Eldest

What's inside (7 sections)

1. Training in Ellesmera
2. Roran Holds Carvahall
3. Nasuada Leads the Varden
4. Fire on the Burning Plains
5. What Soars and What Sags
6. Key takeaways
7. FAQ

I finished Eragon with mixed feelings and picked up Eldest anyway because I wanted to know what happened to Roran. That turned out to be the right call. Eldest was published in 2005 by Alfred A. Knopf, runs 681 pages, and is the second book in The Inheritance Cycle. It is bigger, slower, and more serious than the first. Paolini splits it into three threads that barely touch for hundreds of pages. Eragon trains with the elves in Ellesmera. Roran holds Carvahall against soldiers and strange raiders. Nasuada takes charge of the Varden after her father dies. Of the three, Roran held me most.

The book opens in the aftermath of Farthen Dur. Ajihad is dead, killed by Urgals under the Twins' treachery. His daughter Nasuada steps forward. Murtagh has vanished, taken during the battle. Eragon is scarred across the back from his fight with the Shade Durza, a wound that burns at odd times. Saphira is growing but still young. The Varden are exposed inside the dwarf mountain and must choose a new path. Eragon owes oaths to several sides at once. That tangle drives much of what follows.

Eragon and Saphira fly to Ellesmera, the elf city hidden in Du Weldenvarden, to train with Oromis and Glaedr. Roran stays in the Spine foothills and refuses to abandon his village. Nasuada moves the Varden south out of dwarf lands toward Surda, where King Orrin offers shelter and a chance to meet Galbatorix in open war. The map widens fast. Palancar Valley, the Spine, Teirm on the coast, the dwarf cities, the elf forest, Surda in the west, the Burning Plains where armies will meet. Keep a finger on the map. You will need it.

Training in Ellesmera

Eragon expects swift mastery. He gets grammar lessons, aching limbs, and shame.

Oromis is crippled in a way no healing can fix. Long ago he was captured and his body was broken so he cannot cast large magic without seizures. His gold dragon Glaedr is missing a leg from the same old war. Together they are wise, patient, and sad. Oromis teaches Eragon the ancient language word by word, the true names of things, the ethics of power, the way to draw strength without killing the life around him. Mornings are spent in meditation, trying to sense every ant and leaf. Afternoons are sword work. Evenings are history and language. Eragon fails often. His scar flares. His elven sparring partner Vanir mocks him as a clumsy human rider.

Saphira trains with Glaedr in the sky. She learns dives, climbs, flame control, fighting with tooth and tail while carrying a rider. She also argues. Glaedr is old and formal. Saphira is young and proud. Their talks about pride, mating flights, dragon memory, and duty are some of the warmest pages. She tells Eragon what she learns in images and blunt thoughts. She grows steadier here than in the first book.

Ellesmera itself is lovely and a little cold. Houses grown from trees, lanterns without flame, singers who shape wood, the smith Rhunon who swore never to forge another sword yet agrees to guide Eragon's mind while he forges his own blade. Arya is there, cool and grieving her companion Faolin. Queen Islanzadi receives Eragon with courtesy and reserve. The elves are long lived and slow to trust. They test him, correct his accent, correct his manners, correct his sword grip.

Two events change Eragon in this thread. First, during the elven festival of Agaeti Blodhren, the dragons work a great gift through him. His scar melts away. His face shifts toward elven lines. His strength, speed, sight, and hearing sharpen. He wakes hungry and light, half changed. It solves his back pain in one stroke, which felt too easy to me, though Paolini frames it as grace rather than training earned. Second, Eragon forges Brisingr, a rider's sword that bursts into flame when he speaks its name. Rhunon refuses to touch metal herself because of her oath, so she lends her knowledge mind to mind while Eragon's hands do the work. The forging chapters are slow and exact. Heat, hammer, folding, cooling. I liked them more than the sparring because the labor shows.

The honest flaw here is pace. Oromis lectures on ethics, grammar, and restraint for many chapters while war builds elsewhere. The lessons matter. Eragon learns why mind reading without leave is vile, why oaths in the old speech bind, why taking strength from living things can kill forests. But the book repeats the points. Vanir insults him, Eragon broods, Oromis corrects, repeat. Arya keeps him at a distance while Eragon pines, which replays the first book without much change. When the call to war finally comes, the relief is physical. I turned those last Ellesmera pages fast.

Roran Holds Carvahall

Roran is the heart of Eldest. He stays home, works, loves Katrina, and refuses to be moved.

After Garrow's death and Eragon's flight, the Ra'zac return to Palancar Valley hunting Roran as bait for Eragon. They come with King Galbatorix's soldiers. They demand answers. Sloan the butcher, Katrina's father, betrays the village to protect himself and his own trade. He tells the soldiers where Roran sleeps. Roran escapes the first raid, hides in the hills, and comes back bloodied. Horst the smith takes him in. Elain, Horst's wife, feeds him. Baldor and Albriech, Horst's sons, stand with him. Gertrude the healer binds wounds. Delwin and other farmers argue, blame, then rally.

What follows is a village siege stretched over many chapters, and it is excellent. Roran teaches farmers to bar the gates, dig pits, pile stones, melt pitch, make spears from tools. He sets watches. He rations food. He talks down panic. The first attack is small. The next is larger. The Ra'zac themselves are terrifying, tall, beaked, hissing, immune to pain in ways that chill the blood. Their steeds, the Lethrblaka, swoop at night. Roran learns to face them with a hammer rather than a sword, because a hammer crushes where a blade glances off. He takes a blow that should kill him and keeps swinging. The villagers start calling him Stronghammer.

Katrina is taken. That loss sharpens everything. Sloan, in a panic to save her himself, makes a separate deal and ends up handing her to the Ra'zac. Roran believes she lives because the enemy wants a hold over him and Eragon. He is right, but the wait costs him sleep and sense. His quarrels with Horst over risks, his tenderness with Katrina remembered in small scenes, his guilt over his father and cousin, all feel more human than anything in Ellesmera. When Carvahall can no longer hold, Roran leads the whole village over the Spine in snow, down to the coast, to Teirm, and then by stolen ship toward Surda and the Varden. The march is muddy, hungry, and stubborn. Children cry. Old folk stumble. Roran carries, threatens, begs.

In Teirm he finds Jeod, Brom's old friend, and begs for a ship. Jeod is fearful, tied to his shop and his wife Helen, but he remembers Brom and hates the Empire. The chapters where Roran and Jeod plan to seize the Dragon Wing, load villagers in secret, and slip past imperial sloops are tense and fun. The crew is thin, the tide is wrong, soldiers search the docks. Roran fights on the deck with his hammer and wins passage by nerve. I cheered. After hundreds of pages of elf grammar, a hammer and a tide table felt like fresh air.

If you read Eldest for one thread only, read Roran. Paolini writes labor, fear, and stubborn love better here than magic. The village feels real because people argue about grain, boots, and burial plots while monsters circle. Katrina is not a prize waiting in a tower. She resists her captors, keeps her wits, and protects the unborn child she carries. Sloan earns contempt but also pity. Horst earns respect without speeches. This is the book's best work.

Nasuada Leads the Varden

Nasuada inherits a broken army and a mountain of debts. Ajihad's death leaves grief and doubt. The Twins are gone, revealed as traitors. Many captains think a young woman cannot hold the Varden together. She proves them wrong by work, not speeches, though she gives a few strong ones.

She moves the Varden from Farthen Dur across dwarf lands to Surda. Hrothgar the dwarf king escorts and advises her, gruff and honorable. Orik, Hrothgar's nephew and Eragon's friend, watches and learns. The march strains food, wagons, and tempers. Urgals who once fought for Galbatorix under spells now seek terms. Nar Garzhvog, a horned Kull chieftain, offers pact. Nasuada accepts Urgals into her force, which angers humans and dwarves but adds muscle she needs. It is a bold choice and a lonely one. She makes it after listening, not before.

Two scenes define her. First, the Trial of the Long Knives. To win the trust of a Surdan tribe and to prove she can bear pain for her people, she stands with Elva, the cursed child Eragon once blessed by mistake, and lets two priests cut her arms and legs while she refuses to cry out. Elva, who feels the pain of others because of that botched blessing, suffers with her. Nasuada endures longer. Blood soaks the ground. She does not fall. I found the scene hard to read and hard to dismiss. It is brutal, consensual, political theater and real courage at once. Paolini does not flinch from the cost.

Second, her handling of Elva. Elva is a toddler who speaks like an adult and sees misery coming. The blessing meant to shield her instead forced her to sense and absorb pain. Nasuada shelters her, uses her sight sparingly, and promises to find a release. Their talks are brief and sad. Nasuada treats the child as a person rather than a tool, even while war tempts her to use every edge. That restraint marks her as a leader worth following.

In Surda, King Orrin is clever, vain, fond of science and debate, slow to pay for war. Nasuada manages him with patience and firm lines. She secures funds, forges armor, buys grain, places spies, and sets the field at the Burning Plains, a wide ash plain where the Empire must meet them. She puts Eragon and Saphira where they will inspire most. She puts Roran's villagers where they can fight for homes they lost. She accepts dwarf aid knowing Hrothgar may fall. Her chapters have councils, ledgers, and seamstresses making lace to fund spies, which sounds dull and reads tense because every coin is a spear.

Nasuada is my favorite surprise in this book. In Eragon she was background. Here she carries a third of the story without a dragon or a sword. Her power is attention and nerve. Paolini gives her mistakes too. She trusts too slowly at times, she leans hard on Eragon's legend, she risks her own body when others need her whole. But she learns in view, which Eragon in Ellesmera often does not.

Fire on the Burning Plains

All threads meet on the Burning Plains, where ash chokes the air and the ground smokes from old peat fires. The Varden and Surdans face an imperial host led by Murtagh, now a Rider on the red dragon Thorn.

The Twins appear in imperial colors and murder with glee until Roran kills them. That sentence is simple and the scene is not. Roran, a farmer with a hammer, faces two bald magicians who once betrayed the Varden and tortured minds. He survives because they toy with him and because his hatred steadies his hands. He crushes their skulls while soldiers stare. Veterans cheer his name. It is the peak of his arc and the book's loudest moment. A common man breaks fear itself.

Hrothgar dies in this battle, struck by enemy magic while leading dwarves. Orik weeps and takes up duty. The loss lands because Hrothgar was plain spoken and fair, a king who ate with soldiers. His death shakes the alliance and sets up dwarf politics for later books.

Then Eragon meets Murtagh in the sky. Saphira and Thorn clash with teeth and claws. Murtagh speaks the old speech with dreadful skill and overmatches Eragon, who has trained for months. He strips Zar'roc, Morzan's old sword that Brom once bore, from Eragon and claims it as his birthright. He reveals that Morzan was his father, and that Eragon's mother Selena was also his mother. They share blood through her, though their fathers differ. Galbatorix holds Murtagh's true name and oaths, so Murtagh cannot disobey even when he wishes to. He spares Eragon out of kin feeling and old friendship, warns him that Galbatorix is stronger than Oromis knows, and leaves.

The reveal reframes book one. Brom took Zar'roc from Morzan after killing him. Brom hid Eragon in Carvahall through Garrow. Selena came home to give birth and then returned to a life she could not leave. Murtagh grew in court under torment. Eragon grew on a farm under love. Same mother, split fates. I guessed part of it early, but the oath bondage still stung. Murtagh is not a willing villain. He is a chained one, which is worse.

Eragon ends the book shaken, back among friends but no longer the naive boy who left Palancar Valley. Roran finds Katrina alive in the enemy camp after the battle, with Sloan blinded and broken nearby. Eragon faces Sloan's crimes and spares his life in a strange mercy, marking him and sending him away rather than killing him. Nasuada holds the field but knows the Empire will return larger. Saphira mourns and rages. Oromis warns from afar that the war has only started.

What Soars and What Sags

Eldest soars when it stays close to work. Roran's hammer, Nasuada's knives, Eragon's forge. Paolini writes tools, wounds, hunger, and weather with care. The siege of Carvahall, the march over the Spine, the theft of the Dragon Wing, the Trial of the Long Knives, the forging of Brisingr, the dragon fights over ash. Those chapters move. Saphira's voice is stronger too, wry and loyal, quick to check Eragon's pride. Glaedr's grief for the old Riders gives the lore weight without long songs.

It sags in the middle of training. Lessons repeat. Eragon makes the same error with the old speech, apologizes, meditates, spars with Vanir, pines for Arya, repeats. Oromis is kind and right, but his lectures on restraint and grammar run long. Ellesmera is beautiful yet static. Arya stays distant by design, which leaves Eragon's crush circling. Readers who loved the road miles in book one may enjoy the slow study. I skimmed some meditation pages and missed little.

The prose is still ornate. Cloaks, glances, prophecies. Angela the herbalist and Solembum appear briefly with fortunes and riddles and steal their scenes, then vanish too soon. Elva is a sharp invention, a child who cannot look away from pain because Eragon misspoke a blessing in Teirm. That thread pays off years of guilt in a few quiet talks. Katrina shows spine in captivity. Sloan earns hate and then an uneasy pity. Those small turns lift the big war.

At 681 pages from Alfred A. Knopf, the book needs its length for three armies and two dragons, but a firmer cut in Ellesmera would help. Still, the balance works better than in Eragon because Roran and Nasuada carry weight while Eragon studies. One flies, one digs in, one counts coins for spears. The three labors rhyme without matching.

Read it if you like training tales with real cost, sieges with hungry villagers rather than clean heroes, and leaders who bleed for position. Skim nothing in Carvahall or Surda. Allow patience in the forest. The payoff on the Burning Plains, with Thorn in the smoke and a hammer against magicians, is worth the slow miles.

FAQ

How is Eragon related to Murtagh in Eldest?

They share a mother, Selena. Morzan fathered Murtagh, while Eragon had a different father, so they are half brothers raised worlds apart.

Who leads the Varden in Eldest?

Nasuada takes command after her father Ajihad dies. She moves the Varden to Surda and prepares for open war.

Does Roran kill the Twins?

Yes. On the Burning Plains he crushes both Twins with his hammer after they reveal themselves in imperial colors.