Teres

I can certainly understand that she did not contact him before now, but afterward... there is no good reason not to. Of course, the reason is probably "Borneheld is just so evil that no one wants to reconnect with him", which I still do not exactly believe.

Yeah, it's complete bullshit. Bornheld even points out to her that her abandonment of him was why he turned "evil" or whatever but does THAT get any sympathy from her selfish arse? Of course not. No parent in this thing ever accepts that their bad parenting or even outright abuse could have caused their kid to behave badly.
Real parents feel GUILTY about it when their kid becomes a criminal or somesuch. It's all through the Netflix "Dahmer" series, for one thing. His parents find out what he did and go through hell trying to deny if it could have been their fault before eventually accepting that some blame at least does lie with them. And when he dies they both grieve for him.
Family in general is really poorly portrayed in this trilogy, and especially parenthood.

Given that he still looks "ashen", I do have the idea that he is more injured than he is supposed to be...

In which case it should have been made clear that he's suffering from an infection or severe blood loss or something like that.

Ah yes, that is in chapter eleven. The way Douglass phrases this does sound like Borneheld genetically inherited these things from Searlas (and given next book I would not be surprised if that was due to some curse on the Dukes of Ichtar).

Ah yes, the "criminal Dukes of Ichtar" who were just so Evil because one of them had a lake drained. The horror.

I am already getting the feeling that she is only filling them out because we have not yet reached the Icarii.

aka the perfect idealised race with all their incestuous free love bullshit, who are therefore more deserving of attention. Because Douglass cannot keep her disgusting fetishes to herself.

Because that's all anybody dreams about or desires. Sex. How incredibly juvenile!

Quite.

Because asexuals don't exist. As usual. We're all just in denial or haven't met the right person yet or something.

I think she actually signs it by not doing so to both Azhure and Faraday. Disrespecting two of the main characters is a grave sin, after all.

Better still, she's JEALOUS that Faraday "loves" Azhure. Psychotically so. The lesbian overtones are insane.

He could have defeated Galbatorix as soon as he learned about wordless magic, really. Here, I think Gorgrael might be "defeated" by having someone befriend him and help him realise just how much WolfStar has deceived him.

Like a lot of bad fantasy authors, Paolini included, Douglass just does not believe in the idea of redemption. Ironic given that this thing is called the Wayfarer Redemption, because nobody gets redeemed. They just fucking die! Because that's just easier to write and fits in with this lame black and white view of the world the author seems to have, which is incredibly childish, not to mention massively unhelpful. Just look at what the "us vs them, who are not deserving to be called human" mentality has done so many times in the real world. Or don't, because you will become very depressed.