Eragon, Briefly

So, when recapping a series, it usually makes sense to cover all of the individual parts. I'm rather inclined to skip over Eragon, though, because it's basically Star Wars. Well, okay. It's Star Wars mixed with the aesthetics of Lord of the Rings, with bonus dragons. I could likely leave it at that, and you wouldn't miss out on anything major. Unfortunately, a closer look reveals that there's just enough "original" stuff going on in Eragon that I would have to backtrack a lot to give context to later recaps. For that reason, I'm kicking this off with a brief recap of the events of Eragon.

One bright morning, average fifteen-year-old farm boy Eragon was out hunting some deer in the super scary mountain range where no one else dared to linger, as one does when one is an average fifteen-year-old farm boy. He didn't catch anything. Not because he's a terrible hunter -- he rather resembles a good one. No, it's because there was a sudden explosion, and in the crater left by that explosion, a shiny blue rock. 

Demonstrating his sharp business acumen, Eragon brings the rock back home to his home village of Carvahall for hocking purposes. He further demonstrates his sharp business acumen by telling the butcher he's trying to trade with, Sloan,  that he got the rock from the super scary mountain range. Fun fact: Sloan's wife died there, and he's not a fan of the place, so surprise! No meat for Eragon.

Having proven that the merchant life is not for him, Eragon heads back to his moisture farm outside of town, where he lives with his uncle Owen Garrow and cousin Roran. (He had an aunt named Beru Muriel, but she died prior to the plot.) Garrow never told Eragon anything about his father, though he does have details on his mother, mostly because that was his sister Selena. Apparently, she showed up, birthed out Eragon, and left before the afterbirth had time to cool. Roran, meanwhile, is looking to set out and start a family of his own. Rather than take the Lucas-preferred path of joining the Imperial Academy -- because, yes, there is an Empire in this work, of course there is -- he instead does the boring thing and goes off to work at a mill until he has sufficient funds, leaving Garrow and Eragon alone to tend the farm.

Lest things get too dry now that the Biggs Darklighter expy has peaced out of the story, the weird blue stone of uselessness begins to shake one night because surprise! It's an egg! A dragon egg, to be precise, because, more surprises, there's a dragon inside! And it's adorable and Eragon goes into Cuteness Proximity Mode and tries to pet it, but doing that just burns his palm like touching dry ice would. At least the scar is all silvery and fancy, though. It also has the interesting side effect of linking his mind to the dragon's, which encourages him to love it and cuddle it and take care of it. The dragon grows into a fairly large creature, but as in any story about A Boy and His Whatever, his uncle is none the wiser about it.

Eragon does want to figure out how best to care for and train his dragon, but, lacking access to a DVD player or Netflix Instant, has to rely instead on the campfire yarns spun by Brom, the village storyteller. From him, he learns that there was once a whole organization of people who had dragons, creatively titled the Dragon Riders. They flew all over the country -- which has Alagaësia as its mouthful of a name -- keeping the peace and punching evil in the face and being basically pretty radical dudes and lady-dudes, and also elves, who were technically there first. The fact that being bros with a dragon gives a man or elf magic powers helped with that. 

Everything was sunshine and rainbows shooting out of every orifice, until one day a young Rider, bearing the completely unremarkable and not at all menacing name of Galbatorix, lost his dragon because it was murdered by Orcs Urgals.Because of the bonds forged by the whole Dragon Rider contract thing, Galbatorix went crazy and decided to destroy everything good about society and replace it with his own evil Empire. Remarkably for a crazy person, his plan was perfectly executed. He killed some guy to steal his dragon and convinced a young Anakin Skywalker trainee named Morzan to become Darth Vader his right hand man. He also collected twelve other disaffected youths to create the Forsworn, and together, the fourteen of them managed to topple an entire social order, making Occupy protesters everywhere feel massively inadequate. 

But, that's all ancient history and irrelevant, though it does bear noting that Galbatorix wins the final fight against the leader of the Riders by kicking him in the nuts. Seriously. The only relevant detail from any of Brom's stories is the name which Eragon decides to bestow upon his blue female dragon. Creatively and conveniently enough, it's Saphira.

Anyway, Eragon asks enough derpy questions that Brom manages to cotton to the fact that he is definitely maybe a rider of dragons. Unfortunately, the Empire has at the same time figured out where the Death Star plans were sent and have dispatched Imperial troops to murder Eragon's uncle, and, no, sometimes you don't even need to bother with the pretense that this isn't totally Star Wars in Tolkien trappings. 

So, yeah, Garrow is dead, and Eragon is now on a revenge quest to kill the ones who committed this atrocity, the Ra'zac. (Think Nazgul mixed with insects.) Brom, recognizing that Eragon is as stupid as he is determined, decides to tag along and ensure that nothing too idiotic happens along the way. Over the course of their travels, Brom teaches Eragon how to swordfight, read, and use magic, although he is very coy about just how he knows how to do any of these wondrous things.

At one point in their travels, they meet a herbalist named Angela, who is quirky because she can see the future and make vague prophecies right alongside scientific theories about whether frogs are toads. Her foretellings are pretty standard for young heroes: Eragon can expect to become a pawn in the chess game of giants, have an epic star-crossed romance with a woman miles out of his league, experience the reveal at the end of Empire Strikes Back, and Frodo his way out of the country on the last page of the trilogy. (Angela is only wrong about one of these things, and, to be fair, the books were marketed as a trilogy at the time.) 

There's also a side helping of prophecy from her pet were-cat, Solembum, whose prognostications fall more on the intentionally vague side, being concerned with Menoa trees and Vaults of Souls that open when you tell them your name, you know, unimportant stuff. But, well, it's only the first book, so none of this will be relevant for a while.

What is relevant is that Eragon has started to have dreams of a hot ambassador who is being held in a detention block against her will, a hot ambassador who is crying out for a wise mentor character, as he is her only hope. Now motivated by hotness as well as vengeance, Eragon convinces Brom to change course towards where the hot ambassador is being held captive by a Shade named Durza. (Shades, we eventually learn, are former spirit-controllers who are now controlled by spirits because HUBRIS, etc.) 

Unfortunately, they get ambushed by the Ra'zac, who fatally wound Brom. Fortunately, a dashing young stranger shows up just in the nick of time to save their collective bacon, allowing Eragon to cradle Brom's dying body and hear his  dying words. In a completely shocking twist that no one could have foreseen, Brom turns out to be Obi-Wan Kenobi, in that he was a former Dragon Rider (his dragon was the first Saphira, but then she died) and is also a founding father of the resistance movement known as the Varden. And then he dies. And then Saphira does a ~magical dragon thing~ and encases his body in diamond, because why not. 

Only then do she and Eragon turn their attention to the dashing young stranger. He announces his name is Murtagh, but keeps himself otherwise cloaked in a shroud of mysterious mystique that likely has no plot significance. He does opt to join the party, though, agreeing to help out with Hot Ambassador Fetch Quest. Naturally, Hot Ambassador Fetch Quest does not go off without a hitch. Eragon gets his ass kidnapped by none other than Durza, but it's fine -- Murtagh and Saphira double-team to rescue both him and the hot ambassador, who turns out to be an elf named Arya. 

She also turns out to be pretty poisoned, which converts the plot into a race against the clock as the party hustles their way across basically the entire country, working from directions that Arya uploaded into Saphira's brain before delicately fainting. And when I say "basically the entire country," I mean that the official plot synopsis in front of Eldest states that they "travers almost four hundred miles in eight days." Keep in mind that this is the same book where Eragon's sword was supposed to be five feet long. And, since having a timer on the adventure isn't exciting enough, a pack of Urgals are thrown into the mix, chasing them down the final stretch to an innocuous waterfall in the middle of a mountain range. Naturally, the waterfall is hiding the entrance to the Varden camp, so the party is essentially home free --

Except, no, there's a screening process, because they don't let just anyone into the secret resistance clubhouse. This screening process, according to the book, is the mental equivalent of a TSA strip search, and it's made even more awkward by how it's conducted by a pair of identical bald guys. Unfortunately for the party, Murtagh isn't up for having his brain patted down, and he instead announces that he is the son of Morzan. 

On a scale of bad things, this reveal would rate an "illegal immigrant shouting BOMB" on a TSA chart, so the group is summarily chucked into prison to cool their feet for a while, even though Murtagh is a typical father-hating teen. His reasons are even valid; he's got a massive scar across his back because his dad chucked a sword at him when he was a toddler. Despite this reasonable disinterest in siding with the Empire, Murtagh is still left in captivity when the Varden decide that having a dragon of their very own might be neat.

The following chapters are a long string of introductions to important stuff, everything from setting to politics to important people we should know. The Varden clubhouse is actually an artificial mountain, which fits delicately inside a far bigger inactive volcano.  The city-mountain, Tronjheim, is on loan from the dwarves (come on, you knew there would be dwarves), but the sheer amount of resources needed to keep said city-mountain up and running is causing some mild stirrings of dissent  from the thirteen dwarf clans. Still, it's all very pretty to look at, since dwarves are naturally preoccupied with mining precious gems and metals from the earth, with a gigantic flower-shaped sapphire as the highlight of the place.

As Eragon is shown about the place, he's introduced to a disproportionate number of important characters:

Ajihad: leader of the Varden, apparently the only black man anyone has ever seen

Nasuada: Ajihad's hot military brat daughter, apparently the only black girl anyone has ever seen

Hrothgar: king of the dwarves (you knew there would be dwarves), owner of a kickass hammer

Orik: a dwarf from the clan that Hrothgar is from, Eragon's tour guide, essentially a Gimli expy

The Twins: the creepy bald guys from before, leading local authority on magic, apparently sadists

Jormunder: Ajihad's right-hand-man, rather dull

Additionally, Arya is cured of her poisoning in the nick of time, and she's able to beat Eragon at swordfighting within days of recovery. Also, Eragon and Saphira jointly bestow a blessing upon a random orphan, infusing it with magic so that it'll really stick. And Angela and her were-cat friend are there too, and, yes, she's still rambling about things that ribbit. Everything sort of settles.

EXCEPT, NOT SO FAST! Suddenly, there are Urgals everywhere! Also, Durza is there! And there's a fight, obviously, and Saphira and Eragon get separated, meaning he has to fight Durza on his own. The Shade curbstomps him with laughable ease and gives him a slash on the back to boot. Before Eragon can go out like a punk, Arya and Saphira come bursting down through the ceiling (smashing the fancy sapphlower in the process), and that distracts Durza just long enough for Eragon to shove a blade through his heart. Since ontological inertia isn't a thing, all the Urgals pause in what they're doing, kind of scratch their heads, then awkwardly traipse out, as it turns out that it was magic all along keeping them going.

So, Eragon is passed out for three days, but he lives. While he's unconscious, he has a Hothtastic dream in which some guy calling himself The Cripple Who is Whole tells him to go to the Dagobah system the elf forest to complete his training. Upon waking, Eragon discovers that he now have a scar that matches Murtagh's, but so it goes. The point is, he needs more training, which is convenient, because the dwarves and the Varden have a deal with the elves that says they'll share any Dragon Riders they get with them. And, to finish off this synopsis, I will quote the official one, just to give you a taste of the writing we've got in store:

And at the end of Book One, Eragon decides that, yes, he will find this Togira Ikonoka and learn from him. For gray-eyed Destiny now weaves apace, the first resounding note of war echoes across the land, and the time fast approaches when Eragon shall have to step forth and confront his one, true enemy: King Galbatorix.

Get excited.