Have you read The Last of the Mohicans? It’s a good book, but sometimes it feels like there are just too many words and the sentences are too long.

I have read it, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Although it is a highly subjective matter, I disagree with you that Cooper was excessively verbose. I would struggle find anywhere in Mohicans where Cooper wrote anything that was not either beautiful prose, or necessary for the story. For example:

Unlike other men engaged in the spirit-stirring business of war, they stole from their camp unostentatiously and unobserved, resembling a band of gliding spectres, more than warriors seeking the bubble reputation by deeds of desperate daring.

I read this as an example of beautiful, graceful prose from the early 1800s wherein no word is wasted and no metaphor misplaced. It could be argued that ‘bubble reputation’ could be reworded, but I like the metaphor it conveys and the poetic concision with which it does so. This is because every word is measured and considered, and every word is an important part of the whole. Paolini, on the other hand, throws fancy and archaic words around not to write good prose, but to show everyone how many cool words he can find in his thesaurus, never mind that he’s using them incorrectly or inappropriately, or that the prose feels awkwardly contrived and synthetic and therefore is not enjoyable or easy to read.

What do you think about Christopher Paolini’s creative side? Surely you can’t say that nothing he did seemed creative..or can you?

There is a difference between ‘creative’ and ‘good’ as indicators of worth, and Paolini tends to fall on the lower end of both measures. Large portions of his ‘creativity’ are simply re-hashings or outright theft of other people’s work, and the parts to which he does apply his own creative endeavours simply are not good or logical. To mis-quote Samuel Johnson, “[it] is both original and good; but the parts that are original aren’t good, and the parts that are good, aren’t original.”

Because the character in question is cribbed from Dune, and Paolini has not only admittedly read Dune, but makes explicit references to it within the story itself. These examples detailed in there aren’t vague concepts or Hero’s Journey stuff, it’s direct, specific things.

Exactly. We’re not operating on the level of vague resemblances and half-realised references, but of specific, traceable ideas, like the tollbridge scene (from The Ruby Knight by David Eddings) in Eragon, or the werecats (from Sabriel by Gath Nix), or the entire ‘language of magic’/truenames bit (from Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin), the Shining Palm (from The Belgariad by Eddings, but also from a particular Irish myth, the protagonist of which is one Nuada Airgetlam, aka Silver Hand)...

The list goes on, and it’s not even funny anymore.

I myself, have NEVER heard of someone like Elva. Ideas can occur simultaneously

Uh…

I don’t really read that much

Hardly a stable platform, is it? Just because you personally haven’t read the book it was plagiarised from, doesn’t mean it wasn’t plagiarised. Especially if you don’t read many books.

I hate Fenimore Cooper too. I haven’t read Mohicans, but I had to read one of his books for a class. It was about the Revolutionary War, and I couldn’t get through.

And, Wizard, what Inkblot said. Twilight and Inheritance are like the religion and politics of II. Just try not to take anything personally.

I liked Eragon/Eldest at first, and I remember liking Brisingr, but I know I couldn’t remember what happened in the other two without reading the recap. On reexamination, the books are very purple, and the only reason I didn’t notice the rip-offs read because I wasn’t that familiar with what he was ripping off. I don’t think that he rips off other works exactly on purpose though. I just think he has trouble understanding the difference between a tribute and a rip-off. I could be wrong though.

ok, I’m sensing a storm on the horizon (but it’s dark so I can’t actually tell how far away it is)

hee hee I like this line.

Don’t know DUNE?! Like, best SF novel ever penned. Look it up pronto, and steer a wide course around the movie adaptation.

There is a list on TvTropes – it’s connected to the Useful Notes page on Eragon somewhere.

I would say, merely out of my own tendency to be a cross-grained mule, that we dislike CP so much because he’s hugely successful, and we’re not, and we feel that we could write better than he can. It hurts, but that’s the truth for me. You are correct, then, that logically speaking existence in two places does not prove cause and effect. However, I think a lot of people tend to assume that he took certain good ideas from others, because the parts that are of his own invention are not as well…fleshed-out, say, as the parts which correlate with the work of a previous author. For instance, the plot of the first book in the series can be mapped out pretty much plot point for plot point with the plot of the first Star Wars movie. This is the first item on the TvTropes list, BTW. A lot of people feel that as a result this book had the strongest plot of the series, and when CP began to get into original storytelling with Eldest and Brisingr the narrative grew much weaker, more meandering, and less immediately memorable.

Of course. I know you have my admiration and respect for being so calm and clear, and I think several others feel the same way.

“Purple” prose is prose which uses too many unnecessary words – adjectives, adverbs, long archaic phrases – to describe something. The famous example of this is the sentence “Twas a dark and stormy night…” which unfortunately does not in fact end there, but goes on until it is impossible to say the whole thing in one breath. It is a hugely subjective judgment, though certain general opinions do exist. I myself prefer a bit more poetic description than some, but I understand how it could be hard to stomach.

I refer you to one of our little coined phrases – the “threeshold”. In which, if there are more than three similarities between two works/characters/plots/settings, the work has degenerated from loving homage to straight-up plagiarism.

Hope that helped.

Don’t know DUNE?! Like, best SF novel ever penned.

Blasphemy! Talk about a man who could worldbuild like a god but couldn’t write personable characters to save his life.

I’d like to take this moment to remind everyone that criticism should be kept to the works; not aimed at the author.

That said, I call it Brickingr because it is very dense in both the physical and prosaic senses. I have nothing against dense prose; in fact, I read encyclopedias and other reference books for fun (I actually just started reading a book on coal today that I acquired ages ago…). What I do have issue with is fluff. Especially purple fluff.

The Sword of Truth suffered much from purple fluff as well, now that I think about it. However, I am not as desperate for reading material now as I was when I read The Sword of Truth, and I haven’t been for a while, hence Brisingr just sitting on my shelf like a giant brick of dead tree for the past couple of years.

It does make an excellent spider-squisher when dropped from waist-height, though.

As for why I dislike Paolini, I don’t. From what I’ve seen of him in various forms, he really seems like a nice guy, and if I were to ever meet him (which is totally possible since I’ve got family up near where he lives), I’d likely befriend him. It’s the rabid fans of Inheritance I have issue with.

I am not taking personally any of what is occurring, but I am trying not to offend or anger others.

I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t feel ganged up on. I respect you for your rational and level-headed arguments.

Maybe he didn’t even write it at all, but has some poor nerd/geek chained in his basement writing novels for him

That’s my personal theory. :P

What exactly is the difference, and where does the line blur?

We had a thread for that actually.

Or a Yoda, a Vader, and bad guy that’s actually the protagonists father? Lastly where is the line for similarity?

It’s this one, and Taku wrote an article about it.

As for examples from the Inheritance series, here’s a quote from the article:

With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense that coincidental similarities between fictional works are often counted in threes as well. Let us take, for example, everybody’s favourite fantasy series: The Inheritance Cycle, by Christopher Paolini. Eragon is a farm boy in a remote region of the Empire (1), whose farm and home are burned down by agents of the Emperor (2), in search of a valuable object stolen by rebels (3). Any one of those things would be fine by themselves. Even two of those things might ‘fly under the radar’, so to speak. But the combination of three brings a specific reference to mind, and not in the sense of homage. Alternatively, another example from the same series: Paolini’s elves are tall and graceful (1), in population decline (2), and they worship the stars (3). In addition, they come from a distant land to the west (4), have control of a mysterious magical energy most people cannot comprehend (5), and have distinctly hostile relations with the dwarves (6). Three sets of three similarities relating to different parts of the story. Even without magic and superstition, that is significant.

EDIT:
Oh yeah, and why I don’t think Paolini purposely decided to rip things off is because he seems fairly genuine. It seems more likely that he some of the ripping off was unintentional, and some of it was him thinking that he was paying homage or just not knowing that he couldn’t use certain things from other sources (and not getting called out on it before his book was published). He was young when he started the series (not that that’s an excuse) and he may have been ignorant of a lot of what he was doing. I can’t really speak that much on the ripping off because I haven’t red LotR yet, and I still haven’t seen Star Wars in its entirety. I haven’t read Dune either, so I thought that Elva was fairly original too. Guess not. She’s still one of the more interesting characters though.

The thing is, it’s quite easy to like the series if you don’t care about all those things. So, in my opinion, that explains the fans.

True. I used to like the series because I didn’t really care about that stuff. Now, I don’t really have a strong dislike for it or anything, I’m just not all that interested. I think I’ve realized that I was never that invested in the characters or what happened to them.

tvtropes.org IT WILL CONSUME YOUR LIFE wack

never mind.

Here is an archive of anti-shuturgal, the first (that I know of) inheritance criticism site, may it rest in peace.
Read up. :-)

Well, no, that would have been considered outright plagiary and he would have been taken to court. And heavily fined.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Tolkien. He is my inspiration for writing fantasy. I’ve also written papers and literary analyses about his works, so I hope I’m not speaking like an uneducated twit.

I know that Tolkien was a linguist, so he probably had a great understanding of words. However, he never pretended to be a writer. He loved languages, and his created languages are probably the greatest ever. He also did have a wonderful ear for how things sounded, which is reflected in his names. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a great writer, and it shows.

I hope you won’t mind that I’m not pulling out specific quotes from LotR right now, because it’s a freaking giant book and it’s kind of late. However, there are numerous instances in which Tolkien uses convoluted sentence structure, unnecessary words, and stilted language. I understand that the stilted language goes with the whole ‘mythological’ atmosphere he was aiming for (and it works, because there really is a mythological atmosphere) but still, I’m not sure that it was strictly necessary and he did have a tendency towards the verbose. (Although this might be a matter of personal taste. Anyway, I’m very glad he was smart and used archaic speech properly.)

While his poetry may be great (I’m not a poetry buff, so I won’t remark on that), it’s kind of just dropped into the book, along with numerous descriptions of landscape. I know it’s blasphemous, but I tend to skip these when I’m reading. I’m aware that Tolkien wasn’t necessarily writing for an audience or the story as much as for his own knowledge, and it really does add to the worldbuilding, but still…editing can be very useful.

I’m not trying to bash Tolkien here, as his books are some of my favorites, and you did bring up legitimate points. However, I honestly believe that the magic of Tolkien’s ideas usually outstripped the words he used to express them.

There are probably more points that I wanted to say…maybe I’ll add to this monster-post later, but for now I’ll sleep on it.

I could violently disagree, but I won’t. ^^

From several miles up the chain:

Talk about a man who could worldbuild like a god but couldn’t write personable characters to save his life.

Actually, I agree with you, Spanman, to some extent. Most of the characters were actively dislikeable only because they were based in a tradition of Islamic mythology, which is similarly cultured, oriental, and cruel. Also I still can’t figure out why Paul did what he did. To me the really amazing thing was just the extent to which a rich, semi-religious background was given to Arrakis. That atmosphere is something I’ve never seen before or since.

If your story was influenced by someone else’s, and people reading it can’t tell that it’s plagiarism or instantly name the sources you drew on, then you’re fine. If you sincerely did not know that you were outside the boundary of good taste in imitating an author you liked, you could ask for permission, though you probably won’t get far, or you could change your story and characters until they no longer perfectly resemble the other authors. Resemblances are acceptable, a cut-and-paste is not.

Another question: Is fan fiction publishable?

No. Probably only on the Internet, such as on fanfiction.net, and if you don’t plan on profiting from it. You can’t profit from someone else’s intellectual efforts. Apparently exceptions are made, but I have not heard of many examples in which the author gave permission for a fanfic based off of their own work to be published. Also, it is probably acceptable to publish something that started off as a fanfic, but then changed to such an extent, that the characters, events and other elements of your literary world are now of your own imagination. Of course, after such changes, it could hardly be called fanfiction anymore. And you would probably do well to not broadcast it to the entire world where you got your ideas from, unless you claim the original work to have been your inspiration and, as I said, your own work must be considerably altered from the original characters, places, etc.

However, if you are that incapable of coming up with something remotely original, you hardly deserve the right to fight to get it published. I’m not addressing you directly. Don’t mean to sound too sharp. Just pointing out that if someone was that good an author he/she would not need to base his/her work entirely on someone else’s. Someone like that does not deserve to get his foot in the door of the world of literature. I think there are ways to get around being sued, the best way, of course, being through getting the permission of the author who created the original work. Outside of that, it’s probably something you would not want to get into in the first place. Very messy business if you don’t tread carefully.

Alright well here’s a scenario, but first; have you all heard of Naruto? (like, dislike, whatever. Do you know it?)

If you haven’t, then here is the basic info I’m dealing with: A giant fox demon with incredibly massive power was destroying the village, then Naruto’s Dad performed an epic sealing technique and sealed it inside the baby Naruto. Now, Naruto is able to draw on it’s power because it is sealed inside him.

Does this mean I can’t have a creature sealed within another creature that uses the sealing to their advantage?

Well..here’s what was kinda swirling around in my mind: I wanted something powerful sealed inside of a young child to keep it well… sealed. I was thinking a dragon at first (can you tell I was reading one of the Inheritance novels?) but all I know is it needs to be POWERFUL. I was wanting it to actually have been done by a bad guy, as in the powerful force was good, so they sealed it away. The seal was kinda funkily done though, so it MESSES with the kid. I was thinking that because of it, he has all sorts of mental problems so people stay away from him and don’t really like him. Eventually, he finds a way to communicate with said powerful force and it helps him.

Powerful Force sealed inside child.
Seal messes with kid (I realized this is kinda like a different seal that was placed on Naruto during the series).
People don’t like him.
Gains power from sealed force.

Falling: I wouldn’t rewrite a book..that just doesn’t sound too appealing to me. I’m talking about my own story. Bear in mind that I don’t write much of my stories at all, they’re all in my head. Either way, creation of a story is what I’m talking about.

The problem with not reading any other novels is it’s too easy to tread over ground that’s been done a thousand times before and sound very tired. By having a good grasp of what’s out there, you can see what’s been done and what hasn’t been done.

Do you mean just for the purposes of the audience wanting something they haven’t seen before?

Wait, so instead of commenting again, just add to the previous one?

Uh.. ok, will do.

This I firmly disagree with and all his writings about storytelling itself would lead me to believe otherwise. Yes, a lot of his stories grew from his knowledge of language (for instance, the particular use of the word Ent for instance.) As a philologist words told a story of their own and that pushed him to new story ideas. But that is not the same as the story simply being an excuse for his languages.

Actually, despite the reasons he eventually developed it began (not ended, but began) a a way to explore the contexts of this languages, and little more. He confessed as much in a letter that was published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, compiled by his biographer and youngest son. As he wrote more, he came up with new reasons to write, but the initial spark was simply about putting his languages into a context.

Good idea! On topic!

One of the stupidest lines in Inheritance (up to where I’ve read so far) is also one of the shortest:

Time passed.

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! WHAT, WERE YOUR CHARACTERS ALL FROZEN IN SPACE UNTIL THIS ONE PARTICULAR INSTANT OF TIME HAPPENED TO PASS? WHAT CAUSED IT TO PASS, IF NO TIME HAD ELAPSED BEFORE THE WRITING OF THIS BRILLIANTLY POETIC SENTENCE?

Maybe this is why Elain’s pregnancy seemed to take so long, they were all FROZEN for three books!

Talk about one-dimensional characters… heheh.

Eldunarya are hardly a new concept, as explored here. As foir ra’zac, they are just Nazgul crossed with Skeksis. The bit about larval forms was interesting, but poorly done and illogical.

BlueMask, you must have loved that scene where Nasuada was all “you need to see a healer, you’re obviously injured!” and Roran is like “no way, I’m cool!” And then Nasuada bows her head submissively and says “as you wish”. This is the commander of an armygiving a direct order to one of her underlings, and when he refuses she just backs down? Way to portray a strong female figure, Paolini.

That makes even more sense. I guess it’s more the unintentional and subtle stuff that annoys me…
Gosh, I sound like SwanKIvy- she said pretty much the same thing in one of her essays. I read too much anti stuff, honestly.

Thanks for the assistance happycrab. I really don’t know if I saw the sealing thing and wanted it, or was just kinda thinking some stuff around and a creature seal power thing came along which I later realized was like Naruto. I was playing around with the idea of it being the main protagonist, but I think I’m going to try to put all my ideas into one story to give it more variety and breadth.

I will definitely check out One Piece when I get some time.

Have you guys read Inheritance yet? I want to ask about stuff in it, but I don’t know if you still care about spoiling it or not…honestly.

I’m just under halfway through, managing about a page or so per day.

It’s that bad.

That’s okay War Wizard. No you won’t. It’s too long. I am never reading Inheritance. But as long as I read analyses and such of it I believe I am entitled to think (well know) it’s bad.

Um Taku doesn’t that mean it will take you like 2 years to read…?

You reading that too? They always do such a good job of it. I cant wait for swankivy’s essay though, that’ll be the highlight.

You reading that too?

I’m participating. 8D

Warwiz, I can only comment on the first two things, but my comment is the same: Completely stupid and impractical. Especially the raft thing. Sure, they might have done a bit of damage to the gate, but the chance of them all dying horribly either by drowning or being squished against a huge metal grille was about 90%. The other 9% was the chance of only most of them dying horrible, with the others surviving with horrible wounds.

No, the 1% is the chance of a blue whale falling into the raft and crushing everyone instantly.

In a fantasy where you aren’t actually given specific information, how can you get such a specific answer?

Note: Those are not fighting words.

Common sense says to sit tight in the trench and find some other way.

I see what you mean, but they had been doing that and the raft thing WAS the other way. Was it for sure going to work? No. Was it risky? Most definitely. I just think that saying that scene was “Completely stupid and impractical” is a little much. Opinion? Sure, but I was kinda hoping for a little more than..well, than just that.
Could you please elaborate a little Taku? And what about the first thing?

make an intro thread nub

Some of you may remember me as Shinobaka

HOLY CRAP.

single tear of joy

Yay, more old people that I don’t know! Anyways…
Ooh, good sporking.
And WWR, antishurtugal is doing a collective sporking.

Except there’s no way the raft was going fast enough to break through the gate. I’m preeety sure when they design gates they design them specifically to keep things out, and I’m pretty sure when they design barges they don’t have “battering rams” in mind. Also, if your argument is in terms of force I’m pretty sure the “battering ram” will break first. In addition, unlike real battering rams, you only get to hit once. Unless Paolini defied the laws of physics again, there’s no way they could have built up enough speed to break the gate.

WWR- fair enough. And that’s unusually open-minded of you. I know I couldn’t be the same about, say, Harry Potter.
EDIT: I meant, about the joining the site.
I don’t really get maths or physics, so I can’t give my opinion.

Yeah, and with all that weight comes less buoyancy. It was said that before the water was released that the barge was just inches inches from the bottom of the river, and it was specifically mentioned that the barges were built like giant rectangles. There’s the question of whether the thing is physically capable of floating, and then even if it somehow does it still has to displace a huge amount of water to even move. Like you said, we have no specific numbers, but from what Paolini wrote himself there’s no way that the barge was moving fast enough to break through the gate. Paolini also made sure to mention that they made a giant wall around the perimeter of this 500 foot long barge, up the men’s waists. If the “avalanche” of water had really come at them so fast while they were so close to the bed of the river, a lot of it should have been caught within this rectangular wall, further adding to the weight and further sinking the vessel. In addition, there’s no mention of any kind of steering system. Remember that this is a 500 foot long barge that was pieced together in the shape of a rectangle. How are they supposed to keep it straight? Oh, Roran will just shout at you and the thing will magically realign somehow. And in the off chance it does somehow all go to plan and the barge smashes, how are they supposed to swim to shore with full armor on? And if they aren’t wearing any armor, how can they expect to survive when they are (and I quote) outnumbered “by more than two to one”? Yeah, I don’t have any fancy numbers or complicated pie chats showing all the data, but honestly, do you really believe that such is thing is possible?

2: Rafts float because the materials they are made of are naturally buoyant, which means that even if you submerge one it will float back to the surface.

Incorrect. Rafts are only buoyant while they are above water because of the large surface area and the surface tension of the water. In white water (e.g. a flooding river), the surface tension of the water is broken. If water gets over the wall and into the raft (which it will, given the speed and turbulence of the water and natural obstructions along the way), it will sink. Try it with the plastic lid of a container in the sink one day. So long as the water is calm and it remains above water, it will float. Sink one edge of it slightly, and the surface tension is broken and it will sink. Move the water around it enough, and it will be swamped and sunk. Barges and rafts are designed for smooth, stable waters like lakes and ponds, not for rapid rivers and floods. If the swelling waves coming up behind them doesn’t overturn it from upwards pressure, the raft crashing into the canal walls will.

They had roughly 650 soldiers on the vessel (which was nearly 500 feet long), enough slate to at least cover 250 feet+however wide the thing was, along with sacks of flour lining the perimeter of the whole vessel (at least 1000 feet). Assuming the average soldier weighs 180 pounds, that’s 117,000 pounds OR 58.5 tons (53.0703 tonnes) in SOLDIERS ALONE.

Thus proving my point that it is a completely stupid idea. Anything with that much weight on it will have to be massive for mere surface tension to counterbalance the downward pressure of all that weight. Second, have you ever measured out 500 feet? Converting that into real measurements, that’s over 150 metres long. Or roughly the height of a 45-storey building. Or moire than seventy-five relatively tall people laid head to toe in a single line. Given that there is a wooden gate over the canal’s entrance to the city, it can’t be all that wide, either. The length of such a craft will make it sidewardly unstable, like a log. Second, a raft of that length in a canal of that narrowness would require an almost perfectly straight path across the country, or it will get jammed between the banks trying to turn a corner too sharp for it. As far as I’m aware, no canal created before, well, ever, is that perfectly straight. Rivers and man-made canals both follow the lie of the land, because it’s much easier digging around a hill (or an outcrop of rock) than straight through. The only reason you would do that (like the Roman aqueducts) would be to keep a stable downward slope from the source. But Arrows doesn’t need that, because there are no massive hills between the river and them, just gentle rolling plains with a steady downward slope toward the city. It would be massively impractical to spend all that extra energy to create a perfectly straight water track for no other reason than for the plot of a book that occurs possibly generations after the canal was dug.

How are they supposed to keep it straight?

Exactly so! Water does not flow uniformly, and it’s more than a fair chance to bet that the weight distribution on that raft was not exactly symmetrical. It’s going to ram into one of the walls or banks and collapse long before it reaches the city.

as long as we don’t, we can’t be sure if this would or would not work.

But it’s basic physics. The forces and sheer masses required for this scene to play out as it did are simply not physically possible. Unless they were using a self-propelled iron-plated aircraft carrier with a specially engineered ballasts or multihull design and a specially designed hull-breaking stern, the ship is simply not going to reach the speed required to actually do damage to anything that the soldiers couldn’t have broken down with their fists. Unless they already had a fair amount of momentum, the surging water behind them would have whelmed them and sunk the raft, much like a surfer who is caught under a wave.

we do not know exactly how strong the gate was

Point: This is a city with three concentric stone walls and gates on several sides that were too strong for the army to break down from the outside. What makes you think the gates over the canals would be any less well protected? One does not build a three-tiered walled city and cover the openings with flywire. Given that there is a canal and drain, I would expect a solid metal grill as well as a wooden gate. No raft is going to burst through that without chemical propulsion and a reinforced specially-designed stern. If the gates were already that rotten, the soldiers should have been able to basically tear them off the hinges with grappling hooks.

3: Inertia. Have you ever seen a picture of a piece of straw driven through a tree by a tornado?

That is a good point, except for the fact that the straw in that example is moving at close to the speed of sound. Inertia works both ways: A barge as large and as heavy as the one described would require massive amounts of sustained force (e.,g a manned crew of rowers or polers, or chemical propulsion) to create momentum. Even then it would take a great deal of time and space to bring such a craft up to the sorts of speeds required for it to actually smash through the gate.

I’m preeety sure when they design gates they design them specifically to keep things out, and I’m pretty sure when they design barges they don’t have “battering rams” in mind. Also, if your argument is in terms of force I’m pretty sure the “battering ram” will break first. In addition, unlike real battering rams, you only get to hit once. Unless Paolini defied the laws of physics again, there’s no way they could have built up enough speed to break the gate.

even if people smashing into a wall is a force with momentum, people are soft and breakable. The impulse will be horrific, won’t it?

That’s what I said before. Seatbelts and airbags exist for a reason in the modern world, and head-on-collisions with enough force to smash through a besieged city’s defences will a) throw everyone on the raft forward into the gate, probably before or just as it is breaking, causing concussions, some pretty serious (including, potentially, fatal) splinters and cuts, unconsciousness, severe whiplash or even broken necks, broken limbs, crushing, drowning in the confusion, and who knows what else. If there is a metal potcullis behind the wooden one , there’s likely to be very few survivors. Since Paolini didn’t mention a portcullis (that I can recall), we’ll go with the option of some pretty serious injuries for the people near the front of the barge.

Wow, I’ve gone on a bit, haven’t I? But there’s little I like less than people ignoring or arguing against the laws of physics because ‘we don’t know all the variables’. They’re the laws of physics. It doesn’t matter what variables we don’t know, we have yet to find any variables that contravene the laws of physics. What we do know is that the variables we haven’t measured need to be so massive as to be impossible. QEF.

He made specific mention that the prows were not pointed, which made it easy to attach several of them end to end. And I quote:

“The barges were more like crude rafts than the flat-bottomed boats the villagers had ridden down the coast from Narda to Teirm, for which Roran was grateful, because it meant that they did not have pointed prows. This had made it relatively easy to fasten the four barges end to end with boards, nails, and ropes, thus creating a single rigid structure almost five hundred feet long.”

War Wizards Rule, a question: what do you think are objectively good points of Inheritance? (The books in general, not just the fourth one.)

It’s phlebotinum slate, Kyllorac, jeez. Also apparently no one noticed the scene in Inheritance where Roran’s troops bolt outboard motors onto the backs of all the rafts. Hel-looo…

It’s why pointed objects, like knives, do more penetrating damage compared to blunt objects, like clubs. The force of the blow is concentrated into one tiny point, which pushes apart the matter in its way, allowing the object to penetrate very deeply.

That’s really what I was trying to get at. If you’re trying to ram a gate like that, you need to have a lot of weight and force behind a small surface area. Spreading the impact out over a large flat surface like the front of a barge would be counter-productive.

Anyone read the scene where Solemn Ass was trying to give Eragon information? It’s like Paolini wasn’t even trying any more. “here, have some information. Where did it come from? Who cares, let’s just say the werecats felt compelled to mention something that they themselves do not and cannot know anything whatsoever about, and then literally insert more clues into it’s mouth mid-conversation.”

Probably one of the cheapest author tricks I’ve ever seen, and used so blatantly and lazily that I actually physically punched the page in anger.

It was much better than the others. In my opinion, the ending was the best bit. No happy, solid, ever after fairytale ending. And the fact that Cp put in a small amount of “It wasn’t all peace after the war” was understandable and logical. But the half-assed “it would be dangerous to keep the dragon eggs in Alagaesia” excuse was just bad.