I Read What?!

Kerlois: A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Eragon! Last time, Eragon went into Angela’s shop and met with Solembum, who treated him rather badly.

For the reader post, I do not have much. I do want to note that Solembum is “tawny”, according to Inheritance, something that might be handy to know in any of the previous books.

PPP: 982

Let me resume, then. We last left off with Angela going to the back of the shop. She now comes back, “breathless” (which makes me wonder just where so searched), holding a “leather pouch”, which she puts on the counter. She says that it has been so long since she last used those that she almost forgot were they were, and she tells Eragon to sit across from her, and then she will show him “why [she] want to all this trouble”. Would you mind telling Eragon now? Yes, he can deduce that she is going to tell his fortune, but he is still a customer, and I find she should be clear about that. I also see that she is trying to make him feel responsible for making her “go to this trouble” when he did not ask her to tell his fortune at all. Even if she did not scam people, this would make me unwilling to visit her shop.

Eragon finds a stool from somewhere and sits down, and Solembum looks from the gap between the shelves. Angela puts a “thick cloth” on the counter, and pours out the contents of the pouch: “a handful of smooth bones, each slightly longer than a finger”, which have “[r]unes and symbols [] inscribed along their sides”. Angela touches them gently (for emphasis, I presume) and says they are “the knucklebones of a dragon”. She tells Eragon not to ask where she got them, since it is “a secret [she] won’t reveal”.

That is a pity, since I do wonder about these… I presume these are the dragon’s metacarpals, in which case (from looking at some lizard skeletons) the dragon’s hand would probably have been a bit larger than a human hand. That tells me that this dragon was probably just a few months old at death, maybe as old as Saphira when she left Carvahall. Of itself, that means little, since dragons would have died at such an age, and their bones could conceivably have remained; I would expect some dragons of a few months old to have been killed during the final battle at Vroengard, for example, and we will see that their bones would still be lying there. That, of course, makes me wonder just why she seems to care so much about having intact bones.

Either way, given that she says this is a secret, I suppose she got them from another source? Getting bones from Vroengard would not have to be a secret, after all… I almost wonder if it might have something to do with the young dragon that was killed at the onset of the war between elves and dragons, but that will have to remain speculation, since we never learn more. As for her using these bones, I do not mind much. The dragon must have been dead for a hundred years, at least, and I will not get the impression that the dragons care very much about what happens to their bodies. It is in somewhat poor taste, but I can hardly blame her for this.

Back with the present… Angela says that the bones, “unlike tea leaves, crystal balls, or even divining cards”, have “true power”. Why is that, if I may ask? I suppose it can be because dragons are inherently magical, but would any set of bones from a dragon be suitable on their own, or is a spell necessary to make it work? It is probably the latter, which makes me wonder how that spell would be cast, and if symbols are necessary for it to work, or not. That does not bother me so much, but I do think we should know whether dragon bones are inherently magical or not, since that could be relevant to future plots.

Cardboard Worldbuilding: 12

Angela goes on, saying that the bones do not lie, though it is “complicated” to interpret them (which one could easily take to mean that she is making up what they mean). If Eragon wants to, she will cast the bones and read them for him. He needs to be sure of his decision, though, since knowing one’s fate “can be a terrible thing”. This is what I would want in Eragon’s position: Angela explaining what this is and leaving the decision to Eragon. It is a pity she cannot be bothered to do this consistently.

Eragon looks at the bones “with a feeling of dread”, and thinks about these bones having belonged to a dragon, which he immediately abandons in favour of considering his decision. He asks himself how he can make this decision when he does not know what his fate will be and whether he will like it, and then declares that “[i]gnorance is indeed bliss”.

HISC: That fixes the original, where he declares that about “innocence”. With some more editing, I think this book could have been improved quite a bit.

Kerlois: To answer Eragon’s question, he certainly can; he only needs to decide if knowing uncertain information about his future is worth it. Yes, he cannot make a very informed decision, but if it is possible to make a decision about, for example, continuing to play roulette, deciding on this should be possible, too. As for ignorance being bliss… it is until you hit a problem that could have been circumvented if you were not ignorant. With Eragon, not having the words to express that he is being abused, and not knowing that this is not how it should be might be “bliss”, but it does not protect him one bit from that abuse and only makes it harder for him to get away. So I would advice him to take Angela’s offer; whatever she tells would happen to him even if he did not have his fortune told, and if he does know, he can prepare for it, or even try to change it.

Eragon decides to stall and asks why Angela offers it. She says that is because of Solembum. He “may have been rude”, but him speaking to Eragon makes Eragon special. Um, Angela, Solembum let Eragon get tased, attacked him for innocently calling him a “cat”, and then refused to let him go until he heard what he wanted. There is no “may have been” there, and I do not like that you are enabling Solembum. That aside… she says that Solembum is a werecat, after all. That is true, but we have had no indication that werecats only speak to humans very rarely; in fact, we will be meeting a werecat who seems to have no such reservations at all. So it does make Eragon special to be spoken to by Solembum specifically, I agree, but not because he is a werecat.

Ill Logic: 48

Angela offered this to the other two people who spoke with him. Of these, only the woman, “Selena” by name, agreed to it, and she regretted it. Her fortune was “bleak and painful”, and Angela does not think she believed it at first. That does sound quite sad. Eragon gets overcome with “emotion”, which nearly makes him cry, as he has recognised the name as that of his mother. He wonders if it might have been her, and if her destiny was “so horrible that she had to abandon him”.

I am quite certain that it is meant to have been his mother, especially given the comment in the self-published edition about her hair. For Eragon’s thought… we will find out that she decided to leave him before coming here, but Eragon would have no way to know that, and his thought does make quite some sense. As for her “sad fate”, we will not find out what it is, but I think it might just be that she would never see Eragon again after leaving him. That might explain why she was so keen on leaving Eragon in Carvahall; she might have taken it to mean that Eragon would die soon, and done her best to prevent that. Let me know what you think!

He asks if Angela remembers something from that fortune, “feeling sick”. (I do think this might work better if we had heard more about Selena in the meantime.) Angela shakes her head, saying that it was so long ago that she has forgotten the details, since her memory “isn’t as good as it used to be”. Either way, she will not tell him what she does remember, as the fortune was only for Selena. It was sad, though, and she has never forgotten the look on Selena’s face. I like that Angela sticks by her convictions here (especially since I agree that something as potentially private as a fortune should not be shared without consent of the person receiving the fortune).

Eragon tries to rein his emotions in, and, to distract himself, asks Angela why she talks about her memory failing when she is quite young. She smiles and says that she is actually “much older than [she] look[s]”, and she probably looks young because she needs to eat her herbs in lean times. …That is a fun story, but not much of an explanation, so I presume she is deliberately keeping herself young because she likes it (which I can certainly get behind!). Eragon smiles at her answer. He thinks that, if this Selena was his mother, and she could “bear to have her fortune told”, he can too, so he asks Angela to cast the bones for him.

She takes the bones in her hands, closes her eyes, and murmurs something very softly. Then she says “Manin! Wyrda! Hugin!” and throws the bones on the cloth, where they fall “all jumbled together”. The new and improved edition changes this last word to “Hügin”, with an umlaut, I see. Let me check the glossary… Oh, I see that still has the old version!

PPP: 983

Either way, this phrase is glossed as “Memory! Fate! Thought!”. That is not bad for a fortunetelling, though I wonder how “thought” is supposed to fit in with this. I also think this phrase is only in italics as a holdover from the self-published edition; it does not fit in well with the context, at least.

PPP: 984

Eragon recognises this from the ancient language, and realises “with apprehension” that Angela must be a witch to “use them for magic”. …I thought witches “rely on herbs and potions” for magic, and that is why she has such a vast assortment of herbs, while common magicians use the ancient language? (I do note that things are clearly not that clear-cut, as Angela does use the ancient language while being a witch.)

PPP: 985 (this goes directly against what we learned earlier, after all)

I also like that Eragon has only now managed to pick up that she is a witch, though she did not bother hiding it during their initial conversation. If you were trying to make Eragon look slow on the uptake, you would be doing quite well, Paolini. (And note that Eragon is afraid of Angela because she is a witch.) He says that Angela has not lied, and this is a “true fortunetelling”. So Eragon thought that Angela might be lying to him, and we are still supposed to trust her when she tells her fortune? I, for one, am not going to do that without reservations.

We now get some suspense building, as Angela studies the bones for several minutes. Finally, she leans back, “heave[s] a long sigh”, and wipes her brow. She then offers Eragon wine(!) which he refuses. She says it is the “hardest reading [she’s] ever done”, and she has never known anyone’s fate to be “so tangled and clouded”, but she did get “a few answers” from it (let us see how few it will be). Solembum now jumps on the counter and goes to watch. Eragon clenches his hands as Angela points at one of the bones, which she says she will begin with, as it is the clearest one. I do want to say that, though I do not care much for this fortunetelling, this part is roughly decent.

The first bone has “a long horizontal line with a circle resting on it” as its symbol. Angela explains that it stands for “[i]nfinity or long life”, and this is the first time she has seen it in someone’s fortune. Most of the time, it is “the aspen or the elm”, which are signs that someone will live “a normal span of years”. What is the difference between them, then? I suppose there would be one, since having two symbols that mean the same is a waste, but we are not told (and I do not quite get the symbolism behind them, unfortunately).

Cardboard Worldbuilding: 13

Angela is not sure whether he will “live forever” or “only” have a very long life, but either way, he can be sure that “many years lie ahead of [him]”. Eragon’s reaction is to think this is no surprise since he is a Rider, and to wonder if Angela will only tell him things he already knows. …That is what you wanted just now! He was quite nervous about what he might hear, so Angela only confirming things he knows should be comforting, but now he apparently wants to hear all about his future? Yes, that is what the reader would probably want, but the reader is not Eragon!

PPP: 986 (conflating reader with character)

For her prediction, I do agree with Eragon. If there were more to it than that (if he were to survive for that long), I am quite certain Paolini would have put that in. Angela says the other bones are harder to read, as they “are in a confused pile”. She touches three of them, which show “the wandering path, lightning bolt, and sailing ship”, which is a pattern she only knows from descriptions. She begins with the wandering path.

Here, I would like to talk about what we are about to get, and the problems with this fortune-telling. As we will be seeing soon, Angela goes quite in-depth, predicting what kind of person Eragon will be having a romance with, for example, and even implying that the Empire will fall. I understand what Paolini wanted to do: he wanted to create mystery by making us wonder (for example) who Eragon’s romantic partner could be, and added details to hype the reader up for the eventual reveal (and to make it easier to guess). In doing so, though, he removed quite a bit of mystery, since now we know where the story will be going, and the prophecies we get will not be subverted or challenged, either. In essence, Paolini ends up spoiling the story without meaning to, which is why I think he would have done well to tread more carefully here.

PPP: 996 (+10) (this scene is a remarkably bad idea, after all)

Let us see what she predicts for Eragon, then. The wandering path shows that Eragon has “many choices” in his future, and he faces some of them “even now”. That follows quite well, and we will see Eragon making quite some choices in the future. She then says that she “see[s]” “great battles raging around [Eragon]”, some of which are fought for his sake, and “the mighty powers of this land struggling to control [his] will and destiny”.

…Where is she getting this from? There is only so much that this bone can show, and the way she phrases makes it sound rather like she has some kind of mystical vision. I am reasonably sure that this is Paolini inserting this knowledge, which he ought not to be doing, but in-universe, it really makes me doubt her sources for this information. My first intuition is that she is just making things up, but she could hardly deduce that Eragon will end up in battles, so she is probably drawing on her own experience and that of other fortunetellers. That is a quite fine thing to do, but she should not be presenting it so certainly. For that matter, she delivers this part of the fortune all too confidently, given that reading the bones is supposed to be “difficult”, and that this is the most difficult reading she has ever done. That, combined with her admitting to scamming people, makes me find it quite plausible that she is presenting her suppositions as fact, which means that she is not honest with Eragon… which is a quite bad thing to do when she is reading his fortune!

(Her phrasing also would be more appropriate if she used her crystal ball, which she said she was scamming people. That does not exactly convince me that she is taking this seriously.)

Morals for Thee But Not for Me: 67 (+2) (for two claims)

For what she predicts… there will be “great battles”, but I cannot think of any in the series that will be fought for Eragon’s sake. That is not to say they will not happen, but it does make me wonder. And yes, the “mighty powers” of Alagaësia will be trying to control both Eragon’s will and destiny, and I would expect Eragon to somewhat disturbed at the notion of having his will taken away (especially after his experience with Saphira). Instead, this will mostly go forgotten.

Her next claim is that “[c]ountless possible futures” await Eragon, all of which are “filled with blood and conflict”, but “only one will bring him happiness and peace”. This is just untrue. What if Eragon were to leave Alagaësia after now? Where would that “blood and conflict” be coming from, then? I might see it if he is supposed to stay in Alagaësia, but we will soon learn that he will supposedly leave it forever, so why could he not go forever and avoid all of that? There do not seem to be many people outside of Alagaësia, so he could certainly avoid this “conflict” and find “happiness and peace”. For that reason, I highly doubt that there is just a single future which would bring him that; I am sure he could find that by leaving Alagaësia, as well as achieving it the way he actually ends up doing it. Even if she were faithfully reporting what the bones told her, she still ought to check what she sees against reality, which she is clearly failing to do here.

Also… this would be hard to make work in any case, since “happiness and peace” is not a very hard demand to satisfy; Eragon can get in a variety of ways, after all, and he is notably not yet engaged with “blood and conflict”. I get what Paolini wants to have, but it is just not working well.

Morals for Thee But Not for Me: 68

She then says that Eragon should “[b]eware of losing [his] way”, since he is one of few who are “truly free to choose their own fate”. That is a gift, but it is also “a responsibility more binding than chains”. Well, Eragon certainly has more power to shape his life than most do, but that means little as long as he still has Brom and Saphira abusing him. If he is deliberately kept ignorant, that limits what he can do, no matter that he is a Rider.

As for it being a “binding responsibility”… he may well not find it that, and in any case, I would like it better if Angela waited until after she has told his fortune to say this. He agreed to have his fortune told, after all, not to be lectured on what to do or how to behave, so this is not exactly polite. (Given the context of his abuse, I especially hate this. Maybe he literally cannot pursue this, Angela.)

So we go on to the next bone, the lightning bolt, which Angela calls “a terrible omen”. It shows that there is a “doom” on Eragon, though she does not know of “what sort” it is. Part of this doom lies in a death, which approaches rapidly and will give Eragon “much grief” (my, who could that be?). The rest awaits him in a “great journey”, for which she indicates how the end of the present bone lies on the sailing ship. From that, she says, it is quite clear that it is Eragon’s fate to leave Alagaësia forever. She does not know where he will end up, but he will never come back again. This is “inescapable” and will happen “even if [he tries] to avoid it”.

Hmm… the death I can see her deduce, but with Eragon’s journey, she is wildly extrapolating from the little evidence she has. Yes, I can see it follow that his “doom” comes from a great journey, but how does she know that he will leave Alagaësia? This journey might as well be his current one, since it will certainly determine his future! Once again, this is just irresponsible of her.

Also, I find the concept of this “doom” rather too abstract for Alagaësia, as all the magic we have seen has been rather concrete. I further wonder just where it would be coming from… I do not mind Paolini putting this in, of course, but it needs quite a bit more effort put in to it before it would feel like an integral part of the world.

Cardboard Worldbuilding: 14

That aside… we will learn in Eldest that visions like the one Eragon had in chapter 12 can be avoided, and I do not think this fortune-telling is more definitive than such a vision. Angela should certainly know that, and not predict such a “doom” for Eragon unless she has strong evidence. Come to think of it, the way she tells his fortune does seem like she is scamming him. What she tells him is in large part nonsense, yes, but she blends that in seamlessly with things that she can tell. Further, she does not give him much time to think this over and she points at the “evidence”, which might come across as convincing, but which Eragon cannot quite understand. All in all, she comes across as trustworthy and knowledgeable, while she really is not.

Morals for Thee But Not for Me: 69

Now Eragon has a reaction to this last bone (but not at all to the wandering path). He gets “frightened” and wonders who he “must [] lose now”.

HISC: In the self-published edition, he thinks that would be “Roran and everyone in Carvahall”. Angela predicted only one death, though, and that is not to mention that this feels rather hollow when he has barely thought about them since deciding to go to Teirm.

Kerlois: In this edition, he only thinks of Roran, which fits quite a bit better when has talked with Brom about the possibility of Roran being taken hostage or even killed. I am not sure if Paolini realised this, but it works quite a bit better all the same. (The “must lose now” phrasing also indicates that he has not forgotten Garrow just yet, which is a nice touch. Him thinking that the death will be unavoidable is too, though it does not say very happy things about his mental state.)

Then… he abandons that thought and thinks about leaving Alagaësia and what might make him leave, since we clearly need to have him react to everything instead of dwelling what this might personally mean to him. He thinks that, if there are “lands across the sea or to the east”, only the elves know of them. I wonder where he is getting that from, as we will see that the lands to the east are not known well even under the elves; the lands to the west (Alalëa) are supposedly better known, but we will not be hearing much about them, either. I do not know why the lands to the north and south are excluded; they would certainly be habitable, and are easier to reach than the land across an entire ocean. (And those lands could also be known to humans easiest, I note.)

Angela takes a small break now, taking a deep breath before saying that the next bone is easier to interpret and “perhaps a bit more pleasant”. Eragon has a look and sees it has “a rose blossom inscribed between the horns of a crescent moon” on it. Angela smiles and explains what this means. Eragon has an “epic romance” in his future, which is extraordinary and “strong enough to outlast empires” (and Angela talks about the moon indicating this). She is unsure whether the romance will end happily, but she can say that his love will be of “noble birth and heritage”. She is “powerful, wise, and beautiful beyond compare”.

So, here we have another example of Angela extrapolating. Sure, we see where she is getting some of it from, but I doubt this bone could tell her that this romance is “strong enough to outlast empires”. I could also see her deduce some details about Eragon’s love, but what we get just feels like Angela coming up with ideas about what such an epic romance could be and presenting them as fact.

Morals for Thee But Not for Me: 70

I do like Paolini not telling us whether this romance will actually end happily; that gives us some actual mystery, which is clearly what he was trying to do, and the way he will end up using this uncertainty does make me appreciate it.

For the content… do we really need an Epic Romance? We have had no indication that Eragon is interested in that so far (yes, the self-published edition had a bit in chapter 2 about girls finding him creepy because he goes in the Spine, but that was removed, so it clearly should not count), and this book has clearly been an adventure story so far. Putting a romance in is certainly not problematic of its own, but an Epic Romance will probably draw all too much attention for a story that is not really about it, which is what it will end up doing in Eldest. Some stories do not need a romance, Paolini.

Looking closer… Despite Eragon’s love being described in such glowing terms, I would not entirely agree with calling her “wise”, and her having turned her back on her “noble heritage” is significant, so I cannot say I think very much of Angela’s predictive powers. I further note that this romance is supposed to be able of “outlasting empires”, which means Paolini indirectly tells us that the Empire will be falling. That is hardly a surprise, but it might be nice to either keep that a secret or make a bigger deal out of it. Finally, the Empire is, despite its name, still not an actual Empire.

Did Not Do the Research: 112

HISC: The self-published edition notes that this romance “will be returned in kind”, which seems rather redundant.

Kerlois: Eragon is surprised at the “noble birth” part, and wonders how that could be, since he has “no more standing then the poorest of farmers”. Well, it might just be because you are a Rider, and because of that, people are more likely to pursue their romantic interest in you, so they can influence you. This is seriously not hard to understand.

Ill Logic: 49

Angela goes on to the last two bones (for a total of seven… which makes me wonder why the other three are not mentioned.). These are “the tree and the hawthorn root, which cross each other strongly”. She says she wishes it was not true, since it can only “mean more trouble”, but “betrayal is clear”, and it will come from “within [Eragon’s] family”. So I presume the hawthorn root symbolises betrayal and the “tree” symbolises family? That is not a bad choice, I would say, but I find it a little silly that family is apparently symbolised with a family tree. For what Angela predicts, it follows clearly from the arrangement of the bones and she does not draw all kinds of conclusions, so that is exactly what I would want!

Eragon “object[s]” to this that Roran would not do that. Would he not? From his perspective, you have left him without any good reason just when Garrow died, after all. It will not be him, in any case; instead, though it is never quite proven, it is supposedly a relative of Eragon who we have not met yet. For myself, I would think it is Brom, since we will soon be seeing another nadir of his treatment of Eragon, and he has certainly been betraying Eragon so far! (Also, I think saying Roran’s name was not the smartest thing to do, especially given how untrustworthy Angela is.)

Angela says “carefully” that she does not know if Roran would do that, but the bones “have never lied”. With this prediction, at least, that means it is accurate. And here I would like to stop for the time being.

As a conclusion, let me show in list format what this fortune-telling might look like without all these suppositions:

- Eragon can be sure that many years lie ahead of him.

- He has many choices in his future, some of which he faces even now. Many futures await him, many filled with blood and conflict, but only one will bring him happiness.

- There is a doom upon Eragon: he will soon experience a death, and he will undergo a great journey.

- He will be having an extraordinary romance with one of noble birth and heritage.

- There will be betrayal from within his family.

I would think this leaves quite more space for the readers to speculate on what will be happening to Eragon, which gives us some actual mystery, as Paolini wanted. In any case, that is it for now. You will be seeing me again next time!