2019 ( )

I did not read this because I thought I would like it. I read it because I wanted something high-fantasy, something with dragons, and I was in a bad mood when I was looking for a book so I didn't want something good, I wanted something I could hate. And it did deliver, so maybe I should give it an extra star just for that. Or not.

Don't get me wrong, I've been hating this series for years. It was actually reading Eragon hate blogs that I discovered the Temeraire series, one of my faves, so there's another reason to award it an extra star. And now that you know that I am the kind of person who would hate read a book or read hate blogs of stuff I haven't even experienced myself (though I have seen the movie - twice), then you should know what to expect from this review and whether or not you should read it.

This book has so many problems, and YES every single one of them can be expained by that fact that the author was 15 when he wrote it, but that DOESN'T mean they are not problems. You don't have to tell me something I already knew, and you're not gonna change my opionon re: publishing young author's. Which is that you shouldn't do it. Honestly, I wasn't a better writer when I was Paolini's age, in fact I might have been worse, but at least I didn't publish my shit and charge people money for it!

Okay, so let's list some things that are bad: the names, the writing, the plot, the characters, the world-building ... okay, so almost everything. The names are either stolen or ridiculous (the mythical dragon Brian!!! Galbatorix the high and mighty!!!) and there is absolutely no sense of a common language for any name. They're just generic fantasy with apostrophes in random places, mixed with completely normal names such as Evan and Fredric. Oooookaaaaaay. The writing is basic and over-dramatic, it either under- or over-describes what's going on, there's no middle ground. Either we get treated to fifty paragraphs on how to make a saddle, or just the word "food" to describe anything the characters eat (at least in the beginning, since you can literally see Paolini evolve as a writer as the book goes on there are more descriptions of food going on). Having too many characters in a scene is apparently tiresome, so there are never more than two or three at a time: to keep this up any extra characters are killed, renderd unconcious or sent away. The world-building could have been good, except that LESS IS MORE. You don't need to include every climate possible in your fictional world, you don't all the standard fantasy races and you don't need to give your characters every magical ability under the sun. You just don't.

But the worst sin, in my humble opinion (kidding, all my opinions are obnoxious as fuck), is that it's fucking boring. Every once in a while we getting treated to something exciting ... and Eragon convientely faints or is otherwise removed from the plot. We spend most of our time following him on a roadtrip or watching him explore all the towns - with the dragon safely off somewhere else, because gods forbid we get to know the one cool thing in the book better. Whenever someone does something cool Eragon isn't there to witness it, so instead the person who did it will come back and tell us how awesome it was. Such exciting things in a book, really. Whenever anything exciting happens it's described in the most boring prose imaginable, so you basically just fall asleep trying to give a shit about it. And so on and so on.

But all that said ........ I'm gonna keep reading. For one reason, and one reason only: I am honestly interested in seeing Paolini's writing develop as the series goes on. He got older and older with each book, and given how much time passed between this and the last in the series, he must have gotten better. Good even? I don't know, but I actually want to find out. Just don't expect me to like it. ( )

Paolini follows a little too closely to Tolkien in the world-building and twist departments, but the dragon-rider mythos, relations and magics add a level of depth most generic fantasy novels don't have. ( )

My 10 year old son and I listened to this book together and had a great time. I very much enjoyed the story and the narration. We're moving on to book two! ( )

OK fantasy YA novel. My daughter Jordy said it was a bit too derivative of Tolkien and others and I guess that's right. I enjoyed it though. I have not read the others. ( )