Of Hockey And Hope

It seems that a new post is in order.

I'll start by going over the hockey season. If you read "The Mean Hockey Stick That is Mocking Me" then you'll know which hockey season I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure that that was my longest post in blogging history, so be sure to read it!

Anyway, this coming Saturday is our youth-group hockey play-offs. And how has our team, The Lone Rangers, done?

Undefeated!

I could dance a jig, I'm so happy that we've gone all the way through winning each and every game. But more than that, I admit, I am a little proud of myself too. So far I've gotten 6 goals. This is only my second season playing, and what with being a "newbie" and all, I'm often on defense (which isn't all that bad), so I think I can say true enough, that 6 points isn't to terrible.
My new stick is serving me well, and I can now say that I'm adjusting to it's purple blade.
...despite the fact that it mis-matches...

And now we're ending it all with the play-offs. Our team has the best record, and the highest chances of winning. But you never can tell... I'll be happy if we can play as a good team. Actually, a great team.
...But again, winning the championships wouldn't make me too upset...

The other thing that I wanted to post about had to do with a book review.

Specifically, an Eldest and Brisingr book review.
If you look back in the archives quite a while back, you'll see that I wrote about the book Eragon.
All in all, that book rather seemed to displease me. The author was under 20 years old when he published that book, and that alone will tell you that it just sounded...

Lame. Fake. Crummy.
The list goes on.

I'll go over it for you really quick.

The irritating thing about this, is that Eragon could have been a great piece of literature. As a first glance, it has a twisty story (in a good way), plenty of action, and acceptable character development. However, if you get in a bit closer, you start to see that the plot is a mirror of Star Wars, any of the battle scenes are so unnecessarily gory that it just sounds dumb (and you begin to wonder why anyone would waste so much page on describing blood oozing around wherever it may be), and the characters sound so cheesy with sentences sorta like this:

"Are you hurt, Eragon?"
"Aye."
"It tis a monstrous wound."
"That it is," He replied

...Coming from teenagers of the Alagaesia place.

I mean, really, where do you find 16 year olds who talk like this??
After reading Eragon, my eyes were bleeding with silly-sounding description of exactly how the blood felt splurting out of his cut, and exactly how terribly it hurt to have your skin rubbed raw and bleeding profusely.

It just wasn't right.

That was Eragon. But I wanted to talk about its sequels.

Eldest was basically Eragon all over again. However, I soon acknowledged that Christopher Paolini has an extraordinary way of using adjectives. Adjectives are one of my favorite types of words to work with. And Paolini knows how to use them. The only exception to his wonderful use of adjectives was with one word. It was funny because, until about the middle of the book, I had never heard of or read this word -- not in the book, or any other. But as soon as this word was used, it was as if it had become Paolini's absolute favorite. I kept seeing it again and again and again. Until finally, it seemed to be a new type of cliche:

im·preg·na·ble

1.

strong enough to resist or withstand attack; not to be taken by force, unconquerable: an impregnable fort.

2.

not to be overcome or overthrown: an impregnable argument.

 Another thing that I had a problem with (in both Eragon and Eldest), was this:

A-Y-E

Before I read these books, I thought that "aye," being used instead of "yes," was one of the coolest words ever. I decided that if I ever wrote a fantasy book, I'd make sure that at any moment where someone would say "yes" I'd put "aye" in there instead.

Well, that seriously just happened, right before my eyes.

And thank God that I realized that this is what would happen.

AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE

"Aye" nearly started to come out my nose, and steam out my ears.

In spite of all the bad things that I've said about these books, they just seemed to capture me and take me hostage. I can't help but want to know what each character would do next. Despite the bad use of "aye" and the over-board old-English, it's really rather a, if not original, entertaining, and captivating story-line.

It's been done before, yet it's educating for your fantasy knowledge. The author was improving by the time Eldest was being concluded. And I was interested how his next book would turn out.

Brisingr.

(supposedly, this means "fire" in Paolini's ancient language thing)

Brisingr (pronounced briss-inn-gurr) is the third installment of The Inheritance Cycle (with the fourth coming out on November 8th of this year). Because of the author's improvement in Eldest, I had a few hopes mixed in with the skepticism about this book.

I'll just say now, that Brisingr is beyond what I'd hoped for.

Although the writing is still obviously in-experienced, I am very pleased with Paolini's new-found penmanship. His characters still talk in slightly over-done cheesiness, and he still wastes quiet a few words on gory scenes, but he is much much much much better!!

And best of all:

I AM NOW ON PAGE 189 (chapter 12) AND I HAVE ONLY READ THE WORD "AYE" 5 TIMES!

AND IN ADDITION TO THAT, I HAVE ONLY SEEN THE WORD "IMPREGNABLE" ONCE!!

Rejoice all ye who appreciate adequate literature! For Brisingr has filled my heart with merriment because of it's superb improvement!

In other words:

Good news: I'm not feeling as though I need to stick the book in the microwave.

...Not that I would ever do that to my best friend's favorite book, mind you.

Since I haven't finished this huge chunk of hard-back, I can't give you a full report. Only know this: there is hope for The Inheritance Cycle after all.

See ya later!
-Plink.