It's been a while since we finished off the review of the latest book of the main Eragon series. But that apparently wasn't the end of it, for this spinoff book containing three separate tales was published in 2018. I became quickly interested in it after I quite liked some of the Eragon books, despite not fully knowing what the book contained. So let's see how it holds up. Is it a worthy spinoff off the beloved dragon-riding epic? Spoilers ahead.
The Fork, the Witch and the Worm follows Eragon some year after setting out on his quest to keep the eggs and Eldunarí safe. We now get three stories, one focusing on Murtagh (disguised under the identity of "Tornac" helping out a little girl, one about Angela the witch chronicling Eragon's adventures, and one legend of the Urgals.
I quite enjoyed these three short stories, mostly the first and the last. In The Fork I for the longest time didn't catch on to the fact that Tornac was Murgath. I really should've put one and two together sooner, but apparently I'm just this oblivious. It was still a fun tale, though, about him helping a girl and giving her a magical fork. It was enjoyable, though I surprisingly didn't end up liking the Eragon portions of the story very much. I get that it takes time to readjust to a "normal" life after you've been a prophesied war hero for so long, but reading his portions didn't particularly appeal to me. I did like his interactions with Saphira, though.
In The Witch we get to read some of Angela's writing regarding Eragon and the child Elva. I've made it clear in my reviews of the main series that I never quite liked the Elva-twist, so that didn't change here. Some of the writing was fun, but I didn't particularly feel engaged by this part of the story.
The last short story in this series I enjoyed by far the most, as I feel like it was probably the closest to what I loved so much about the first and second Eragon books. We get world building, a legend about a humongous dragon, and Eragon gets to spend time with the Urgals, which I personally find to be one of the most interesting races in Alagaësia. It's just a good old lore story for the Kull, but it is executed great. A tale of vengeance and realizing what is the right thing, which also contains some references to the Lethrblaka, which was definitely cool.
Overall not the greatest short story collection I've ever read, but it's definitely all right. If you like the Eragon series I think you'll probably like this fine, but if not, you can skip it, you're not missing that much, plus you'll need the context for what's going on and who these characters are.
Rating: 3/5
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