Eragon Is So Gone

Over a month ago, my boss at work, who knows I love reading, plopped the library’s copy of Eragon down on the desk I was sitting at. “You said you really enjoy fantasy, I read this, and I’d love to have your opinion on it.” Well, the book still isn’t finished – and I’m afraid to say, it’s not going to be. I’ve expressed before how much I dislike abandoning a book half-way through, and I really tried to stick with Eragon, but it’s just… not good. No, that’s being kind; it’s bad. I know, I know – the fellow wrote it when he was 15. I know that. But the fact is, there’s a reason not many books by 15 year old kids are published: they aren’t good enough to be sent to press!

When I first started reading it, I thought it was decent – it was no “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”, but it wasn’t atrocious, either. But the more I read, the more bored I became – I felt like I could see through the 300 pages between me and the ending, right to the ending. There was no suspense, no intrigue, no interestingness. Young boy finds dragon egg; dragon egg hatches, dragon chooses boy; bad guys come and level boy’s home; mysterious old bearded man takes young boy under wing and starts training him, while hiding his real identity for no good reason. Yes, yes, and in the end, the young boy grows up a bit and wins a huge battle against the evil King of the Empire, right, while helping the rebels? Well, yes, actually, that’s exactly right (I cheated and read the plot summary at Wikipedia after throwing in the towel.)

I knew as I read through it that much of it was stuff lifted straight from other books, but I didn’t realize how much near-outright theft had taken place until I explored some of the amazon.com reviews. Paolini stole (admittedly, probably unintentionally) from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Pern, and other stuff to put together his work. His heavy borrowing from other works definitely shows, with the story (the half of it I plowed through, anyway) feeling extremely generic.

As many of the amazon.com reviewers remarked, hopefully Paolini’s parents self-publishing his book for him (before a big publisher picked it up) hasn’t led to an over-inflated ego. His huge commercial success might have already led to him thinking he wrote something truly great – which he didn’t. The book is mediocre at best, extremely bad at worst, not to mention full of borderline plagiarism (just look at the names!). I hope he reads the criticism and takes it to heart; he’s got a long way to go before he’s a good writer.

Now that I’ve tossed Eragon aside, I’ve moved on to The Crow Road by Iain Banks, which Cas sent to me as a gift. I’m only about 30 pages into it, but so far, it’s excellent. It’s got a feel to it I’ve not encountered before in a book, and I’m digging the Scottish bent it has.