Eragon

To be truthful, this book is horrifically cliché both in terms of plot and writing style. The story is interesting, but it is a patchwork of plots familiar from different writers. What I value about this series is it gives us the chance to see the developing writing style of a contemporary teen writer, which is an amazing thing for me to experience.

The fantasy (or more accurately, purple prose) epic Eragon was written by a homeschooled 15-year-old boy, and GEEZ does it ever show. I'm not sure how Paolini's first few brainstorming sessions before writing this asinine pile of refuse went, but I'm willing to bet it went something like this: "Hmm... if I incorporate strong thematic elements from the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Pern, surely noone will notice how shamelessly derivative and horribly uninteresting a book I'm slamming out!" At least that's as near as I can surmise after having read this. In short, Luke Skywalker finds himself trapped inexplicably in Middle Earth, where he must harness the ancient wisdom of Anne McCaffrey and a horribly mutated Obi-Wan Kenobi to defeat the evil Emperor Palpatine and his Nazgul and take his rightful place alongside Arwen as the king of Gondor. Along the way, he meets Han Solo, Faramir, and Lessa, and begins to discover the awesome power of the Force with the aide of his snarky, telepathic dragon Samwise Gamgee. From here on in it gets even worse, so I'm just going to stop right here and try to control the burning sensation in my brain. The dialogue is horrible, the characters are invariably annoying and full of dissociated teenage angst, the world and all its mechanations are effectively plagiarized, and Paolini's untrained writing style can only be described as "double-plus ungood". May the Force be with you, Elessar, and... oh, forget it.

Where to start...so many things in this book didn't make sense. On the surface, it is just another fantasy novel ripped off from the Lord of the Rings, but the problem runs deeper than that.

Not only can I relate almost every one of the character to an LOTR character either by description or name, the plot itself so closely follows that of Star Wars that I sometimes wonder why a lawsuit has not arisen. This runs directly into the second book as well, where the problem is only worsened. The main female character sends off a valuable item so it does not fall into the hands of the evil empire. It is found by a farm boy living with his uncle. The boy goes to visit an old wise man in the village who turns out to be one of the elite protectors of the old empire, and returns to find his farm ruined and his uncle dead...it goes on and on.

Many plot elements in the story simply do make make sense unless one considers the view that they were ripped from other works. For example: the elves are making a big fuss about fading and having to leave the land. Why? I'll tell you: because Tolkein's elves said the same thing. One major difference between the two: Tolkein's elves had a fleshed out reason, Paolini's don't.

Rife with inconsistencies and full of plagiarized ideas, Paolini's work is good for a read only if you have nothing else at your disposal. If you are not well versed enough in the fantasy genre to spot the numerous flaws then you may actually enjoy it. If you are looking for a book to scratch your fantasy itch, however, I can suggest many other books with highly original plot lines that are worth your reading dollar. If you don't mind modern elements tossed in with your fantasy, I cannot suggest The Bartimaeus Trilogy or The Lightning Thief highly enough. True fans of the genre should support new and imaginative ideas such as these, not a story that has not so much been written as copy-pasted.

Gee, I wish my parents were literary agents so I could copy every fantasy book I ever read and get published at 15 too.

Eragon, in my opinion is taking all the good elements of other fantasy novels and smashing them together. An interresting idea that doesn't work at all. Its like dragon riders of pern with lord of the rings and dragonlance. Seriously this is almost breaking copyright laws. Urgals and Kai? ever read about tolkiens Uruk-Hai?

This book is just terrible- basically, the book was a collaboration of other fantasy stories (such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings) which were mushed together by a teen boy. Not an interesting read, and I found it to be very poorly written. I would not recommend this book to true fantasy readers.

Anyone who reads this and considers it of any worth whatsoever has no business reading anything. Pure, unabashed plagarism...the plot can be accurately described as "Star Wars as told by Lord of the Rings." Completely unoriginal, and horrendously terrible writing.

I am borrowing this book from my 11 year old niece, she and her mother (my sister) both had good things to say about it. I'm about 2/3 in and it's an interesting read for the most part. I suspect the reason why this book has gotten SO big is because Paolini was 15 when he wrote it. Otherwise, it's fairly unremarkable. It's the plot of Star Wars set in Tolkien's age with a heavy dose of Dragonriders of Pern (which I have not read) and a dash of Harry Potter. In other words, there isn't a whole lot NEW in here but it's somewhat entertaining the way he puts it all together. One of those, "Why didn't I think of that?" situations. But I didn't and Paolini did so hats off to him.

Plot is predictable and the characters are one-dimensional. Stereotypes and cliches abound. In other words, a misshapen conglomerate of ideas "borrowed" from others in the genre. For those of you who argue that such plagiarism is acceptable because the genre is already bloated with ideas and it's impossible not to use some of the same ideas, clearly, you are ignoring the fact that this book is not original in any way whatsoever. They are plenty of books that have come out in recent years that have executed "stereotypical" characters and made them into something more original, created a completely new, original setting.

It's generic fantasy near its laziest - pick a fantasy trope, any trope, and odds are it's here and lackluster in execution. Though an entertaining enough read, and a pleasant sort of way to pass a few hours, it wasn't anything that truly drew me in, and I felt no real need to go and read the sequels.