Murtagh II (Working Title) - The Sneak Peak
Hello, all. Thank you for joining me for another quick reaction piece.
On August 19th (or August 20th, depending on where you are), Christopher Paolini announced on Twitter that he’d posted a sneak peek of the Murtagh sequel to his blog. This was apparently done as a thank-you for his Kickstarter for The Book of Remembrance (which is apparently some sort of lore book) crossing the $1 million mark.
I’m a bit surprised Murtagh is getting a sequel. Not that Paolini can’t go that route, of course. I feel like he’s speed-run Murtagh’s character growth in the last book with that overstuffed trauma arc, but there’s still room for the character to go on fun, pulpy adventures like the one he claimed he initially meant to write for the first book. It’s just that the original book was presented as a bridge to the so-called “Book V” of Eragon’s story, rather than the start of a new series. It was also very much a self-contained story. Sure, there are plenty of threads that could be picked up for a sequel (and one of those is pulled in this sneak peak), but nothing that feels incomplete if it’s not dealt with before Book V.
(The wiki is telling me that these books are meant to be a duology, which is sourced back to some comment on Reddit. I guess we will see whether that is indeed the case as time goes on.)
Regardless, the sneak peak is here, so we might as well take a look at it.
This post won’t be speculation as to what this sequel (which Paolini is calling Murtagh II for now, though he has an actual title that he’s keeping close to the chest) will be about. Rather, we will be evaluating this sneak peak as a continuation of the first book.
SPOILERS
This post will have heavy, unmarked spoilers for the sneak peak of Murtagh II. You can read the full text for yourself on Paolini’s blog, either within the webpage itself or via the PDF copy Paolini has made available for download.
There will also be heavy, unmarked spoilers for the four books of the Inheritance Cycle and for Murtagh. I am also going to assume you have read my past reviews for books set in Alagaësia, though they aren’t necessary to understand what we’ll cover here.
TERMINOLOGY
Since the name of the main character is also the name of the book, and now we have two books to cover, I am going to use the following to distinguish between them:
The actual character named Murtagh will be called Murtagh.
The original book Murtagh will be M1.
The sequel will be M2.
STORY
An urgal named Kekvra struggles up the stairs of something called “the White Tower” in a place called “the Academy at Mount Arngor”. (I have not read anything from the Tales from Alagaësia series, but giving references to dragons, I assume this is Eragon’s rider school.) He stops and pounds on a door, which opens to reveal Murtagh. Kekvra informs Murtagh that Murtagh’s blood brother, Uvek Windtalker (the urgal Murtagh was imprisoned alongside in the last book) has called upon Murtahg for aid.
The POV shifts to Murtagh. He learns the Kekvra will be his guide to where Uvek waits (at some unspecified point in the “north”). Privately, he verifies with Thorn that the dragon is willing to assist him, and Thorn speculates whether this has to do with “more of the Draumar” (who, of course, are still an unresolved threat). Murtagh begins his preparations to leave. In order to build Kekvra’s trust in him, he takes the Dauthdaert from his wardrobe and tasks Kekvra with safeguarding it until he gets back.
Murtagh climbs further up the White Tower, passing Elva on the way. He then knocks on Eragon’s door. Eragon answers it. The sneak peaks ends on this line.
“We need to talk,” said Murtagh.
PLOT
As an opening to a sequel, this works fine. Paolini is picking up the plot thread of Uvek being Murtagh’s blood brother, which was an idea introduced in the last book without any meaningful impact on the narrative (no, Uvek making it a requirement before he would help Murtagh does not count). He’s also making use of the Draumar the focus right away. Even if they aren’t actually the threat Murtagh deals with in this book, it makes sense to reintroduce them as a means of reminding the audience what happened in the previous book.
WORLDBUILDING
Most of what we get here is reintroduction, with one exception.
Old
Let’s cover the reintroductions. The two main worldbuilding elements that stand out here are:
Paolini re-affirms the importance of the Ancient Language in the magic system. Murtagh is studying the Ancient Language when Kekvra knocks.
Murtagh is keeping the Dauthdaert in his wardrobe, alongside his sword.
One thing that bothers me about the way the Ancient Language is handled is that we get a passage explicitly acknowledging that Murtagh wants to avoid repeating the mistake Eragon made with Elva. This confirms that intent does not override the Ancient Language … thereby confirming that Paolini patting himself on the back for having Murtagh put two guards to sleep with intent was an unearned moment that violated the rules of the world. (I’m not going to give Paolini credit for course-correcting in this particular case, as in that moment of unearned self-congratulations, he practically looked at the audience and told us that we couldn’t count of Murtagh being able to do that trick in the future. It reads like he wrote himself into a corner and gave himself a free pass.)
As for the latter, it strikes me as odd that Murtagh is keeping this. Wouldn’t he want to hand it off to Nasuada, so that the Empire has a tool to defend themselves against dragons in the absence of the Riders? This isn’t a huge issue, and it’s not hard to rationalize it as a character decision. It just feels like the Dauthdaert is here because Paolini wanted to keep using it, not because Murtagh keeping it was the most likely decision for the characters to make.
New
As Kekvra is struggling up the stairs, he narrowly reigns in his temper at how hard they are to climb. He then prays the forgiveness of an Urgal goddess for his moment of temptation. Then, this happens.
“Rahna forgive me,” he said, and his shoulders relaxed as he felt the comforting presence of the goddess upon him.
Is Paolini confirming that the gods are objectively real in this setting? I know he met Gûntera in Brisingr, but seeing an apparition that Eragon and Saphira could quickly write off as something other than a god is very different from mystical experiences on command. It’s isolated in its own paragraph, to, so Paolini wanted us to notice this. What is he going for?
I’m previously asserted that Paolini seems incapable of empathizing with religious people. This moment does nothing to change my mind. If anything, such low-hanging mysticism implies that he thinks religious people all get jolts of happy juice from a higher power on command, which would be an utter absurd thing to assert if that were indeed the intent. I do hope that Paolini proves me wrong (or, at the very least, no longer correct) in this or a future book; I’ll happily acknowledge that if and when it happens. It’s just that things like this don’t put my mind at ease.
CHARACTER
Kekvra
This is our first urgal POV character in the main books. I like how Paolini takes time to highlight the struggle this character has in climbing stairs that were not build for creatures of his size. I wouldn’t call this brief scene particularly deep, but at least for now, Paoloni has convinced me that this is the narrative voice of a character with the physical and cultural traits he has previously established for urgals.
Murtagh
The fact that Murtagh is aggressively studying the Ancient Language has me worried that the voice and character issues - namely, that Paolini is not comfortable writing Murtagh differently from Eragon - is not going to be resolved in M2. Specifically, it feeds into the issue of Murtagh solving problems the same way as Eragon. Aggressively studying the Ancient Language would indeed justify Murtagh having the same magical skills as Eragon. That is certainly an improvement over how things were handling in the last book. Still, it feels like Paolini is just giving up on having Murtagh solve problems differently from Eragon. He’s handing Murtagh the skills the erase one of the things that made him interesting.
Murtagh’s decision to hand Kekvra the Dauthdaert , by contrast, does feel more in-tune with Murtagh as a distinct character from Eragon. In at least the early parts of M1, Paolini toyed with the idea of Murtagh as a charismatic, manipulative rogue. Here, we are explicitly told that he’s trusting Kekvra to guard this weapon to win the urgal’s trust. He doesn’t need Kekvra to guard the weapon - Thorn is in the room, and could very easily defend it if Murtagh left it in the wardrobe for however long it takes to talk to Eragon - but he’s doing so anyway to build a bond between them.
Elva
Elva is the same character as she was at the end of the Inheritance Cycle - which has me curious.
Exactly how long has it been since the previous books? M1 is set one year after the end of Inheritance. We don’t get any clear descriptions of Elva, other than her being “small”, so it’s unclear if she’s had months or years of growth. We also get this exchange between her and Murtagh.
She blinked, then looked at the stars out the nearby window. “It has been a cold winter this year.”
“Aye. That is known to happen. Move aside.”
Her violet eyes returned to him. “It will grow colder still, Murtagh son of Morzan. The rivers will freeze, and the beasts of the field will die in their drifts, and the birds will drop from the sky. Seek you where there is warmth. We all must.”
Murtagh was set before a winter. Per Part I Chapter I:
Snow didn’t usually arrive until a month or two after Maddentide. For it to be this early meant a bitter, brutal winter was on the way.
So it could be only a few months later, or it could be any arbitrary number of years.
Eragon
Uh … did something happen to Eragon in Tales from Alagaësia?
His half-brother wore an evening robe much like Murtagh’s, but he showed no sign of sleepiness. Another gift, Murtagh supposed, of his transformation among the elves. Tired or not, he still looked wan and haggard from his recent ordeal—the skin about his eyes was unnaturally thin, and blue veins showed beneath—and Murtagh feared that his wound was not yet fully healed.
What recent ordeal? Why is he described as though he recently survived getting shanked by a Morgul-knife?
If this is explained in Tales from Alagaësia - either The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm or the second book that Paolini is apparently working on - then this isn’t a continuity error. I’m just a bit frustrated by the implication that those side stories might become required reading. I hope this gets some proper explanation in the scene that follows this sneak peak so that readers won’t have to double back.
FINAL THOUGHTS
While I complained a lot here, this sneak peek is a strong opening overall. Most of the problems are really just continuations of old problems, and Paolini balances that by making good use of other things he previously introduced.
As a way to thank the fans for their support on another Alagaësia project, I think this was a generous and heartfelt offering. Thank you, Mr. Paolini.
