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1787 of 2297 found the following review helpful:
 impressive for a 17-yr-old, clearly written by a 17-yr-oldNov 15, 2003
By B. Capossere
What you almost always hear first about this book is "wow, it was written by a 17-yr-old". And the author is fully deserving of the respect and admiration he gets--it is indeed an impressive book for a 17-year-old to have written. What he probably should not have gotten was a publishing contract, since while it is impressive for a 17-yr-old, it is less than impressive for a published work of fiction.
If an adult had written and published this, I would have been disgusted (as I was with the Sword of Shannara) with the clear calculation that had gone into the work: "ok, I'll take a lot of Tolkien, a lot of McCaffery, a good amount of Leguin, some Dragonlance, some Star Wars, etc. It will be a can't miss book." Since it's the product not of an adult but of a teenager, it comes across much more positively--as a work of fiction by someone who has read lots and absorbed lots of fantasy and simply didn't have the experience (or the good editor) to take out all of his favorite parts of other works. How can I dislike or be too critical of someone who so obviously loved some of my own favorite authors, loved them so much that they simply took over his book through I'm guessing no fault of his own.
And that in a nutshell is the problem with Eragon. The story is cliched, formulaic and barely passable as are the characters and the language is simply what you would expect from a somewhat precocious teen fan of adult fantasy. If you have any experience in the field of fantasy at all, reading Eragon will feel like a visit to Las Vegas (though not so tacky)--sure you can see New York and Paris and Italy, but they are mere shadows of the real thing. So McCaffery's telepathic link between dragon and rider is here, but not the powerful emotionality of her (especially earlier) works. LeGuin's idea of one true name and one true language forming the backbone of magic is here, but not her masterful sense of order and balance and restraint, not to mention the sparse beauty of her language. And of course, the graceful, bow-carrying elves, the gruff and secretive mentor with magical powers, the withdrawn dwarves, etc. all show up in their correct place and time. As a high school English teacher, the story and characters are exactly what I would expect to see if I picked up one of my fantasy fan's personal notebooks off of their desks and began reading. Even the people and place names are far too imitative (as opposed to inspired by). To be perfectly honest, it was so much like my students' writings I had to struggle to continue past the first ten pages.
Does that mean nobody could enjoy this book? A quick look at the reviews clearly shows that many have (most of them young I'm sure). If you have read Tolkien, McCaffery, LeGuin, Jordan, Lewis, Pullman, Donaldson, etc., then I'd strongly suggest skipping Eragon. You'll not only be heavily disappointed by the weaknesses in plot, character development, and language, but you'll probably be annoyed at how often your favorite authors appear in borrowed and poorer clothing. If you have little experience in fantasy and so won't be bothered by the obviously derivative nature of this book, you'll probably enjoy it but there are far better works to begin a lifetime of fantasy reading with and even if you start with Eragon, I hope you quickly move onto them, beginning with the above list and adding for younger readers people like Lloyd Alexander, E. Nesbit, Robin McKinley, and many, many others. I'd like to see what this young author comes up with in another five-ten years, but for now he's still retelling the stories he liked himself, rather than writing down his own.
90 of 113 found the following review helpful:
Mythic, but perhaps too much so.May 26, 2004
By nelyk
Everyone here seems to be extremely divided in their views of this book, and I'm afraid I fall in the dislike camp.
Okay, let's start with the plot. I must admit it is quite enjoyable, if you are in such unlikely circumstances that you are both inclined to like fantasy, and have not read most of the modern classics in said genre; or, perhaps, you have to have read enough awfully-written stories to know cliches when you see them. Basically, Eragon embarks upon a quest for revenge against shadow forces he doesn't know much about, but which will undoubtedly have something to do with his 'mysterious past.'
While most people mention fantasy books as inspiration, I find Eragon's plot more reminiscent of Star Wars than of anything else. There's the dead order of peace-keepers with amazing powers, the main character's mysterious past (Who's his father? He doesn't know!), the magical power, the old man with long-dead secrets of the past, which of course he teaches to this headstrong youth without really bothering about whether he's _good_ or not, and most tellingly, the destruction of the boy's farm and death of his uncle, which in both Star Wars and Eragon sets the main character off on a quest of revenge. Just thank heaven there's no C3P0...
In terms of concepts, there are very few original ideas, either. Paolini draws from Tolkien's works, not just Lord of the Rings but background materials as well, and, I am told, Anne McCaffrey's (sorry if I misspelled that) Pern books. Personally, I can't stand McCaffrey's writing, which is why I can't speak for myself on that one. Anyway, all of the races are almost exactly the same, down to the origins of the elves across the sea (Tolkien came up with that one, folks!); while Urgals and the Ra'zac are original, as far as I know, they are shadily described. Indeed, the Urgals always remind me of the Knights who say Ni, a la Monty Python, which rather kills their potential as villans.
Paolini attempts to make his world original and fresh by adding in what he seems to think is his own idea, judging by the care he takes in explaining it: an ancient language, a true language, with magical power. Unfortunately, his implementation of this idea has two flaws: 1) lacking a proper knowledge of the mechanics of language, he has created a set of _words_ with absolutely no grammar involved, so that to get across a complex idea you have to smoosh words together and hope that it works; and 2) the words seem to have been created by randomly pounding on the keyboard, and adding vowels where he thought them necessary. They're not unpronouncible, as this has created a tongue with a phonology similar to Russian, or perhaps closer to Czech; but I doubt that was intentional, as my high school is one in, I think, a little over fifty in the United States that actually teaches Russian. 'Brisingr' is a word that simply could not exist in any Romance or Germanic language, and, as I said, I doubt that Chris Paolini put much thought into making his language original (even Tolkien, a philologist, only used harsh Slavic sounds in his black speech, the tongue of evil) when all the rest of his work has little or no thought in that area. Originality, I mean.
One more thing. Eragon is grammatically correct throughout, a fact for which I am thankful, but shows distinct signs of having been written by a ten-year-old - and yes, I know the author was fifteen at the time of publishing. So what? I'm sixteen, and I can still vary my sentence structure. Learning to do so was an integral part of my 7th grade English education! All of Eragon's sentences are short, less than a line long, and generally begin with either an article (a or the) or the subject of said sentence; occasionally you'll find another adjective there instead, if you're lucky. I have not noticed a single subordinate clause in the entire book, and have been appalled at the blatant lack of semicolons. Semicolons! What is the world coming to, if people can say a story without semicolons is worth reading?
Still, Eragon did wonders as light, mindless reading material - besides, of course, the choppy writing style inherent in a book with uniform sentence structure and a dearth of semicolons - and so, rather than a one, I give it two stars out of five.
P.S. - I haven't seen anyone else comment on this particular name theft, so I thought I'd mention it. You know the Bid'duam? Turn it around and what do you get: Muad'dib. Frank Herbert alone could sue the kid for plaigarism; I'd hate to see what the Tolkien estate would do if they got word.
75 of 94 found the following review helpful:
 if you're 10 years old or younger, you'll love this bookJan 06, 2005
By T. Simmons
I was given this book as a Christmas present and decided to read it. I'm 41, by the way, and have read a few books and written a few stories in my day. I see this book has received over a thousand reviews so I'll keep mine short.
Good points:
The writing is technically sound for the most part (by that I mean at least grammatically correct) and the writer followed the classic pattern of the "epic" (hero travels around discovering secrets of him/her self and growing in power reaching a climax of killing the evil one).
Bad points:
The plot is completely cliche and "safe", woven from the fabric of all the stories the author had loved (Star Wars, Dragon Riders of Pern, Lord of the Rings, and perhaps even The Song of Albion and others) prior to writing his story. He even names the evil empire, "the Empire"! Tip of the hat or uninspired plagiarism?
His writing style reflects his age: way too many adverbs and he repeatedly violates the "show don't tell" mantra of professional writers everywhere. Don't tell me that Eragon was worried. SHOW me by telling me that Eragon's brow wrinkled or he pulled at his face with open hands or some such VISUAL clue that he was worried. His adjectives and adverbs often feel as if he'd simply pulled them from a thesaurus and he had never heard of the words until then.
There are COUNTLESS illogical situations that made me want to give up on the book long before I finished it. Eragon is traveling to the Varden along with Murtagh and the poisoned elf. They have a dragon and 2 horses and need to get there ASAP but instead of Eragon flying there via his dragon, they'd rather trot along on horses! Boy, I really felt the suspense. It simply is a reflection of the lack of reasoning skills of the author due to his age.
No real resolution is achieved by the end of the book but much is revealed along the way.
The battle scene at the end was so devoid of graphic descriptions and suspense that it seemed the author was unsure exactly who his audience should be. Out of thousands of Urgals, Dwarves and men, only one or two is described as dying.
I could go on but I won't. This book is probably worth two stars but I gave one to try and offset the hundreds of reviews by readers who are not yet to the age where they can understand exactly what "master Paolini" has accomplished. I think he could be a great writer - in time.
Summary: If you are new to epic fantasy literature, by all means, read this if you want. Otherwise, avoid it. Why waste your time on a two-star work when there are more five-star works than you could read in a lifetime?
105 of 133 found the following review helpful:
I liked it the first time I read it... when it was Star Wars.Sep 26, 2005
By A. C. Longtin
I teach Gifted middle school students and was urged by many students to read this. So I picked up a copy and was almost instantly transported to a magical, far-off land- Middle Earth, with a fantastical storyline- Star Wars. Yes, it is admirable for a 17 year old, but fiction cannot be measured against the age of the author, it must be measured against other great books, regardless of author's age.
When I spoke to one of my students about how similar this storyline was to Star Wars, he asked how. So, I started a two-column list as I read. I now present this to you:
Warning: SPOILERS!! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW!
****Keep in mind that it is not EXACT, but that many circumstances are similar. For instance, another character is the son of a bad guy, but the "son of the bad guy" is still in this story. Also keep in mind that this list was created as I read, so several revelations happen in the order they occurred.
1. 1st scene: Female elf magically transports a dragon egg, hiding it from evil doers. (Princess Leia sends a droid to an escape pod, hiding it from evil doers.)
2. Eragon lives on farm with uncle. (Luke lives on farm with aunt and uncle.)
3. Eragon's parentage unknown. (Luke's parentage unknown.)
4. Riders possess magical powers and were wiped out by Galbatorix. (Jedi possess magical powers and were wiped out by Vader and the Emperor.)
5. Galbatorix is a former Rider who enlisted another to destroy Riders. (Vader is a former Jedi who was enlisted to destroy the Jedi.)
6. The Empire rules all and it threatened by a small, mysterious band (Vardens) who "constantly raided and attacked the Empire." (The Empire rules all and is threatened by a small, mysterious band, the Rebel Alliance.)
7. Galbatorix learned "dark secrets" from a Shade. (Vader and Palpatine learned the dark side from their mentors.)
8. Vrael defeated Galbatorix but "hesitated with the final blow." (Obi-Wan defeated Vader but did not kill him.)
9. Eragon stumbles upon the egg. (Luke stumbles upon the droid.)
10. The dragon hatches, releasing powers Eragon didn't know he had. (The droid runs away, leading Luke on a journey that releases powers he didn't know he had.)
11. Evil men looking for the egg burn Eragon's farm, killing his uncle. (Evil men looking for the droid burn Luke's farm, killing his aunt and uncle.
12. Eragon goes out for revenge and old, gray Brom goes, too. (Luke goes out to return the droid and old, gray Obi-Wan goes, too.)
13. Brom speaks to dragons. (Obi-Wan has powers, too.)
14. Brom presents a sword to Eragon. (Obi-Wan presents a lightsaber to Luke.)
15. Brom secures horses for transport. (Obi-Wan secures the Falcon for transport).
16. Eragon is the first in a new line of Riders. (Luke is the first in a new line of Jedi.)
17. On the journey, Brom teaches Eragon to fight. (On the journey, Obi-Wan teaches Luke to fight.)
18. They come across a destroyed village, all inhabitants dead. (They come across a destroyed planet, all inhabitants dead.)
19. Brom asks Eragon to levitate a rock. (Luke's training included levitating rocks.(
20. The egg was supposed to be sent to Brom. (The droid was supposed to be sent to Obi-Wan.)
21. Brom lived incognito in Carvahall to look after Eragon. (Obi-Wan lived incognito on Tatooine to look after Luke.)
22. Brom reveals himself to have been a Dragon Rider. (Obi-Wan reveals himself to be a Jedi.)
23. Brom and Eragon cross paths with Murtagh, slightly older than Eragon, who does not "owe allegiance to anyone but" himself. (Obi-Wan and Luke cross paths with Han Solo, slightly older than Luke who only looks after himself.)
24. Brom sacrifices himself to the Ra'zac to save Eragon. (Obi-Wan sacrifices himself to save Luke.)
25. Brom was friends with Morzan, a Rider who turned to evil. (Obi-Wan was friends with Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi who turned to evil.)
26. Brom took Morzan's sword after he defeated him in battle and gave it to Eragon. (Obi-Wan took Anakin's lightsaber after he defeated him in battle and gave it to Luke.)
27. Eragon wants to find a beautiful, mysterious woman who is being held prisoner. (Luke wants to find a beautiful, mysterious woman who is being held prisoner.)
28. Eragon and Murtagh rescue an elf woman from prison. (Luke and Han rescue Princess Leia from prison.)
29. Arya holds information vital to the success of the Varden. (Leia holds information vital to the success of the Rebels.)
30. Arya was ruthlessly tortured to reveal the location of the Varden. (Leia is ruthlessly tortured to reveal the location of the Rebel base.)
31. Attempting to return Arya to the Varden, Eragon and Murtagh are pursued all the way to the secret base, which takes them in. (Attempting to return Leia to the Rebels, Luke and Han are pursued all the way to the secret base, which takes them in.
32. It turns out that Arya was the one who sent the egg to the Spine. (Leia was the one who sent R2-D2 to Tatooine.
33. Murtagh reveals that he is the secret son of Morzan, Galbatorix's most faithful follower. (Darth Vader, the Emperor's most faithful follower, reveals himself to be Luke's father.)
34. Urgals advance on Tronjheim. (The Death Star advances on Yavin.)
35. Eragon destroys the Shade. (Luke destroys the Death Star.)
This doesn't mean it's not an entertaining story. Of course it is! Star Wars is entertaining, isn't it? I'm just so surprised that Paolini's editors didn't see that almost every element of this story has been borrowed from other sources, like Tolkien, McAffrey and others. Very little is original. Cutting and pasting from different books and screenplays does not make an original story.
84 of 106 found the following review helpful:
Eragon--Whew. Not one to curl up withDec 08, 2003
Cheese and rice. Has anyone else out there read Eragon by Christopher Paolini? I'd read the hype, a 19-year-old with a publishing contract. I was curious, and when I ran across the book at a book store last week I picked it up. Anne McCaffrey, who's written two of my favorite children's fantasy books Dragon Song and Dragon Singer, said that she gave it full praise. She must have been on acid. In a word the book is ghastly. The book opens with "Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world." Which is perilously close to "The wind wasn't the beginning... But it was a beginning." Immediate reference to an evil Shade (humm, three letters off Jordan's fade) a non-human that controls Urgals (descriptions similar to trollics). There are items that ring of Jordan--shades and urgals, evil banding together and showing up where it never has before, the mentor is a bard just like Thom Merrilin Eddings--a silver, oval marked palm, an orphan raised by relatives and not knowing his true heritage, not being able to stay because of discovery, the word and the will (he doesn't call it that, but his description rings of Eddings) McCaffrey--a dragon making the choice for rider, telepathic connection between dragon and rider, dragons classed by color On page 155 Eragon is having a conversation with his mentor. His mentor scolds him saying he should have used his magic to tell what someone in the town they were just in was thinking. This after warning him about the dangers of using the magic on 139. It's maddening and continual. It's like reading someone's unorganized notes. The contradictions are through out. This is just one example. There are MANY others. At the beginning Eragon is hunting in the Spine (more Jordan terminology, but closer in description his Misty Mountains, or Mountains of Mist). He is the only hunter who will go there. (Rand, Matt and Perrin) has a bow only he can pull (Rand). Anyway, he's a mighty hunter tracking a herd of deer, three nights away from home, he has a pack, a a knife, and a bow. But the next morning he also has a pan. Where did it come from. Yes I know it could have been in the pack, but that would have made it difficult to keep up with the deer. A pan isn't typical hunting gear. Camping? Yes. But he had no camp. He's following a herd which means travel rations. His family needs meat for the winter and has no money, but when he arrives home his uncle and cousin are eating chicken for breakfast. If you're poor, that's not what you're going to eat first thing in the morning. And on and on. I know that these items have been used by others and will be again. But never before have I read something that so clearly rang back to the original book. Language is a problem. To quote Nancy Springer, "When 'was' shows up, you have problems." Paolini uses was five or six times a page. Yes, every so often I stop and count the number of times he uses was per page. So far I've counted eight different times. He uses 'was' five or six times a page. He cops out on 'had/has.' Passive. Inadvertent POV shifts. He tells. He tells. He tells. He contradicts himself. He tells. This book is a mess, and it got published. You remember the movie Dances with Wolves? Wind-in-His-Hair says, "All we know about this man is he has a smart horse"? Well, I think this kid has smart parents and a publisher thought that they could hype his age. This book could have been saved if it had been edited. I get the feeling it wasn't. I really want to stop reading the book, but it's kind of like a train wreck. You don't want to look, but you just can't help it. Has anyone else read it? Did you like it? What was I missing? Okay, I decided I've been to hard on this kid. I've taken a look at the chapter endings and found out that he has a disability. Poor Eragon has narcolepsy. He falls asleep on pages 18, 89, 128, 142, 212, 220, 249, 272, 316, 323, 392, 478. (These are chapter endings mind you.) I know that gives me permission to put the book away, and I wish I could, but something makes me continue to read. Ok. If falling asleep isn't bad enough, I have found no fewer than seven times where he's knocked unconscious at the end of chapters. (Pages 80, 134, 263, 266, 292 and just when I was getting worried about the lack, page 491). I know, that's only six. I didn't really know how to classify the stupor leading to sleep on page 233. Now keep in mind this in no way includes the loss of consciousness in the bodies of the chapters themselves. I'm still only on page 301, and the book has 200 or so more pages. I wish I could put myself out of my misery and burn the stupid thing, but I must finish it. There has to be some reason the book has gotten so much press. Other than the smart parents, which I now find out self published the book prior to it being acquired by Knopf. Oh, by the way. Does anyone have the definition of epic fantasy? Mr. Palini claims to have written one, but I can't seem to find it.
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