Eragon

[HLGStrider]

Now I can list the pros and cons of this book and they exist. It is a fantasy novel by a young, first time author (19 in age), and I think that is why I like it so much. If he can do it, I can too. I'm nearly as good as him!


Anyway, has anyone read it? What did they think?

I liked a lot of the elements. . .and I am awaiting the sequel if only to prove my theory right about certain family trees that I have been speculating on.

I predict that Eragon has a half brother he doesn't know about, for instance, but who we have already met in the story.

[Lief Erikson]

I've only read half of it, so I won't be looking at this thread for a very long time, I expect. The author was a good writer, in my opinion. I didn't encounter any new ideas in the book, so I ended up losing interest. He is good at writing, though.

EDIT: And this will be the only part of our conversation that Valandil reads .

[HLGStrider]

MU HA HA HA The evil exclusiveness of it all. Only I, Lief, and Christoph the Beta Fish know!

Where was I?

I could see where Paolini could use a little work on his style. For one thing he gave the villianous shade Maroon eyes. Maroon? What serious fantasy writer allows the color Maroon into his work! If you are a serious fantasy writer and have the word maroon in your work, go delete it immediately. No one uses the word herb in a rock song. No one uses maroon in a fantasy book.

He also will occasionally throw in a big word where a small one would fit and I know what that is. He was homeschooled and is showing off his vocabulary. I know because I was homeschooled and used to do the same thing. Homeschoolers love to show off vocabulary. It's our main fault.

However, I did like certain plot elements, especially the dragon herself and the WareCat. I just like cats, however. The character Angelica was too contrived and the females don't feel real, but he's new to this.

[Valandil]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

EDIT: And this will be the only part of our conversation that Valandil reads .

But I haven't even read the book! Is the title (and is it a character name) a bit of a play with the word 'dragon'? The first time I saw it I did a double-take, wondering if the 'E' was supposed to be a fancy 'D' - and if the title was 'Dragon'! Silly me!

[ethuiliel]

But it was supposed to look like Dragon, CP purposely spelled it almost like Dragon.

I think it's a great book, by the way!!

[Iboen]

I've read this book through ands through, and still haven't bought it yet =\ Hehe, I found it really well written and rather inspiring, but I think most of Paolini's ideas were stolen obviously, hehe.

Iboen

[Cantaloupe]

I agree with Iboen, much of Eragon is stolen. I found it slightly annoying how similar is was to Tolkien *sage nod*

[Elemmírë]

Come now, is it even possible to write a fantasy story that is not like Tolkien's? Though certainly there are a few exceptions, very rarely have I seen it done. And there are definitely other stories out there that have stolen much more from Tolkien than this author did. Personally, I liked Eragon. Not... obsessively. But I did enjoy reading it.

[Thraxon]

for a firist book it did quite well i wonder if the movie will be that good

[ItalianLegolas]

Originally Posted by ElemmÃ*rë

Come now, is it even possible to write a fantasy story that is not like Tolkien's?

I believe they did a study on that El, and it was deemed to be physically impossible

[Lief Erikson]

Using swords and slaying monsters came before Tolkien.

[ethuiliel]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Using swords and slaying monsters came before Tolkien.

Of course they did... as did most of the other stuff Tolkien used. And I never heard mythology and mideaval weaponry was copy-righted. And the rest, like languages and Hobbits, CP did not steal (meaning, he didn't use them... not Tolkien's languages, at least, and he didn't use anything remotely resembling Hobbits... and he did use his own creatures... like the Ra'zak.).

[Elenwen06]

I didn't like Eragon. It seemed like he "borrowed" too much from too many authors. I found elements of Tolkien, McCaffery, and many others within the volume. It frustrates me when people can't use their own imagination and have to fall back on others'. Sorry if you don't agree with me.

[ethuiliel]

Originally Posted by Elenwen06

I didn't like Eragon. It seemed like he "borrowed" too much from too many authors. I found elements of Tolkien, McCaffery, and many others within the volume. It frustrates me when people can't use their own imagination and have to fall back on others'. Sorry if you don't agree with me.

How can you not use at least some elements of others' stories. It doesn't mean he "borrowed" them, just that they're similar. And he did use his own imagination, there are deffinely some creatures in those books that don't resemble anything else I've read (like the Ra'zak). And I've read both Eragon and a few Pern books, and I don't feel that the dragons and their riders are all that similar in the two. Give the man some credit.

I don't mean that Eragon is the best book ever written (that'd be LotR ) but I do think that CP has more imagination and is an over all better writer than you give him credit for.

[tolkienfan]

He was okay, it does seem like a lot was "borrowed"? from Tolkien (and others) but there was a lot that I didn't notice being too similar to anything else I've read either.

[ethuiliel]

I was reading an interview with the author of Eragon, and he said something that pretty much exactly explains my point of view on this issue... not just with Eragon but with pretty much every book people claim to be too much like another.

Many people say Eragon copies from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. What is your response?
Christopher Paolini: I read and enjoyed a lot of epic fantasy growing up and I wanted to write a story in that same genre. If I avoided elements common in those epics- elves, dragons, etc- I wouldn't be writing the kind of genre I wanted. It's what you do with those elements that makes or break the book.

Another fantasy author, Mercedes Lackey, who has written plenty of books, good books, wrote this in an essay on plagarism:

People tend to use this term incorrectly all the time. In some very few legal cases, authors have proved in court that someone else plagiarized their work, by proving substantial portions of it were lifted, unchanged, from their own work. When most people refer to “plagiarizing� however, they are generally saying that someone used someone else’s ideas. Now, you will almost never hear a professional author accusing another of this. The reason is simple; first, you cannot put a patent or a copyright or a statement of ownership on an idea. Second, every professional writer knows that no two authors will take the same idea and do the same thing with it. And again, with the exception of a handful of legal cases and an incredibly original idea (and I can personally think of only one, Art Buchwald’s case against the producers of COMING TO AMERICA) it simply is wildly unlikely that any professional would bother with pilfering someone else’s work. Why should we? Ideas occur all the time to us. The trick is not in coming up with ideas, but with figuring out which are the most marketable.

She also ended with

You can’t plagiarize ideas, only text. And a real, professional writer would throw themselves over a cliff before they did that—because the one thing we take pride in is our words. Our own voice. So to take someone else’s would mean we couldn’t come up with any of our own. Not a chance.

Will you argue with an accomplished author, saying that she has the wrong idea about the use of the ideas that she, and most other fantasy authors, use?

[Tree Dweller]

What do you guys think about me reading it to my 7 and 9 year old? They are very interested and heard that the movie was being made. I try to read the books to them before they see the movie, so we were considering it.
Do you think it is on their comprehension level?

[ethuiliel]

If you've read them LotR, it should be fine, but if you haven't and wouldn't read LotR to them I wouldn't read Eragon. The language is probably a little easier than LotR, but otherwise it's on a similar level.

[Tree Dweller]

Thanks for the advice, Ethuiliel!

[luvEyowen]

Books! Anybody read Eragon?