Reading List

I've had the same 2 books listed in the "what I'm reading" section on this blog for quite a while.

Well, I finally finished Brisingr. It didn't take me forever to finish because I wasn't interested in it, just that I'm a very busy girl.

However, it is a very, very long book and it tends to drag in many places. My 16-year-old son read it too and had the same complaint. We're both fans of the series (this is the 3rd of 4 books), but I think as a middle book in a series it suffers the sad fate of over-narration. Although Paolini's prose is often very lyrical and impressive, he could have easily condensed this book down to at least half its current length and had a book that was a much quicker read that moved the story along much more efficiently. It felt almost as if he had several pieces of action planned and then had to fill the gaps between with extra narration.

Don't get me wrong, I admire anyone who is capable of filling that much space...and then selling it. I have trouble writing longer pieces because I tend to want to get to the point. I'm not a very good rambler.

For anyone who is a fan of the Inheritance series (Eragon and Eldest), Brisingr is definitely worth reading, if for no other reason than it prepares you for the upcoming conclusion. There are some interesting battles, and some useful character development, and, of course, the story is moving along toward it's eventual completion. However, there's only one significant revelation in this book, and the rest is pretty much back story and busy work for the characters while we wait for the finale of the series in book 4.

(I'm still working on Palm Latitudes. It's an extremely dense book. I like it very much, but it's very time consuming to get through. It's like a book written in poetry rather than prose, so you have to pay very close attention to catch all the nuance. It's exhuasting!)