A short (and somewhat sarcastic) summary: Main character = Eragon, mysteeeeerious boy-child left with his aunt and uncle by wandering mother, father unknown. Boy finds mysteeeeerious stone. Turns out to be dragon egg. Boy raises dragon and bonds with it strongly. Bad guys come and destroy boy's house and kill his uncle. Boy swears revenge. Boy's secret dragon is discovered by mysteeeerious storyteller who turns out to be master swordsman and random magic user. The hunt for the bad guys begins, and boy searches for his destiny as a legendary Dragon Rider (of course, that must be capitalized). Eragon goes through traditional bouts of training and learning about himself under the stern tutelage of old wise traveling companion. Along the way he gains and loses friends, and rescues a mysteeeerious woman from a horrible dungeon while never straying from his quest to put right all that is wrong in a world oppressively ruled by an evil king.This book has gotten lots of attention since it first came out, partly because the author is so young. He was fifteen when he started the book, and was nineteen when it was published. Age isn't always correlated with mastery, of course, but when I read this book, I could TELL that the writer was either young or an immature writer. Though it seems people think it "got published" somehow because of its great merit, this book was actually self-published by the author's parents (company was Paolini International), and then it was paraded around on a self-funded signing tour the way most self-published people do. An established author happened to run into the family doing a signing while he was on vacation, thought a kid writing a book was interesting, bought a copy and made his stepson read it, and decided to try to get the book a deal when the kid liked it. The people at Knopf re-edited and repackaged and re-released it under that label. I believe that if this book had meandered its way to publishing houses the usual way, it would have been rejected as unpublishable, for reasons I will discuss in depth here.Christopher Paolini himself, in his own words, describes his story thus: "Eragon is an archetypal hero story, filled with exciting action, dangerous villains, and fantastic locations. There are dragons and elves, sword fights and unexpected revelations, and of course, a beautiful maiden who's more than capable of taking care of herself."I would argue that this book is not an "archetypal hero story" so much as an overused and overly traditional Tolkienien "epic," with "epic" in quotes because it lacks exactly that epic nature that made the world of Lord of the Rings so rich. There was absolutely nothing new or "unexpected" in this book (though the author claims there are "revelations"), and if a reader is excited by this book, they are probably reacting to the concepts themselves (e.g., fantasy worlds, dragons, fierce battles) rather than the book's own merit, or perhaps they have never been exposed to the dozens of fantasy and science fiction epics from which this author pulled his influences. My feeling was that this book was nothing special because, if I may be so blunt, "it's been done," and it's been done better. Overall, I just think that this book was written as though it had a template or blueprint for "traditional fantasy novel" and the details and names were simply filled in. I couldn't help feeling the entire time I was reading it that I had read this story before, nothing was much of a surprise, and things that didn't make sense or got in the way of a conflicting original vision were smoothed over with excuses or deliberate muddling of motives. I think that in order to write something so traditional, a writer needs something special, a unique twist or slant, and this just hasn't got it. (In other words, I'm not saying that writing an "archetypal fantasy epic" is BAD; I'm saying that it needs to not be a rehashing of overused themes that have been done to death by classic writers.) The boy and his powerful companion having an intimate relationship? Done, in everything from Anne McCaffrey to freaking Digimon. The hero quest to punish the baddies and bring the good guys back into power? Done, in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Lush descriptions of landscapes and surroundings? Done by Tolkien of course, but more as a background to action rather than in stagnant heaps of detail. Mysterious companions to whom there is more than meets the eye? I don't even want to think about all the books and movies that have done that. I can't pick out a single thing that this book has that has never been done before, the characters didn't interest or capture me, the storytelling was riddled with too many attempts to be grand that I was just entirely turned off by it.Some specifics about the bad writing style:Every imaginable permutation of the word "said" is used. If the reader cannot tell how someone is saying something by what they are saying, it is likely that the dialogue has been written sloppily. "'You're not thinking,' admonished Brom." Yes, that is an admonishment without you telling us so. Leave it out. "'Get on with the story,' he said impatiently." Well, if one person is urging another to get on with it, it stands to reason that it's being said impatiently. Running into "'Sorry,' apologized Brom" made me cringe. The fact that Brom said "Sorry" means that he apologized, so use "said." You can deviate from "said" if for some reason HOW the sentence is said is not obvious, such as volume ("he whispered") or intent ("he said sarcastically," if it isn't obvious that that's a sarcastic comment anyway). Leave out the decorations because they're tacky. The speech tags are not the part of the writing that is supposed to be interesting, so don't distract us; believe me when I say that if you do it, nearly any editor will consider it an early warning sign that you are an amateur.Unnecessary description is inserted with maddening frequency. I am not usually a reader of traditional fantasy, and traditional fantasy does tend to be more flowery than the hard stuff, but either way random descriptions should not just be thrown into the mix. Eragon is waking up and stretching. Suddenly we get a description of the items on his night table, including the random information that he likes to look at one of the objects on it frequently. In the meantime, while we are getting this rush of information, Eragon is putting on his shoes. He then does not proceed to touch, pick up, or look at anything on the night table, and none of it is ever mentioned again. Also, people and places just get sudden paragraphs of description. We're fighting an Urgal and all of a sudden . . . drop some description on us. While he's rushing at Eragon with drooling fangs, no less. By all means, describe the fangs, slipping the adjectives in gracefully. But don't give us a run-down of a typical Urgal when we're a lot more interested in whether those fangs are going into Eragon's head.And lastly, too many words, phrases, and concepts seem to be entirely lifted from other well-known works. Word choice seemed as though it was the author's attempt to use all his SAT words; it was verbose and flowery as if on purpose, trying to impress with vocabulary that would have been better used sparingly. The similarity of some people's and places' names to those of Tolkien have not gone unnoticed by seasoned fantasy readers; I have heard several people call this book "Aragorn" without even noticing that they weren't saying it right, not to mention things like Ardwen (compared with Arwen), Isenstar (compared with Isengard), and Isidar (compared with Isildur)--and there are a LOT more. A ridiculous number of phrases seem to be something I've heard before, though I'm not sure where; for example, near the beginning someone is touching a wrapped package repeatedly, "as if to reassure herself that it was still there." I mentioned this to a friend and said, "That's FROM something." He replied, "It's FROM everything!" Far too often, ridiculously overused or clichéd similes and metaphors are used, such as tears being described as "liquid diamonds." It is less like this book was written and more like it was sewn together from the torn apart products of others, like some old quilt on which the stitches are showing. (How's that for an original simile?)There's definitely not enough space in this little box (which has a character limit) for me to go into as much detail as I'd like talking about how bad this book is, so if you really want to read my ranting in all its entirety, you might want to check out my essay about it on my website.
In 2002 I was 16 and a sophomore in high school. I was the Manhattan finalist for a storytelling festival. I was writing, mostly poetry. The year before I had been named runner up in a contest held by the Poetry Society of America and had the poem I entered read on the radio. I used to feel pretty good about those accomplishments until I read Christopher Paolini's bio on his first book.In 2002 Christopher Paolini was 15 and a high school graduate. So, of course, the next obvious step was to write a novel. Which is why readers now have Eragon, the latest in a long line of dragon-centric fantasies (I just made that term up). This novel is the first in the Inheritance Trilogy (Eldest is already out and Brisingr is due for release soon). It was also made into a movie in 2006 that I enjoyed quite a bit even before I found its excellent tagline: "You are stronger than you realize. Wiser than you know. What was once your life is now your legend."The reason I mention the movie at all is because this is one of the only books I can think of where I saw the movie adaptation before I read the book. I really liked both and found it interesting to be motivated to read a book because of the movie. Before I review the book I just want to get this out of my system: Eragon was really good and I enjoyed it, but it did at times sound like it was written by a fifteen-year-old. I'm not saying that to be petty or because of sour grapes--I just really think that's the case.In addition to mentioning his age, Paolini's back flap bio mentions that he has an abiding love of fantasy that subsequently motivated him to write his own fantasy novel. For that reason, Eragon owes an obvious debt to some of the fantasy big shots. Like Tamora Pierce's books (and Gail Carson Levine's), this one has a medieval-esque setting. The most obvious similarities that I noticed lie between this book and Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea and J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books (and The Hobbit too). Obviously, then, if you like those books you will like Eragon. At the same time, though, these similarities did leave me wishing there were more "acceptable" ways to write a fantasy setting. Maybe that's me.More than an event book where events are central to the plot and the story moves from event to event, this is a journey book. Stuff happens, but most of the novel is spent traveling. In a sense, the entire book is a journey to the end which I assume leads to more revelations which will be found in the second book in the trilogy.The book's journey starts with its title character, Eragon, a fifteen-year-old youth living in a rural town in the land of Alagaesia. Once a place of glory where dragons and their riders kept peace across the country, the Empire is now ruled by a cruel king called Galbatorix. Such concerns are far from Eragon's daily concerns though. Living with his uncle and cousin, Eragon's days are spent helping his family farm their land and prepare for winter.All of that changes when Eragon returns from a hunting trip with a mysterious stone. Soon enough, he realizes the stone is actually an egg. A dragon egg. The presence of this new dragon will not only change the course of Eragon's life but also the path of the entire Empire. Thus Eragon is set on a new path with only his dragon, an old storyteller and a mysterious sword to help him find his way.And that, really, is what this book is about: Eragon finding his way as he learns what being a Rider, and dare I say being a hero, really means. One of the subtler things I liked about the writing is that when Paolini begins this story, his protagonist is clearly a boy even if by Alagaesian standards he's only a year from manhood. By the end of the novel, though, Eragon is a man. The writing changes subtly to reflect this important change from beginning to end.Eragon is literally finding his way too--the novel features a lot of long, perilous journeys and long, dangerous battles. All of which were good to read but did leave me burnt out when I finally made my way to the end of my paperback copy (on page 497). Sometimes it's just surprising how long it can take to read a long book.For fear of providing accidental spoilers, that's really all I have to say. Once I got over the fact that I did not graduate high school at fifteen or write a novel, the book was not at all depressing. Eragon features some great characters (Brom to name one) and some of the scariest villains seen in recent fantasies. I have high hopes for the next installment in the trilogy once I get my hands on it.
What do You think about Eragon (2005)?
While I hesitated to read this book at first (saw the insipid movie, and not a big fan of juvenile books in general), it's actually a great fantasy novel. Reading can be such a great escape, and these novels (I'm now on the 3rd in the series) are a great example of this. I'm sure to irritate a lot of people by saying that I've purposely avoided the juvenile books for the masses (the Harry Potter cult and the Twilight-crazed zombies). And I was afraid that this series would be more of the same; overrated drivel with no original thoughts, and an intellectual regression. But this first novel captured my attention (no easy task) for most of a weekend. Luckily, the friend who insisted that I read this novel had the other two for me to start right after I devoured the first. Although it's not a short novel, time seemed to fly by (no pun intended, dragon and all, ha ha), and I didn't want the book to end. It's always a good sign when I get to the last page and I'm disappointed that there's not more after that.Like any good fantasy novel, by the time I was done, I believed in all the ridiculous parts-- dragons, magic, etc. Much like the Anne Rice vampire novels, I half expected to see some of the fantastic characters (werecats?) walking around in the real world afterwards. That's not to say that I lost my freakin' mind, REALLY, it's just that I came to accept that world, and that I became completely engrossed in it.Yes, there were a few moments where I realized how young the author must have been when he wrote this, which made me in turn feel a little old. But considering that he was only 15 when he wrote this, and that this was his first novel, it's pretty amazing that I didn't find myself annoyed by his naivete. Instead, I forgot all about his age (and mine), and just enjoyed the novel. And no, it's not aimed at today's barely literate youth. The vocabulary is definitely more sophisticated than that, and the subject matter can be enjoyed at any age, I would think.So if you have an imagination, and you enjoy escaping from all your daily realities into a completely different world, I'd recommend this book. But I warn you: you, too, may find yourself making excuses to read your book whenever possible, and being somewhat irritated by any/all distractions.
—Melora
Probably the most expensive fanfiction I've ever read. I'm not sure what possessed the publishing company to publish this book (although I heard that Christopher Paolini was self-published at first). I also wrote a book when I was 16 (much like Paolini) and the quality was pretty much the same as Eragon, that is to say, awful. Eragon (the character) is a total Mary Sue/Gary Stu: he learns to fight with a sword in just a few weeks, his past is angsty, he's the first dragon rider for centuries, etc etc. This becomes even more clear in the next book, Eldest. Everyone loves Eragon, and those who don't are evil or will repent their ways (see the elf-dude that he fights in Eldest. In Eldest he becomes this superhero, half-elf half-human, while of course the other characters mainly remain stock characters: the dwarf with an axe, the beautiful but haughty elf lady. Brom is of course the wise old mentor, like Gandalf, or perhaps more like Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, which the whole trilogy rips off anyway.The only interesting character is Murtagh, but he turns out to be evil. I won't be surprised if he dies in the next book, or becomes Eragon's henchman after he realises how "awesome and cool" Eragon really is.
—Archgallo
i learned that this book kicks butt i mean common ppl you see this explosion in a forest gather up the guts to go see what it was and its a hue piece of saphire (or is it?) well then eragon goes around trying to sell it because his family is poor but know one wants it because it came out of the spine! (for those that dont know what te spine is its a collection of mountians only the brave go in but only the lucky come out) i seen the movie and i literally wanted to send a P.O. email to him i swear he didnt get one thing right. first of all its not a burn with a spiraling dragon its a scale on his palm.. seocndly the dragon took moths togrow so instead of making this newborn fly into the sky and then amazingly come down all grown up yeaa what a piece of crap the movie was.. but third thing is about how brom says that rajak is tough and both movie and book and it takes forever for them to kill the rajak in the book but brom and eragon goes and takes them out within 10 minutes after saying that.. totally contradicting thierself.. and the director cut so many places out of it he didnt even introduse the witch .. who was a big character in second book... i mean did the director even read the book i want a god foresaken remake of the move its nothing like the book i hated the movie loved the book... god will thier ever be a smart director or do you consist of bringing idiots to hollywood grrrr.~Bye!~
—Brent
