Eragon
The Inheritance Cycle, Book 1
Christopher Paolini
Knopf
Fiction, YA Fantasy
Themes: Bonded Companions, Dragons, Epics
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Description
Fifteen-year-old Eragon is a typical farmer's child. The legends of the elves and long-extinct Dragon Riders, the doings of the distant Empire's ruler and his enemies, the Valen, are no concern of his, not when his uncle's crops need harvesting. One day, he stumbles across a strange stone, a stone that turns out to be a dragon's egg. Quite unexpectedly, the egg hatches, and Eragon is chosen by the young Saphira as the first Dragon Rider in centuries. Now, the humble farm boy finds powers he never knew he had, and enemies who have hunted him since before he was born.
Review
I'm not sure why I didn't like this book more. There were some nice descriptions, and I can't say that nothing happened. I just felt the characters
were inconsistent, relying too much on fantasy convention. In one scene, Eragon is a barely-literate child with little worldly knowledge, and in the
next he's an equal member of a group plotting a dangerous jailbreak. Almost as soon as I met some of Eragon's acquaintances, I could predict their fate
and their "deep dark secret" whose revelation was supposed to stun me. It was odd that so few women were involved: only two main characters were female,
and one spends an unusual amount of time imprisoned, sick and helpless before transforming into the obligatory fantasy warrior woman. The constant wave
of Tolkienesque city and place names that couldn't be kept straight contributed to an overall sense of detachment, so I was never swept up in the tale
as I should have been. This should've been a Good book, but I couldn't find the spark to add that fourth star.
As a side note, the author wrote this when he was only nineteen. More power to him for getting a story this size published, at any age, but I can't help
thinking that Eragon might've been better had he had a little more writing experience under his belt before he tackled a multivolume fantasy epic.
Too bad - Paolini could've become a real kick-arse writer, but I fear he's learning the wrong lessons from this premature publication.