Spoiling the Murtagh book... (Patreon)

...don't read if you don't want to be spoiled.

Anyway, so what happens is we have this ancient witch, Bachel, that uses wild magic. She is a half elf belonging to an ancient cult. Her elf mom used to lead the cult but was killed by her because the mom feared she would usurp her position in the cult. Which she did.

They worship and ancient evil dragon called Azlagur that is either hibernating under the Spine mountians or was imprisoned there. It is totally crazy and wants to destroy the world.

This cult is apparently really old with the riders and galby knowing about it but trying and failing to destroy it. They were also responsible for galby losing his dragom and going cooky

They are searching for a way to either free the dragon or gather visions from people sleeping near it (being near it induces crazy visions) to conquer the world.

...trying to think of anything else, but the only thing that comes to mind is the witch supposedly being powerful enough to match galby or the riders which seems nonsense. she beats murtagh but it turns out without his eldunari he is actually pretty useless with magic.

he beats her after getting captured because a girl and urgal felt sorry for him and helped him. they face off again and despite him not having thorn's help and her right hand man being there he wins this time because... idk honestly feels like paolini nerfed the bad guy at the last moment. she's literally ancient, knows wild magic and the ancient language  has superior physical specs and experience to murtagh (this is well established in the book) but he wins... somehow. no powerup, no clever use of magic (he blinds her i guess? but obscuring someone's senses seems like basic shit to me. idk. even him beating her in a swordfight didn't make sense.)

also he didnt have any magical stores (no gems, nada. za roc is tapped out and thorn is too far) or anything, is totally exhausted, keeps telling everyond how tires he is but never runs out of magic. and focuses the light in a cave (underground) into a laser strong enough to punch through like half a mile of solid rock? what? once again paolini has no concept of physics or what is and isn't possible by messing with it.

the evil dragon never makes an appearance expecpt in murtaghs nightmares and he senses its consciousness once.

at the end he flees the village with thorn and goes to tell nasuada and the riders. the book ends and we assume paolini is setting up the big evil dragon as the next bad guy. which will definitely be defeated in an entirely sensible way, right...?