Eragon

us folks at AW HATE anything paolini. I don't know why, but we just do. Or the general population hates it. I, personally, love it, but 85% of people here will hate it.

I like it, too, though I can't explain why. Maybe it's Murtagh. I still think of him as the good guy.

The one thing I don't like is excessive description, because I have a two second attention span, but I guess if you combine that with the rest of the fantasy elements, maybe I enjoyed it because it reminds me of when my dad read me Lord of the Rings when I was little.

(btw, I think there was a thread about this sometime back).

Honest opinion?

1) The writing is derivative in the extreme. Sure, people might argue that every book has derivative elements, but Paolini's trilogy is all derivative. Everything is taken from something else and slightly renamed.

2) The plot and storyline (apart from being stolen from other works) is generally weak and inconsistent.

3) The writing is bad. Very bad.

If Paolini's parents hadn't marketed him--and published him--as a teen author and therefore somehow amazing (because obviously teenagers who can write are virtually non-existent--end sarcasm) he would never have gotten as far as he has. The fact his writing hasn't improved with the second and third books is sad, but expected.

But, on the plus side, his books have gotten a lot of people interested in writing and reading who weren't interested before, so that can only be good, i guess.

I saw the movie first. Had no idea what the story was or who Paolini was or his age. I thought it was awful, but a lot of people liked the book so I figured maybe it was just a bad adaptation. I tried the book. Made it through one paragraph with crimson hair and red eyes and said "no thank you".

I enjoyed reading the books. Though to be honest, I preferred the first, because Murtagh is by far my favorite character, and he's hardly gotten any face time since. The character of Eragon himself really annoys me because he's very...obnoxious. I sort of think he's Paolini's idealized version of himself.

I'm not sure what about it I enjoy, but there's something there that really entertained me.

I do warn anyone who asks me how it is that there are a lot of places where you want to fall asleep because Paolini just describes everyone's thought processes in way, WAY too much detail. I've found that I didn't miss out much by skimming the big chunks

kaitlin008 said:

I do warn anyone who asks me how it is that there are a lot of places where you want to fall asleep because Paolini just describes everyone's thought processes in way, WAY too much detail. I've found that I didn't miss out much by skimming the big chunks

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Which is why, once the book was picked up by a mainstream house, it should have gone through a line edit with a real editor rather than the author's mom and dad.

I hated the Eragon series, mostly for the reasons Issac stated. Though, I will add that on top of the bad writing, self publishing and whatnot, the books are just plain boring. Paolini used a lot of cliche ideas and didn't even put a refreshing spin on them or anything. Drove me nutters, it did.

And honestly? J.K. Rowling and Paolini aren't even in the same league. Rowling wins by a landslide 'cuz at least she knows how to write.

A simple search will give you a lot of threads on this. Most hit the same subjects again and again, as all hot topics tend to do. If you care for my opinion, you'll find it in SFF. Just don't read too much into the april fools thread, heh.

Main, main, main, main, MAIN reason.

Paolini began writing at a young age. He has not gotten better since, despite it being nearly ten years.

http://eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com/Brisinger For a very good critique of Brisingr, which should be the pinnacle of Inheritance until the fourth. It is not.

Islaitha Frost said:

Paolini began writing at a young age. He has not gotten better since, despite it being nearly ten years.

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This. I read the first book and thought, "Eh, Tolkien it isn't, but I sucked a lot worse as a teenager. Guy's got potential. Give him a good editor and a decade to learn and he's going to rock."

A decade later, he hasn't found a good editor or, apparently, learned much. He irritates me in large part because I think he could be better.

Izunya

Eragon is a sociopath.

Seriously.

He shows a great deal of pain for accidentally killing an insect in one scene...and yet, in the SAME BOOK, he slaughtered HUNDREDS of troopers for an "evil" Empire!

However, this gave me an awesome idea...what if someone wrote a story like Eragon, but actually made the main character *intentionally* sociopathic.

Hence my story, The Cold King, which has the yellow haired farmboy who is also the Chosen One gleefully skinning hookers.

Awesome.

But, really, everything I've said about Eragon has been said before.



I just came on this thread to brag about my story.

I love the Eragon books, but only because of Murtagh. He's so awesome

Ok. Last time I posted about Paolini, the thread got closed down, so I'm going to be VERY and EXTREMELY careful about how I say this. The Eragon books are, for me personally, deeply problematic. I don't really want to come across as overly negative or slamming in saying this, it is my opinion. The Time Traveller's Wife and Catcher in the Rye are some of my favourite books ever written, but every time I come across a thread where people share their most hated books, one or both of them will virtually always come up with some reader saying that they couldn't find anything good about them. And that's okay. Not everyone has to like everything.

While Paolini obviously knew what to go for in order to get an audience's interest - dragons and magic etc - for me he failed to do anything original with this subject matter. Also, all the characters feel wooden and one sided. Then there's the prose. I seriously cannot handle the prose. Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is one of the most highly regarded books on writing I know. (For good reason! Go buy it!) And if you go consult the last chapter in Strunk and White, there's a list of rules about how to create readable prose. Paolini breaks almost every single one. There's nothing wrong with breaking rules if you do it well, but to me Paolini doesn't break them well. His sentences are simply overloaded. It is good that Paolini gets people reading, but god, in my opinion I could not think of a worse writer to use as a role model. If you want good epic fantasy, go read Magician of Hoad by Margaret Mahy and Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin.

Here endeth rant. Hopefully that was more agreeable than last time.

Really, Eragon and its publishing...always seemed kinda...well...sad.

My first book was on the level of Eragon: Sloppily written...but engaging and fun.

Though I do think my story was much more original than Eragon

But, well, I submitted it to this very site for peer review and I got my teeth kicked in by Preyer, who no longer visits these forums (TO MY KNOWLEDGE!). And I realized that, well, I need to square my shoulders and get BETTER.

I think a lot of writers go through this, and this is what makes okay or budding writers better writers. Struggle and all.

Paolini got his journey short circuited by getting self published.

Either that or I'm really really bitter.

Really, Eragon and its publishing...always seemed kinda...well...sad.

My first book was on the level of Eragon: Sloppily written...but engaging and fun.

Though I do think my story was much more original than Eragon

But, well, I submitted it to this very site for peer review and I got my teeth kicked in by Preyer, who no longer visits these forums (TO MY KNOWLEDGE!). And I realized that, well, I need to square my shoulders and get BETTER.

I think a lot of writers go through this, and this is what makes okay or budding writers better writers. Struggle and all.

Paolini got his journey short circuited by getting self published.

Either that or I'm really really bitter.

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You don't want to know what my earliest attempts at writing novels were like. All I can say is that the level of dullness that I achieved could seriously put Paolini to shame. I thought nothing of filling page after page with endless unnecessary details and description of everything. Then again, I was maybe nine when I first started trying to write novels. Or possibly younger. It was before I got over my Babysitter's Club phase anyway. Then there was the stuff I wrote later, all the fantasy stories about people with magic and dark pasts, when I was 11-12 and later when I was at high school. And that was all appallingly bad too. (These days I'm 23 and writing... fantasy stories about people with magic and dark pasts. Go figure. I hope they're better than the ones I wrote ten years ago, anyway.)

I used to be jealous of Paolini. I mean, I can write better (which, believe me, is not showing off), and I'm yet to have a novel published and earn masses of money from it. But is it really a bad thing that our early attempts at novel writing are unlikely to ever see the shelves of any bookshop? When we get published, it will be our awesome writing, the novels we learnt how to write by writing earlier ones which were less good and facing criticism and rejection. It's like you have to learn how not to write novels in order to learn how to write them, if that makes any sense. And I agree that Paolini somehow skipped that struggle. I am curious about the writer Paolini would have been if he and his family had left the Inheritance books alone and he'd been published ten or twenty years later with something else. Especially if he read The Elements of Style at some point in those ten or twenty years.

Not all teenage writers are bad. There are some stunning ones out there who have my envy because I certainly wasn't one of them. Nor was Paolini. It's just that his early stuff was marketed well right from the start, and it took off from there.

The series just went downhill for me. I liked Eragon. I thought it was reasonably well written and the cocept interested me. But from there it just became worse and worse. I found that a lot of Eldest was tedious and hard to get through and Brisingr is just awful. It's boring and i couldn't even get all the way through it. Waste of money and my time.

On a side note, some people may then be wondering, if i feel this way about the series, why my name is a direct reference to the series, hehe. Well i'd just like to clear it up that i think Saphira is awesome. I just tend to love dragons in general. She will always be awesome but the series....not so much.

Eragon was unoriginal, but still readable. Actually, it was a fairly fast read.

I don't get how it got worse. I mean, as you get older, you're supposed to get better, not worse, right? That's what all these writers who don't want teenagers to get published 'yet' say. But then look at Paolini. He's at an age where he'd be ripe to get a first novel published if he went the 'normal' way -- and yet, his third book is unreadable prose-sludge! He could have developed his skill. He could have turned the Eragon series into something original and creative. What the hell happened?

Haphazard said:

I don't get how it got worse. I mean, as you get older, you're supposed to get better, not worse, right? That's what all these writers who don't want teenagers to get published 'yet' say. But then look at Paolini. He's at an age where he'd be ripe to get a first novel published if he went the 'normal' way -- and yet, his third book is unreadable prose-sludge! He could have developed his skill. He could have turned the Eragon series into something original and creative. What the hell happened?

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Overloaded ego, perhaps?

And let's not forget that for at least 1/4 of Brisingr the plot is nowhere in sight. Oh, and Paolini tries to make Eragon out to be a beacon of virtue and compassion, despite his actions making him out to be the complete opposite.

When I was reading Eragon, I felt as if I was reading a multi-fandom crossover with a Marty-Stu MC, poorly disguised as original, I found it vastly amusing.
I easily noticed many things from other books and movies, and always felt that Eragon would not be out of place on a fanfiction archive, as long as he changed the names back first, of course.

While I do agree that in terms of quality, the series declined. I don't think he's as bad as some people make him out to be.

Read these: http://eragon-sporkings.wikispaces.com/Brisinger

He reviews each chapter of Brisingr, as it should be his best work to date. He makes note of each thing that jars him about the story. It's really a good read, and humorous too.

I've only watched the movie. I thought they actually did a really good job on the dragon, Saphira. Other than that? I felt the movie was sort of empy. As if it was moving way too quickly. Anyone else get that feeling or was that just me?


~Sam