paolini as a writer dulled with his other novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I thought was pretty … meh; the only thing I could and can really say about it was, “yup, that was indeed a book I read”.

So I was excited to revisit my OG bad boy, he has so much potential from where we last saw him, but I was worried about Paolini’s ability to deliver a *good book*. And mixed feelings is a good way to put it now that I’ve finished.

Firstly, I adored getting to see Murtagh and Thorn’s psyches seventeen years after being introduced to them and deciding that these two would be my favourite poor little meow meows/blorbos (or whatever the kids say nowadays) forever. My throat did all the closing up and my heart ached whenever I read the passages about their experiences in Urû’baen at the hands of Galbatorix and his court. A shining beacon throughout the novel was in watching the two of them struggling with and addressing the trauma they experienced, most notable in Thorn’s fear of confined spaces and the ugly consequences that follow.

The book is very good at making me feel emotions for Murtagh and Thorn. But I wanted to feel, well, more. I wanted Murtagh to be a book about them navigating a post-Galbatorix landscape where they must deal with the fact that they’ve committed these atrocities, willingly or not. I wanted the main conflict to be centred around the fact that people don’t trust Murtagh and Thorn. I wanted a character-driven piece of storytelling.

Instead, the book is mostly a plot-driven sequel-setter. I’ve not been left a happy camper as it stumbles into the age-old sequel problem of oh shit, we need to escalate the stakes, and it’s decided to do this by introducing a Deep State, cheese-morality, Satanic Panic influenced, Westboro-fire-and-brimstone-esque Cthulhu cult that Murtagh and Thorn need to take out. But oops, we ran out of pages please buy the next book.

Man, when this was announced back in March, I thought was going to be a character study standalone D:

So, it’s an action-adventure book, it’s a book with all the swords and gore and magician duels of the previous books. It’s a winning formula, but, this time around, not for me. The characters stumble about from one plot point to the next through blind luck and by making strange (stupid) decisions, and I struggled to find a solid, motivational throughline for the events going on other than “we need to get the book to happen”. I found the main conflict centred around Bachel and her cult to be underwhelming at best, and downright boring at worst, and I just … I wanted more, and not in the way that more sequels! can fix.

In summary, Murtagh feels like a book teetering on the edge of having something to say, but never quite succeeding because instead of delving into what made Murtagh and Thorn so interesting in the first place, it’s more focused on doing, to be blunt about it, boring, tired, ill-thought out, and done-better-elsewhere plot things for later books. How can you have characters like Murtagh and Thorn, who have long been those with the most potential in the Cycle, and decide that this was the story that needed to be told about them? Setting them up to save the world isn’t why I found them interesting.

——

Criticisms from the original books that have been addressed and I am super happy about!

• The Empire is given more substance to it from the flat, evil entity it was in the previous books, hooray! The soldiers are talked about, the social classes are given more stage room, the economies and governments in cities and towns do exist; it was more than I was expecting upon coming into the book. Good job, I would like more, please.
• Murtagh is also, unlike Eragon, not ridiculously bloodthirsty. Sure, he is dangerous, but he’s not going about punching people so hard their hearts stop and coming away with the conclusion of “huh, I should change my knuckles to kill people even harder”, or “man, I wish I could kill a few more people for my literal murder mountain so I can have an even headcount of two hundred”. Murtagh and Eragon may be equally stupid, but at least Murtagh (mostly) escaped the psychopath gene that Eragon and Roran have.

However …

• Murtagh and Thorn’s relationship feels very much the same as Eragon and Saphira’s in that the Rider is definitely in charge and the dragon is, at best, a flying sidekick. Very frustrating. There are nice scenes between Murtagh and Thorn which show them as equals in the relationship, don’t get me wrong, and I love how they’re in each other’s corners, but Murtagh’s the one making the big decisions and calling the shots, with Thorn always going along with what Murtagh wants to do. So I’m not really sold on this being an equal partnership.
• We also return to the weirdly worded pseudo-medieval speak, and I’m still not a fan. Pls Chris. And whilst we’re on the subject of dialogue, can we stop with the written accents please. It’s so frustrating to read these “not-quite-Cockney-but-aping-on-something-vaguely-East-London”, are-youse-’avin-a-laff-at-me accents and I wish the trend would die. Just stop.
• Paolini still cannot write poetry and verse beyond the first two-ish lines of a stanza. I automatically skip these now because they’re the reading equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
• There is still a looot of filler going on here. Flying around filler, random musings filler, random worldbuilding filler, descriptions that are so lengthy that they become, for me at least, ineffective. This book could have easily been 100 pages shorter if the filler was either cut or strictly edited down. This is something I always forget is a thing when I pick up a Paolini book until I’m like, “Oh…. Yeah.”

I will read the next book because Murtagh and Thorn are my favourites, but can it reach the heights of its potential? Well, that’s up to Chris and his team at Knopf Books, now.

If you would like to read an utterly exhaustive, in-depth analysis on this book that dissects the plot, characters, and writing, you can find my heinously long essay on Substack below.

Also who decided that the world map at the front of the travel book would be in made-up runes? Sir, I just want to talk to the art department.

This is book five of The Inheritance Cycle, however it is not the book five that the author previously had in mind as one day coming out (aka hell yeah there’s still more). This also features the same story shown in The Fork, just from Murtagh’s perspective.

It’s only been a year since the end of the fourth book, and yet so much has happened and so many things are going on. Murtagh and Thorn are desperately searching for a path forward, in desperate need of figuring out who they are without the traumatic hand of Galbatorix overseeing them. Neither are sure if word has spread of their hand in bringing about the king’s end, so they travel on the very outskirts of society, camping out at night and constantly traveling. Murtagh keeps up his false identity we met in The Fork, but he just can’t help getting involved when things happen. This need, this desire to be good, this curiosity, is the impetus for everything that follows.

Paolini really pulled back the curtain with this one. Murtagh was the jaded, traumatized bad boy long before it was cool. And he doesn’t shy away from telling the reader just how horrible his time at Urû'baen was. From the memories of him as a child, living under the temperamental (at best) Morzan, to being bullied and overshadowed during court life, to his captivity and subsequent torture with Thorn. All while they were forced under oath. And don’t forget that Murtagh is only twenty at the end of the series! They really are just damaged boys. Beat down and trapped over and over again.

Sadly, for most of this new novel, that truth doesn’t change. Perhaps that’s just their lot in life (and Paolini does enjoy torturing us readers too). I will say again, kind of like my recently re-shared ‘review’ of Inheritance and the series in general, there was a part in this new one that involves a fish that had me shaking my head and wondering why I was reading about it. But again, the author reels it in and by the end you’re left not feeling like you’ve had enough. Each trial takes Murtagh and Thorn back through something that triggers a trauma, reliving the worst of their lives. And each time they must adapt, persevere, and fight back. They consistently claw their way out of the trouble they’ve walked into, and both end up way more dynamic for it.

Murtagh’s curiosity leads them down a path that involves a witch and her unruly cult. More than once they question if they should contact Nasuada, Eragon, or Arya so that they aren’t alone. Part anti-hero rashness, and part not knowing if they’ll be accepted by the others, they push on alone. This does not go well for them. There is even a part where Murtagh pushes a healing charm to Thorn’s nose that I could feel actual tears brewing. This witch makes a lot of heavy claims. Whether or not she’s telling the truth, or if those things come to pass, we may get to experience some things that make us say, “Galbatorix who?”

I really enjoyed that Paolini only has Murtagh use a handful of spells in the ancient language. He tends to get whatever he needs done, somehow, but it’s pointed out how he has quite large gaps in his education (unlike Eragon) and I felt like this was actually one of the author’s subtle ways of showing it. I feel like this book is half “Eragon ain’t the only dragon rider, I don’t need him,” and half “oh damn, we really should have called Eragon.” It’s hard to be the older brother.

I think it’s obvious that Paolini has clearly grown and learned a lot. The writing is powerful and each word is packed with meaning. Not only are his characters growing, but he has as well. His style still feels well within the world of Alagaësia, however I really wouldn’t tag this one as young adult at all. The themes are dark, the descriptions are brutal, and they have grown out of adolescence themselves. This was absolutely incredible, and I’m so excited that he’s stated he’s not running out of ideas anytime soon. Personally a 5/5*