Eragon

[Jack Frost]

So, my friend lent me Eragon with the instructions to read it and give it back by the end of the year. (It's a long story involving elves, drama class and her punching me in the chest ... really hard).

So far it's actually pretty good. The start's weird (And I almost got punched again for saying that Shades sounded like anime characters). And it's a little slow but the pacing picks up after Saphira the dragon shows up.

Have any of you read it? What're your opinions?

[Andrea Harkins]

To be quite honest I strongly dislike the series. It's amateurish drivel that the only things that could be considered saving graces were lifted whole sale from Star Wars. It would have never seen print if the author tried it at any publishing company that his parents did not own. All in all it's what I'd expect from a sixteen year old's first novel except it actually saw print because his parents handed it to him.

It's not quite Twilight bad well it is one of the three series I run active crossover games where we bring in characters from other works to deal put those bad examples of fantasy in their place (the others being Twilight and Sword of Truth).

[Thomas Cooper]

...I like Sword of Truth...

[Legendary Mystics]

I only read the first book and thought it was okay. That one is a series most of the other players feel more strongly about.

[Kirihiko Sudo-Sonozaki]

The second book brings in the best parts of the series; the war that spawns the rest of the series. I love book 2, book 1 not so much.

[Steve Rogers]

At the moment it seems alright, when I read fantasy stuff I pay more attention to the mythos and the world than I do the actual story. So I find it interesting because of the concept of Dragon Riders and Galbotorix.

Of course literature (like everything else) is subjective, there are people who like Twilight, people who hate Harry Potter etc.

So far I will admit that some of the description is lacking, and a couple of characters don't get described until a chapter or two later.

[Tsubasa Todoroki]

You should try A Song of Ice and Fire sometime, Cross. A great mythos behind it, I'm on Book 4 right now out of the five currently out. Great high fantasy series.

[Trenton Ricard]

Back to Eragon, personally, I hated the series. One of my main complaints is that everything is WAY too fucking easy for Eragon. I mean, every other chapter, he does something that is either really difficult or has never been done before. The kicker is, each time, he does it perfectly. PERFECTLY.
Another biggie is that he is a freaking sociopath. I mean, I believe in the first book, he encounters a guard who surrenders and throws down his sword. He kills him anyway, then rationalizes that the guy probably would have gotten a search party sent out. He does this, like, two paragraphs after he kills the guy.

[Peter Saint]

Ooh, that ain't good =/

Also, the author has a tendency to outright avoid having his characters explain events that have already happened. Paolini just says they say what happens instead of having the character's speak. Yes I already know but ... it's a wee bit grating when all these important lines are waved away with a single line.

[Trenton Ricard]

I could go on for days about this series, but I'll limit it to one more rant:
Mr. Paolini is really, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY bad about over-describing things, like he devotes an entire paragraph to describe the back of Arya's neck, and I don't mean he describes all of Arya in a paragraph, and puts emphasis on the back of her neck, I mean he sets aside a WHOLE. FUCKING. PARAGRAPH. just to describe the skin on the back of Arya's neck. Is that really needed?

[Suzie Miyazaki]

It's good sometimes, Victorian literature and H.P Lovecraft do it all the time. The problem is when it's not used constantly, it seems out of place.