The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm

I guess I'm probably just too old for this book. Seems like it's about on the same level as the Inheritance cycle which I enjoyed then and not so much now. The biggest flaw I see with this book is that there's no introduction to characters or concepts - its the DLC of Eragon etc... it didn't take me very long to dig up memories of who and what was being talked about, but nobody could read this book without having first read the original series. While the stories were enjoyable on their own, I don't care for the effort to tie them all together to the main storyline - works great in NotW, but here I just don't feel invested in what's going on in the “real world” enough.

Below is some of my review posted on Inheritance, Brisingr, Eldest and Eragon with some rehashing/added stuff...

So this is my first time reading The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm: Tales from Alagaësia: Eragon, (Eragon, Eragon/Eldest, Eragon/Eldest/Brisingr, Eragon/Eldest/Brisingr/Inheritance...) this being my first time listening to the audiobook too. To put it simply, Gerard Doyle is fantastic. His character voices and narration fit perfectly, and I loved the job he did. My only complaint for this one is that he did a kind of less growly sounding voice for Saphira, and that the change after hearing the other voice for 4 much longer audiobooks was very off-putting.

I obviously fell off for some years seeing that Inheritance was released 9 years ago, but what can you do...

I'm sure there's a hundred reviews on here talking about how this all started when Paolini was fifteen, and how at the time of Brisingr, he had spent a decade with Eragon, so I'll just say–WOW.

He takes so many things from others (in terms of influence) and handles them all so delicately that he created this wonderful, lush, dense lore that continues to grow throughout the rest of the novels. He was like a mini-Tolkien with his languages and flushed out geographic ideas. He created the Urgals and Kull instead of just recycling the typical Orcs and Uruk-hai. I found multiple points of similarity between Martin's ‘Game of Thrones' dragons and Paolini's, and yet past those he once again branched off and created his own world and lore for them in a refreshing way. I think the training and wiseness from Brom most similarly matches the ideas of Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker, including the necessary death of a mentor/father figure that thus propels the main character towards greatness. I suppose you could also easily argue that it is also like Gandalf/Frodo, however I think it's a harder argument to make that Frodo actually grew based off lessons from a knowledgable mentor (HE IS A HERO, JUST A DIFFERENT KIND!). Or, you could also point out Harry/Dumbledore–I'm sure we've all seen the memes about needing an old man mentor and a young hero to make a successful series–even though Dumbledore hid questionable important details from Harry, he still fulfilled that role.


The Fork I enjoyed very much. I always liked Murtagh as a character. I've waited countless years to see him come back around to being a good guy and we are finally getting there. His change of name didn't really serve fans well in this audiobook because Doyle was clearly doing Murtagh's voice, but I was excited all the same.

The Witch worked, but was far less exciting to me. As much as I enjoy Angela the Herbalist, and want to know more about her, her powers, and who she really is, this story doesn't really deliver on any of those things. Perhaps it is a start though? Maybe we'll get an entire anthology on who she really is...

The Worm was another that I didn't dislike, but I don't know if it really worked for me. I was interested to see more into Urgal life, and definitely excited to see an Urgal spell caster, but I didn't really like the concept of an evil dragon for this story. Even if the dragon was wild. It felt almost like backpedaling on the majesty that's been ground home for Paolini's dragons since day one.

However, I did enjoy them all. For the most part the thing that hurt these stories the most was the fact that they were simply too short, especially after the long series prior. I still look forward to more!

Pros: more incorporation of nature imagery and themes than I remembered.
This is the kind of thing that I think is fun, and that more authors should do: short stories / novellas set in their world that give the advantages of exploring a little bit more or answering reader questions without getting caught up in the weight of a full new plot.
There are a few moments of magic and beauty that I'm sure are what he was going for, in the vein of Name of the Wind.

Cons: While I loved these books in high school and there's a bit of a nostalgia factor, I'm a different reader now. I find his writing and especially his dialogue so very stilted that it definitely takes me out of the world and the plot. And the breadth of other things I've read make it harder to recommend this series, when I now have so many other works that are more interesting and have a shorter page count. But I'll always be grateful to CP for making my younger self dream about books and writing.