I've been curious about these books, since they've been such bestsellers, and are already being made into movies. However, when I saw a co-worker reading one of them, and asked her how it was, she said "Eh. Not so good, actually."
And, I'd have to agree.
Admittedly, this was the second in a series, so perhaps I didn't start from the ideal perspective, but I was just not impressed at all.
The subject matter is completely unoriginal - a dragonrider, a la Anne McCaffrey (complete with the telepathic bond and 'whirling' dragon eyes) meets elves and dwarves that are straight out of Tolkien. Nothing new added at all - and not only that, the lack of effective description seems to indicate that Paolini just assumes that we've read McCaffrey and Tolkien, so he doesn't need to reiterate all that stuff - we already know it. The young dragonrider, Eragon, seems anachronistically contemporary in his speech and actions, even though he lives in a faux-medieval-fantasy world. And he soon becomes wish-fulfillment-ly handsome, strong, and talented, due to the gift of a magic spell. Boring. Most of the other characters are very two-dimensional.
I just realized I was about to finish this up, and I didn't mention anything about the plot. That's 'cause it was barely memorable. An evil warlord wants to take over the world with dark magic and the good peoples of the land want to stop him, of course. But not much actually happens.
At least it was a really fast read - although the book is physically large, the pages are thick and the typeface is pretty big - it's not really a very long story.
And, I'd have to agree.
Admittedly, this was the second in a series, so perhaps I didn't start from the ideal perspective, but I was just not impressed at all.
The subject matter is completely unoriginal - a dragonrider, a la Anne McCaffrey (complete with the telepathic bond and 'whirling' dragon eyes) meets elves and dwarves that are straight out of Tolkien. Nothing new added at all - and not only that, the lack of effective description seems to indicate that Paolini just assumes that we've read McCaffrey and Tolkien, so he doesn't need to reiterate all that stuff - we already know it. The young dragonrider, Eragon, seems anachronistically contemporary in his speech and actions, even though he lives in a faux-medieval-fantasy world. And he soon becomes wish-fulfillment-ly handsome, strong, and talented, due to the gift of a magic spell. Boring. Most of the other characters are very two-dimensional.
I just realized I was about to finish this up, and I didn't mention anything about the plot. That's 'cause it was barely memorable. An evil warlord wants to take over the world with dark magic and the good peoples of the land want to stop him, of course. But not much actually happens.
At least it was a really fast read - although the book is physically large, the pages are thick and the typeface is pretty big - it's not really a very long story.
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