Review: #800
Title: Eragon
Series: The Inheritance Cycle - 1st book
Author: Christopher Paolini
Comments: Eragon is a divisive novel. It is addictive and exciting if you’re in its target market of early teens, but if you have more experience with reading actual good novels, then you can clearly see all the flaws of Eragon. The story is about a normal farm boy who discovers a dragon egg and becomes the first Dragon Rider in many years. He goes on a great journey, first out of revenge, and then eventually out of duty as he learns more about his powers and his responsibilities. One of the many complaints about Eragon is its derivative nature of its plot, mainly from Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. It is really evident here and while you want to give credit since it was written by the author when they were 15-19 years old (but frankly, feels more like the result of an indulged spoiled teenager), on the other hand, the editor should have done a much better job. The end result is a novel that’s over bloated. The author has a tendency to describe excessively pointless details; you get paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions that serve no purpose and are repetitive. The novel could have been shortened by half and nothing would have been lost. The other thing is that the author is extremely melodramatic to the point that it is cheesy and cringeworthy. There are many places where you would not believe how the dialogue is written because it is just so corny and does not suit the context of the situation at all. You can see that the author tried to go for an epic theme but he fails spectacularly and becomes more like a joke. It seems that the author feels the need to explain very single plot point in meticulous detail in case the reader didn’t pick it up… when it was so predictable and clichéd in the first place. Eragon himself is not a likable protagonist, being arrogant, prideful, naïve and unfortunately, stupid. Yes, characters should have flaws but Eragon is frankly an uninteresting and hard to get behind when there is no merit to so many of this actions that caused the situation to become worse. Then throw in bits of predetermined destiny (a major cause of eye rolling) and a forced romance, one that paints Eragon as a creepy stalker no less, and it can be a struggle to the finish.
Rating: 6/10