Eragon
Author: Christopher Paolini
ISBN: 0-375-82668-8
Pages: 544 (hardcover)
Well, Brisingr’s coming out in September so I thought I might as well do a quick review of Eragon.
Anyone who’s read some of my previous posts will know that I’m not particularly fond of this book, but I did have fun reading it when I bought a copy several years ago. I even went back to read a couple chapters a second time. I can think of two possible reasons:
a) I enjoy it when a book takes the time to describe the setting of a scene, which Eragon does a lot. And even if the description is not perfectly written, I still enjoy it.
b) I enjoy reading a book that’s so hugely popular and being able to find something I don’t like in almost every paragraph - and knowing I could do better myself without a lot of effort.
And while I do think the writing is mostly awful, I won’t criticize it as much as I might have once. I recently read the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, and I realized a lot of the things I found weird in Eragon were really an attempt to imitate Tolkien’s style - which isn’t a bad goal, it seems to me, even if it didn’t really work.
The dwarves and elves seem to be heavily inspired by Tolkien also, and I’ve heard people say that the plot is a copy of Star Wars. (And Brom sounded a lot like Yoda in places, funnily enough, in the original self-published edition of the book.)
But maybe the largest problem is that I didn’t like any of the characters. Some characters really captivate you from the beginning, you know? And make you want to learn more about them. And no one in Eragon did. It isn’t wholly about whether or not a character is an arrogant ass, or is someone you can relate to. It’s more… whether they’re interesting. Whether you want to read about them.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Kevin
I did not like Eragon very much either. I was able to read it and some of the ideas were great, but at the same time, I did not enjoy any of the characters, as you mentioned and found it incredibly difficult to read. I actually had to force myself to read a book that is meant for pleasure.
I started the second one expecting it to be much better because of all the years in between, so far, I have not made it very far because I find it slow still.
I did a review of Eragon on my site as well, somewhere. Thanks for sharing your opinions. :)
Jul 14th, 2008
Thorn
Thanks for the comment. :) Would this be the review you’re talking about?
I read Eldest. I’m not really sure what I think of it in relation to Eragon. In some ways, the writing seemed a bit better from a technical standpoint - but still bad. And swiching between different perspectives (three I think?) can be interesting, but it also slows things down. I think the plot in Eragon was more focused.
It’s actually been a while since I read either of them, though, so I may not be remembering everything.
Jul 14th, 2008
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