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Christopher Paolini: Brisingr--Book 3 Inheritance Cycle

I've been seriously debating how I was going to approach my critique of this book for the past week-ish.  Of the series, I think Brisinger is my favorite.  Paolini managed to keep the pacing up, he started in a good place by attacking the Ra'zac and ending with the deaths of Oromis and Glaedr, the attack on Feinstar, and the summoning of a Shade.  I liked the idea of Eragon's sword, and how Rhunon was able to get around her oaths.  The dwarves' deliberation over Hrothgar's successor was slow and felt a little dragged out.  However, it is understandable because few political matters like that are decided hastily.  The soldiers who couldn't feel pain was a clever and creepy problem to overcome.  Paolini managed to slow down the intensity to finish the book, leaving the reader desperately wondering how Eragon and his friends were going to defeat Galbatorix.

Despite this book being my favorite, I still have a couple of issues.

My first issue:  If Roran was so concerned about Katrina's honor, how then did Katrina become pregnant out of wedlock?  A temptation like that is not easy to resist, however, if Roran was so determined to keep her honor, he would have resisted.  Roran's will is like iron; that much has been made clear earlier in this installment and in Eldest.  I think that Roran should have been striving to protect her honor, as he claimed.  On the whole, that subplot was unnecessary.

While I liked the chapters that were from Saphira's point of view, I wish that her way of thinking would have carried over into her communication with Eragon in the chapters from his point of view.  We often think the way we speak, so why didn't Paolini incorporate her manner of description into the rest of the books?  He did make a weak attempt to do this while Eragon and Saphira are apart in Inheritance when Eragon labels something as Saphira would have.  I think that this was a weak and insufficient way to connect the two ideas.  Saphira's way of thinking also can be quite arduous and a little difficult to read.  The long, hyphenated words, while descriptive and give Saphira a unique voice, are distracting and difficult to read. I do think, however, that Saphira's point of view is needed.  I wish Paolini had a) introduced it sooner, and b) kept it consistent with what readers already knew of Saphira's character.


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