Inheritance Spork: Part Forty-Eight
Note: This page of the spork was written by mage_apprentice, and was originally published here. Reposted with permission.
Chapter Fifty-Four: The Vault of Souls
This isn’t what you’d expect at all . . .
Let me just get this out of the way: I HATE this version of the book. The digital copy of Inheritance that I got a hold of is crap. I don’t know if it’s because this is the bootlegged version that I’ll delete as soon as I’m done with this or if every digital copy of this book is like this. It’s not very encouraging when the title reads “THEVAULT OFSOULS” or the first sentence goes “ragon lifted his sword and shield, eager to proceed, but also somewhat afraid.”
By the way, there’s a word for that. It’s called “hesitant.”
Oh, and if you think that first sentence means that we’re gonna get right into the heat of things, think again. He introduces the present with just that one sentence before diving right into a flashback before we can even begin to figure out what’s going on.
Last time we left off, Eragon was about to tell Saphira his Twu Naime. Instead of showing us this, we simply get exposition telling us about how this brought the two closer. I can understand what Eragon means, though, since the last time I shared my Twu Naime with someone it was a very passionate moment as we got to know each other quite intimately. Want to know the details to that? WELL TOO BAD. I’LL JUST TELL YOU IT WAS INTIMATE.
When we FINALLY get to the Vault of Souls, after FIFTY-FOUR CHAPTERS, Glaedr volunteers to go first in speaking his true name in case there are any traps that he could spring before it kills them. After calling the coast clear, Eragon and Saphira say their true names and get the door open. As soon as they step through, a spike trap takes all of their lives, thus ridding the world of yet another Mary Sue all due to Glaedr’s stupidity in thinking that only magical traps matter.
Nah, I’m just teasing. This book isn’t nearly that sensible.
Eragon pulls out his mind from Glaedr to allow him some alone time, but Glaedr decides to show his true name since Eragon and Saphira showed theirs to him. And then . . . you have to read this paragraph to believe it.
“Then Glaedr spoke his name, and it boomed forth in Eragon’s mind like a fanfare of trumpets, regal yet discordant, colored throughout by Glaedr’s grief and anger at Oromis’s death. His name was longer than either Eragon’s or Saphira’s; it went on for several sentences—a record of a life that had stretched over centuries and which had contained joys and sorrows and accomplishments too numerous to count. His wisdom was evident in his name, but also contradictions: complexities that made it difficult to fully grasp his identity.”
- A fanfare of regal yet discordant trumpets, huh? You mean something like this? Well, it has a fanfare of trumpets and it is rather regal, though I couldn’t quite find something discordant. Maybe you mean something more along the lines of this. No disrespect to the players, though. They practice long and hard to be able to get to the skill level they’re at.
- Glaedr’s true name is “a record of a life that stretched over centuries and which had contained joys and sorrows and accomplishments too numerous to count”? So his true name is an autobiography? I thought these things were supposed to be a generalizing definition of this person rather than a history book!
- Come on, Paolini. As a writer, you should know that sometimes words can’t quite define everything oh wait I forgot who I was talking to.
- If his identity is hard to grasp, how does Glaedr even have a true name? A true name is supposed to define who you are and if this can’t define his personality then either this is a stupid system or Eragon and Saphira are too stupid to be anything but easily impressed—and I’m placing my bets on both.
“I wonder what Arya’s true name is. Eragon thought to himself.”
Arya’s true name is Mandatory Love Interest the Sex Toy of Eragon Bromson.
. . . What? Eragon only recently started thinking of her as a complex and independent person who’s more than a pretty face. I can call her a sex toy if I want.
Saphira steps up to the plate next and proudly states her true name. Just like last chapter, “[e]ven in the daylight, her scales again shimmered and sparkled at the proclamation.”
Don’t you mean “especially”? Things tend to sparkle in the sunlight. Take Twilight’s word for it.
Anyway, Eragon feels comforted by hearing those two say their true names with their minds since “they did not condemn each other for their shortcomings, but rather acknowledged and forgave them.”
Here’s something I’ll condemn ya for: KILLING THAT CHILD SOLDIER WHEN YOU HAD OTHER OPTIONS FOR AVOIDING HIS PATROL.
Then Eragon goes up to say his true name and there’s “a cold sweat coated on his brow” as he knows that “it might be his final act as a free man” oh get over yourself. Be apprehensive, sure, but you three are the only ones on that nuclear wasteland of an island besides those post apocalyptic monks from earlier but they’re only paid actors.
When Eragon says his true name, the door finally appears with rows “of glyphs limned in gold: wards against both physical and magical detection.” Not very good if Eragon was able to find it. Then the door opens and they all stare into it.
“Solembum did not lie, said Saphira.”
NO SHIT.
Now it’s my turn to rip into this! Let’s go over what Solembum predicted!
He predicted that Eragon would lose his weapon and told him to look under the Menoa tree. This lead to him getting a new and shinier weapon! After that, it shouldn’t be in question that Solembum wasn’t lying about this and these idiots were just too incompetent to realize that getting into something called the Vault of Souls wasn’t going to be easy! Furthermore, the werecat was going into obvious trances! If he was lying, all that would be purposeful misleading, yet the trances where he was getting this information was quite real! Never mind that he didn’t go into a trance the first time and that’s just a consistency problem.
So, again, why is there such drama over Solembum lying? Because the plot demands it.
Our three protagonists talk about how ZOMG THIS SHOULDN’T EXIST because secret projects by the government have never been made before and they enter. Then “the doors [swing] shut behind them and closed” behind them. Now they have no escape and will now starve because they “should have used a log or a boulder to wedge them open,” as acknowledged by Eragon, but Paolini made them too stupid to do that beforehand instead of putting something there and having it get crushed by the doors regardless.
With nowhere else to go, they go down the stairs and there’s absolutely nothing except for a supposedly empty room that smells like brimstone. Oh I wonder what that could be! Tune in next time for the next exciting chapter!
*sigh* What can I say? It’s just a boring chapter. You’d think that a chapter going over the Vault of Souls would go over the contents of the place—but no, this is about the Rock of Kuthian and the entrance. A lot of this could’ve either been used to talk about Saphira and Eragon bonding over sharing intimacies with their true name (y’know, the thing that was exposition’d away at the beginning of the chapter) or at least cut most of this chapter and combine it with the next. Maybe then there’d be something interesting. Here’s something to help express how I feel about this chapter. Since the flash didn’t work as far as I know, here’s the Nostalgia Critic’s song Boring.