Rating: 2 out of 5
Sometimes, Mr Paolini’s fantasy-world captivates me thoroughly; at other times, it does not. This belongs into the latter category, mostly because the book really doesn’t serve a purpose. Eragon’s in a tough place when it starts, and he’s in the same place when he ends. That some stories come to him about what’s going on at the same time doesn’t really change any of that.
The author’s style is weird. Some scenes and lands he writes really well: the best example of this being small-village peasants though these don’t feature in the three stories included in this compilation. Yet, some other things this author writes very poorly. The specific example of his bad style are the extremely forced sentences that are peppered through the stories.
The other aspect that I didn’t fully enjoy was how imbalanced the stories were. The first one, “The Fork”, was about a fifth of the length of “The Worm”, the second story somewhere in the middle of those two but it was even more aimless. A lot more thinking about what these stories meant for Eragon and what their message was would have made these a lot more coherent overall.
All in all, a quick reintroduction to Alagaesia but nothing special.
