The 3rd installment in the Inheritance Cycle, Brisingr continues with the story of Eragon and his dragon Saphira in their quest to dethrone the evil Galbatorix and rid Alagaesia of his tyranny.
I found this third book in the series much more exciting then Eldest, the second book, in part I think because second books in trilogies (which the Inheritance Cycle originally was planned as) tend to be transitional books. The main characters have all been introduced in the first book, and the climax awaits us in the third book, so the second book is often merely a bridge from the one to the next. Second books in trilogies rarely excite me. Brisingr, however, has all the excitement of a final book, yet doesn’t quite complete the series. Therefore, I look forward to the fourth and final book, hopefully to be published in 2011.
The series begins with fifteen year old Eragon discovering a dragon egg that hatches for him and he becomes a Dragon Rider, a member of an elite race of humans and elves that have nearly gone extinct with the rise of evil warlord Galbatorix. Eragon and his dragon Saphira are the only hope Alagaesia have of thwarting Galbatorix and bringing peace back to the land. In Eldest, Eragon and Saphira travel to the elven city of Ellesmera where their training is continued by Oromis and Glaedr, an elf and his dragon who escaped Galbatorix’s clutches and hidden themselves in Du Waldenvarden, the elven forest. Oromis and Glaedr teach Eragon and Saphira what it means to be Rider and Dragon, preparing them for the ultimate battle with Galbatorix. Throughout, Eragon wrestles with his familial past. His mother died shortly after he was born and the mystery of his father’s identity is one of the themes in this series.
Christopher Paolini, the author, was but fifteen himself when he wrote the first book of the series, and eighteen when it was published. Both Eragon and Eldest consequently read with a very juvenile voice. In Brisingr, however, the reader gets a sense of the author’s maturity as several themes are examined by a maturing Eragon – family, marriage, adulthood, right vs wrong (or morality), religion, and race. There is a thin veil between Eragon’s musings about god (each race in Alagaesia – human, Urgal, Dwarf and Elf – have their own belief and notion of spirituality) and race (if Galbatorix is to be defeated, the many factions of Alagaesia must work together – the different tribes of man working alongside the different species – Elf, Dwarf, Urgal) and the author’s own thoughts on these subjects. For me, the book reads as a canvass for the author’s own journey toward adulthood and self-discovery, a journey that is often absent when children’s books are written by adults. At times I found the veil too transparent and the author’s voice too intrusive, but thankfully these interruptions were few and far between.
Along with the maturity of the author, there was a maturity in the writing that was pleasant to experience, however I found the battle scenes much more graphic than expected for a children’s book. It gave me the impression Paolini expected his audience to have grown with him and the series, and perhaps didn’t take into consideration younger readers just discovering the series. Although I’m no prude, I would have wished for less gratuitous violence in what is often hailed as a children’s literary novel, but perhaps that is where Paolini’s maturity fails us, the reader.
Till next time, happy reading!
L J
“A room without books is like a body without a soul”
~Cicero
“Well-behaved women rarely make history”
~Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favourite book”
~ Marcel Proust
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