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

[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.