Oh look, another Saphira POV chapter.
Pipedream has gone mysteriously missing, leaving behind nothing but a pile of recently-worn clothes, and a strange box with a three-way switch on top and a potato inside*
I haven't forgotten about the ongoing What Will Happen In Eragon IV sporking, I'm just trying to avoid it.
"The morning sun beat down on Saphira, suffusing her with a pleasant warmth."
Ugh. I forgot how much I dislike Paolini's attempts at description.
"She lay basking on a smooth shelf of stone several feet above Eragon's empty cloth-shell-tent."
UGH.
Also, what? Are they camped in a cave? Is the rock floating? Are we in the middle of Stonehenge?
???
"Saphira yawned and stretched out her right foreleg, spreading the clawed fingers of her paw"
REPTILES DON'T HAVE PAWS
The paw is characterised by thin, pigmented, keratinised, hairless epidermis covering subcutaneous collagenous and adipose tissue, which make up the pads. These pads act as a cushion for the load-bearing limbs of the animal. The paw consists of the large, heart-shaped metacarpal or palmar pad (forelimb) or metatarsal or plantar pad (rear limb), and generally four load-bearing digital pads, although there can be five or six toes in the case of domestic cats and bears (including giant panda). A carpal pad is also found on the forelimb which is used for additional traction when stopping or descending a slope in digitigrade species. Additional dewclaws can also be present.
The paw also includes a horn-like, beak shaped claw on each digit.
Paw:
Not a paw:
Unless Paolini is suggesting that his dragons are mammals, like some kind of giant flying pangolin, this is completely the wrong word.
From the first draft: Kevin from the sleepy mountain town of Mont Ana, with his dragon, Goldie.
(For Anya and the other Cards players, if Saphira were a pangolin, that would completely change the meaning of Smutsia gigantea.)
So, to summarise the entirety of page 1 of this chaper: Saphira is lazing around in the sun during a war, once she saw Thorn flying in the distance, and she refuses to let Bleeding-arm, sorry, Blödhghärhmr, ride her.
But then she hears a sound! It is the sound of a messenger running through the camp.
Then she hears another sound, some time later! It is another messenger! And then two more messengers!
Then she goes to sleep!
Then she wakes up, to the sound of angry voices!
She is annoyed that someone woke her up. She has a headache.
Nasuada visits, and they speak telepathically. That is to say, Saphira reads Nasuada's mind while she thinks things.
Apparently four messengers in an afternoon is "an unusual amount of messengers". Even though "Saphira paid little attention to the sound; messengers were always hurrying to and fro" on the previous page.
Either messengers are always hurrying around, or four people with messages, in a war camp, is an unusual amount. Make up your mind.
It turns out one of the Varden soldiers crept into the urgal camp at night and killed one of them. Without waking anyone else, or being caught. By the superhumanly strong and tough warrior species who has no reason to trust their safety surrounded by their ancestral enemies, on the basis of a flimsy alliance against a common enemy.
Right.
It seems the man responsible is nothing more than a common racist. He wasn't acting for revenge, or honour, but "for no other reason than that they are urgals".
I admire Paolini trying to tackle the important but thorny issue of racism here, but now is neither the time nor the place for such discussion, and Paolini has not yet shown that he is capable of subtlety, or of empathetic and respectful discussion.
There follows almost two pages of italicised dialogue, as they discuss and rationalise Nasuada's decision to uphold well-advertised laws and consequences.
Nasuada praises Saphira for being "very wise", because of course she does, and then Nasuada mentions offhandedly that Eragon had contacted them by mirror scrying to ask Saphira to meet him at Farthen Dur.
There's yet more pointless drivel, I mean "plot essential dialogue", and then the elves put on Saphira's saddle, sorry, her uncomfortable-leather-patch-Eragon-seat-saddle, and after yet more dawdling and exposition, Saphira flies off towards the dwarves.
What a utter waste of pages. What an insult to pacing. What a complete waste of everybody's time, and I include in that the readers, the editor, the typesetter, the ink producer, the person who pulled the lever to operate the machine that made the paper it was printed on, and Clippy the Paperclip who presumably helped when Paolini was typing it.
I cannot think of a single reason for this chapter to exist, as precisely nothing of any worth is accomplished. We get Saphira flying to meet Eragon, but that could have been accomplished in a few sentences.
Over to you, Bishop, with Four Strokes of the Drum, followed by Epistler with Reunion and then Doomotter with Ascension.
* This is a reference to Terry Pratchett and Steve Baxter's The Long Earth, in which such a device is used to jump between parallel dimensions.