As I meander through the world of ERAGON - CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI...

I think people rip on it because it was so hugely successful, whereas the book itself is mediocre.

It's not a terrible book -- esp when you consider the author's age -- but it is so-so. But there's a jealousy factor involved when an author makes a million dollars with a book that doesn't "deserve" it.

No one ever says Stephen King doesn't deserve his millions.

I've read (and seen) LOTR and some of the Star Wars movies and there were a couple of spots where it seemed a bit ripped off...but not so much that it pissed me off or even distracted me from the story. I enjoyed Eragon, it wasn't horrible. It's not going in my Top 10 Favorite Book list, but it was a good read.

I don't know why everyone was ripping on it either...it wasn't that bad.

I don't think people actually rip on the books (other than "oh, his mommy and daddy published it for him"...) I think the movie, however, is generally considered horrible.

And now it is time for an Agony Booth recap!

http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Eragon.aspx

aka learn how NOT to plot

Star Wars is in turn a pretty standard Hero's Journey. But the derivative, I suppose, is the whole farm boy with destiny/mythical mentor/charismatic sidekick archetypes complete with the good vs. evil story line. Does it have to be a farm boy? Can't he be, like, an apple salesman or something?

I would agree that it's NOT the worst book in the world. It IS very derivative and follows the plot for Star Wars almost exactly, beyond a 'hero's journey', it's uses exact relationships and outcomes, but on a different backdrop, kind of like he smooshed SW and LOTR into one book. Star Wars with dragons.

Eragon/Luke lives with his uncle on the farm when he finds a Dragon Egg/pair of Droids that the Evil Emperor/Evil Emperor is looking for (there's a Darth Vader character too, can't recall his name in Eragon). The bad guys coming looking for it, while Eragon/Luke is not at home, and they burn down the farm/burn down the farm, leaving Eragon/Luke as an orphan.

Eragon/Luke meets up with Brom/Obi Wan who used to be a Dragon Rider/Jedi Knight...

Do ya get where that's all going. There's a better-written synopsis comparison somewhere that goes through the entire plot, even including the part where the underground city/rebel base is discovered, blah, blah, blah.

It's not terrible, but there are far better books, like Dragon Rider, Inkspell and the like that are more original. However, for the age of kids who read it, most haven't seen Star Wars, I suppose, and kids like the familiar anyway.

It irks me that if it had come through the regular slush, not written by a 15 year old, it would have been rejected. Almost certainly.

It's just not the big deal everyone made it out to be, IMO. Harry Potter, while stories about magical boarding schools aren't original either (Jane Yolen and Diane Duane), was only used as a backdrop for a far more creative story with better characters.

I saw Star Wars, and even after reading Eragon, it really wasn't the most terrible book. Predictable, yes. Derivitive, yes. Better ways to spend your reading time? probably. Not as bad as The DaVinci Code as far as writing.

I wouldn't say righteous indignation as much as...apathy.

Christine N. said:

It irks me that if it had come through the regular slush, not written by a 15 year old, it would have been rejected. Almost certainly.

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Youth has something to do with it -- for a 15yo, it's actually rather well written. The book would not have been published had his parents not published it for him; but he still had to push very hard for over two years -- he practically went to every book store to sell his book. So it's not like he didn't work hard.

Still, I'm surprised that Knopf would get behind the hype of such a derivative and unoriginal work, especially since there are so many Star Wars/LotR knockoffs out there already. Then Hollywood got on the bandwagon as well (no doubt because of the immense popularity of LotR and Narnia). But the movie was just awful.

I think Paolini has a future if he would let his creativity take him instead of just copying/tweaking other people's stories. He's not a bad writer, but he needs to nurture his originality if he really wants to make it as a true writer.

Okay I hated Eragon. And this is why.

It was derivative. Okay is that a reason to hate something? Well when it is so derivative that I basically feel like I am reading fan fiction by a teenage boy who has cast a Mary Sue of himself to save the world and win the girl - it makes me a little sick to my stomach.

That said, people love it, it does well, and even those who have read LOTR or seen Star Wars don't mind. So I don't begrudge him his success. Thus I am one of those people who just hate the book because she hates the book. No sour grapes.

I jus' didn' like it!

'tis extreme crap. Much more on this later. Dinner, now.

Let's see.

One: Why the stupid comments about his age? He's a published author. The final draft was written when he was nineteen, along with his parents and sister and a professional editor. After graduating high school, he decided to hang around with mom and dad, which he is still doing at the age of twenty four, and since he had all the time in the world to play video games and act like he could sword fight, he decided to write his crappy medieval daydreams down on paper.

We have crappy cameos of supposedly quirky characters, choppy prose, unnecessary prose, overuse of adverbs and modifiers of said, ridiculous unexplained deus ex machina leading to [spoilers: the main character being turned into a half-elf) and things of the sort, along with ancestral memory and the ability for the dragon to do whatever just because. We have characters showing up in a nick of time, unrealistic worldbuilding, unrealistic characters, every archetype in the book, scenes taken from Tad Williams and David Eddings with direct lines, approximately .8% semi-original-yet-still-cliche things that are Paolini's own work, overuse of unnecessary apostrophes, villian stupidity and fluctuations of villian competence depending on what is necessary to the plot. True love, unexplained happenings that occur because the main character is super special. All characters love or learn to love the main character. There is a major lack of internal consistency, the pseudo-medieval times are a ridiculous hodgepodge and his facts and science are twisted to hell, the geography is completely idiotic, the explanations are stupid, there are clumps of worthless exposition, there are prophecies ruining all suspense for the future, the 'surprises' are not surprises at all if you use an ounce of common sense to figure out things like, mhm, they found someone's bloody clothes, so he must be dead---oh wait, not. There is a movie, a game, and millions of dollars being traded for this franchise being built off the lie that the author wrote the novel Eragon at fifteen---no one ever says he wrote the bare, changing rough draft at fifteen. If you start a novel at ten and you smooth it out until you're twenty, you're a ten year old in stasis. He was nineteen. Different than fifteen.

Plus, he's not helping the fact that most famous young authors nowadays are trash.

In case you're wondering, in his lower-twenties, Paolini didn't redeem himself with the sequel. Far from it. What the hell is Eldest supposed to mean anyway? Think about it: Eldest. More than two. Elders would be better. But Eldest apparently sounds cool, even though it doesn't sense; just like the first line in that book.

Oh, and anyone that tries to approach me with Psychology 101 theories like jealousy, I'm going to kick you in the teeth. I do notice that a good chunk of the people on this board praising him are adults that go 'at his age, I was still shitting my pants'. Ignore the guy's age.

So, I'm unclear. Are you saying you don't much care for the book?

Hate's such a strong word...

But yes.

The good thing may be he gives all the young writers hope, that they can be a successful author before they are 20.

The bad thing may be they all want to use him as a boilerplate -- farm boy with a destiny who defeats the evil empire and gets the dream girl. That you can make up anything you want as long as it's "fantasy." Oh, don't forget the dragon. There's got to be dragons.

Well, "written by a 15 year old" was the marketing angle. They marketed the book to a generation who doesn't know Star Wars. My nephew loves the books. He's 12. I don't begrudge him the love of a book, but I'm still irritated by the whole thing.

I mean, yeah, he had to sell the book to all the bookstores, but his parents also paid to send him all over doing school visits. If I had the money to do that, I'd do it too. We all would.

The good thing may be he gives all the young writers hope, that they can be a successful author before they are 20.

The bad thing may be they all want to use him as a boilerplate -- farm boy with a destiny who defeats the evil empire and gets the dream girl. That you can make up anything you want as long as it's "fantasy." Oh, don't forget the dragon. There's got to be dragons.

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Why the hell would anyone want to be a successful writer by the age of 20? I mean, I would send out queries when I'm finished despite being under twenty, and if I got published, friggin' wonderful. But if I'm not ready, I'm not ready, and I don't want to be published because Paolini made a bunch of money off his crappy book and then have that little Child Star Syndrome where everyone thinks they're a prodigy. And when prodigies grow older, everyone else becomes just as smart as they are, and they have little more than the fact that when they were children, they were a bit above the average child.

Wintermule said:

Let's see.

One: Why the stupid comments about his age? He's a published author. The final draft was written when he was nineteen, along with his parents and sister and a professional editor. After graduating high school, he decided to hang around with mom and dad, which he is still doing at the age of twenty four, and since he had all the time in the world to play video games and act like he could sword fight, he decided to write his crappy medieval daydreams down on paper.

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That's just pure frickin' genius there. I'm totally marketing myself as a 10 year old child prodigy! My first draft of the novel I'm querying was written 14 years ago.

As far as the book goes, I haven't read it. I saw the movie, and as Ray has repeated several times, it sucked some major ass. It didn't make me want to read the book.

Eragon?

I know, I know, its been out forever but I just finished reading it for the first time.

I'd been hearing how great it was for ages and I found a used copy for 50 cents, so I gave it a try.... I have to say I wasn't that impressed. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the fantastic piece of literature I've heard it made out to be either.

Share your opinions please?

Mediocre at best, but remember, Paolini was what, sixteen when he was writing it? So I'll cut him some slack.

When I was sixteen, my writing consisted of bad imitations of Hemingway.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. "Does Luke blow up the Death Star in this one?" is the title of one of the threads in the Amazon discussion board for the upcoming third book in the series -- which pretty much sums the series up.

Hey! Some people still working on their 16 years old laughable novel here! we aren't all like Paolini, I am not making Star Wars on Middle Earth...

And yes it's mediocre and the movie is even worst