Eragon

[lederhosen]

Have been reading Eragon. After the first 160-odd pages, plot so far:


Mark HamillEragon*, whose parents are missing and/or dead, is a daring young lad who has been raised by his uncle OwenGarrow on a moisture farm.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, Carrie Fisheran elf and her guards are being attacked by Evil Minions. Just before they get her, she sends a rounded blue stone (not C3P0, although it does chirp) in the general direction of Away.

Eragon finds the stone, and manages to show it to almost everybody in the village, but can't find a buyer. A helpful NPC points out that it's hollow. He doesn't figure out what it is. It starts chirping. He still doesn't figure out what it is I guess they don't have a lot of eggs on farms. Eventually it hatches into a dragon. He touches it and they establish a lifelong telepathic bond and defend the weyrs from Threads.

Eragon's cousin is leaving home, and Uncle Garrow delivers a touching "you and Eragon are men now, all I have left to teach you is these few words of wisdom" speech. GOSH I WONDER IF HE'S GOING TO BE KILLED OFF IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE. Eragon wanders off to look after his dragon, returns to find the farm has been trashed by stormtroopersminions. Uncle Garrow dies of injuries shortly afterwards.

Fortunately, Alec GuinnessBrom, the Mysterious Old Guy of the village, takes Eragon under his wing and fills him and the audience in on the backstory: once upon a time there was a noble order called the JediDragon Riders of Pern. They rode dragons and could live forever, unless killed by violence (or their dragons were). But after many years of Doing Good (TM), the order accepted a young Dragon Rider (Galbatorix) of unusual talent, and even though some in the order were uneasy about him, he rose quickly in power - until, consumed by anger and grief over being played by Hayden Christensenhis dragon's death, he turned his powers to evil and destroyed the order, becoming the tyrannical ruler of an empire.

As they travel (Eragon's dragon flies overhead, which is apparently what you do when you don't want the Evil Overlord to know you're a Dragon Rider), Brom teaches Eragon how to fight with swords. (Brom, incidentally, has a Sword Of Mysterious Origins, and if it isn't Galbatorix' old sword I will be amazed.) We discover that Dragon Riders can use the Forcemagic, and Brom tutors Eragon in that too, although he's uncomfortable about it because traditionally the Dragon Riders always started their padawansapprenticeship at a much earlier age so they'd learn the necessary discipline. It is established that Brom can also use magic, and that he's much older than he looks and hasn't aged at all in the last twenty years. Eragon still doesn't seem to have figured out that Brom is also a Dragon Rider.


And that's about where I stopped. Now, I'm the first to acknowledge that all the good plots have been used before, yada yada archetypes yada, but this struck me as more than usually derivative. Anybody who's made it all the way through feel like telling me whether it gets any better? It's not particularly badly written (a bit of thesauritis, and too many cliches of the 'sickening thud' variety), but so far it's one of the least original stories I've ever read.

*Yes, one letter off 'dragon'. I'm not sure whether this is intended to be significant, but I found it kinda jarring - when I first saw the book, which has a picture of a dragon immediately below the title, I thought it was a really unfortunate typo.

Edit: BTW, when I am an Evil Overlord, I will make sure my minions are issued with sturdy, well-made clothes that don't tear easily, if only to spare readers from yet another "scrap of cloth in dying man's fingers" gimmick.

Comments

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

...the farm has been trashed by stormtroopersminions

Just for the record, I first read that as "the farm has been trashed by persimmons."

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I'd pay good money to see that :-)

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

Uck. That'd be terrible. You'd wake up with your tongue all thick and furry.

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

So did I. Conspiracy?

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

I blame the squirrels.

If there's one thing I've learned around this lot, it's that you can usually blame the squirrels. *grin*

[torin3.livejournal.com]

(not C3P0, although it does chirp) ITYM R2-D2

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

So I do. I never could keep those two straight...

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

You beat me to it.

[hpapillon.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it, but from what I've heard I don't expect it gets any better.

The biggest reason I've *heard* of it is that the author was So Young when he wrote it. Rather like the vast majority of truly bad fanfic. I feel slightly guilty reading the sporking of Mary Sues, because the poor little darlings are twelve and don't really know any better... *I* wrote like that when I was twelve... But when such a thing actually makes it into publication, vigorous poking with kitchen implements is allowed. :)

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I actually got a little further than you before I gave up. I know from working at the bookstore that this book is beloved by many and for the life of me I can't figure out why. Even as a kid I would've recognized it for the junk that it is. It pulls out every cliche and rips off various sources (as you note). The brazen aping of McCaffrey is especially embarrassing (the bond between riders and dragons is described in almost identical terms). The writing is pretty bad too, I think (no one ever just "says" something, they always "cry" it or "exclaim" it or whatever). After you left off, Brom gets killed (sacrificing himself to save Eragon). While dying, instead of just telling Eragon he was a dragon rider, he wastes precious time by commanding Eragon to bring some water over and wash his hand. Eragon does so and finds that -- gasp -- Brom has been wearing makeup to conceal the white mark on his hand that shows he was a dragon rider.

Eventually Eragon meets up with ArwenArya, the elf, and falls in love with her unearthly beauty. At that point things got so tedious that I gave up.

Much was made of the fact that this kid was 18 years old when the book was published and had worked on it through his teenage years. Well, it shows. It's a painfully adolescent book.

Here's a great quote from Paolini: "In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf."

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

It looks like what I wrote when I was 12: a copy of everything I read or saw in the theaters.

Hopefully I'm showing signs of recovery; I don't want to write "Eragon II: Sea of Silver Light".

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Sadly, Eragon already has a sequel, called Eldest. There is also going to be a third book to complete the trilogy. Oh, and a film of Eragon is in production for some reason.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

no one ever just "says" something, they always "cry" it or "exclaim" it or whatever

Yeah, that annoyed me too. It reminds me of the sort of bad fanfic where the author has been taught never to use the same word twice for the same thing, and never to use a two-cent word when there's a five-dollar one.

I see Jeremy Irons has been cast in the upcoming movie as Brom. I guess that answers the question of what to do after the Dungeons and Dragons movie...

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

OK, I see the words "upcoming movie" there and I don't like it. Then I see Jeremy Irons and a reminder of what it was like to watch him in D&D and I like it even less. I mean, I've just managed to forgive him, thanks to Kingdom of Heaven. Must he do that to me again?

But then I realize that it would be a good snarking movie.

Hmmm.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I got all the way through, but hated it a lot. Eventually they get to this mountain range that's ridiculously tall for no apparent reason and find Mordor with human-hating dwarves (I think) that they have to rally to fight against the evil army... which never found them despite years of searching because the secret entrance to the city was behind a waterfall.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Wow... you made it a bit further than I did.

Yah, the book's great claim to fame isn't that it's Great Literature, but that the author is 12 or somesuch, and thus is loved and adored by legions of other 12-year-olds. And yah, the "Eragon"/dragon typo still bugs me. And, well... yah. Much with the stabbing. I don't think I'm a Great Author, but I know damn sure I can write better than that, and that makes me warm and fuzzy inside.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Alas, he doesn't quite have the excuse of having been 12; the book was published when he was 18, though he supposedly started writing it when he was 15 (which, come to think of it, probably explains why Eragon is 15).

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, close. Better than (most of) what I was writing at 15.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

the book was published when he was 18

...by his parents' publishing company. What I don't get is why Knopf later picked it up, but I guess it was a good time for LotR knockoffs.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Apparently, Carl Hiaasen's stepson read the original self-published version and recommended it to Hiaasen, who in turn recommended it to Knopf. I have no idea what he was thinking.

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Well, that explains how it managed to get published.

Even Littlest Sister, at the tender age of 11, canned it.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I haven't read either book, but the sequel, Eldest scored one of the most savage reviews I've ever read: "proof that you can sell any crap if you advertise it on television".

We sold a lot of copies of both books at planetfantastic in the lead-up to Christmas... after which point, demand dropped to the level where we didn't even bother keeping the trade paperback of Eldest in stock. It's been months since anyone asked me when the third book was due, and if anyone does ask, we try to sell them Naomi Novik's Temeraire.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I picked up... er... the greeb book about Temeraire in the supermarket. Surprisingly good. }:P

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

You didn't get to the part where elves don't eat meat? You've missed an entire vegetarian subplot. It's almost as good as the evil brother/nemesis bit, and as subtle. I'm actually waiting for the "LukeEragon, I am your father" that has to show up in one of the sequels.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

You've missed an entire vegetarian subplot.

The mind boggles.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

And so the mantle of Derivative Crap Written With No Concern Over Plagiarism Issues moves from Terry Brooks. (I still get into arguments with people I knew during my high school/fan days who still adore the Shanarra books, and they aren't thrilled when I point out that Brooks and Brian Lumley continue to prove that there's a lucrative market for literary necrophilia.)

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

This stuff makes Terry Brooks look like a visionary. Honestly, though, I blame the parents. Thousands of geeky teenagers write stuff like that every year, but most of them get the opportunity to wait a few years, realise how derivative it was, and quietly burn the evidence before it taints their future career.