Eragon (Inheritance, Book 1) (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: Dras Leona, Eragon Brom, Saphira Eragon (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Here's a great big fantasy that you can pull over your head like a comfy old sweater and disappear into for a whole weekend. Christopher Paolini began Eragon when he was just 15, and the book shows the influence of Tolkien, of course, but also Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, and perhaps even Wagner in its traditional quest structure and the generally agreed-upon nature of dwarves, elves, dragons, and heroic warfare with magic swords.

Eragon, a young farm boy, finds a marvelous blue stone in a mystical mountain place. Before he can trade it for food to get his family through the hard winter, it hatches a beautiful sapphire-blue dragon, a race thought to be extinct. Eragon bonds with the dragon, and when his family is killed by the marauding Ra'zac, he discovers that he is the last of the Dragon Riders, fated to play a decisive part in the coming war between the human but hidden Varden, dwarves, elves, the diabolical Shades and their neanderthal Urgalls, all pitted against and allied with each other and the evil King Galbatorix. Eragon and his dragon Saphira set out to find their role, growing in magic power and understanding of the complex political situation as they endure perilous travels and sudden battles, dire wounds, capture and escape.

In spite of the engrossing action, this is not a book for the casual fantasy reader. There are 65 names of people, horses, and dragons to be remembered and lots of pseudo-Celtic places, magic words, and phrases in the Ancient Language as well as the speech of the dwarfs and the Urgalls. But the maps and glossaries help, and by the end, readers will be utterly dedicated and eager for the next book, Eldest. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell

From Publishers Weekly

While exploring the forest, 15-year-old Eragon discovers an odd blue gemstone—a dragon egg, fated to hatch in his care. According to PW, "The author takes the near-archetypes of fantasy fiction and makes them fresh and enjoyable, chiefly through a crisp narrative and a likable hero." Ages 12-up. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers; First Edition edition (June 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375826688
• ISBN-13: 978-0375826689
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2,863 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,353 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #7 in	Books > Children's Books > Series > Fantasy & Adventure > Inheritance
  #11 in	Books > Children's Books > Authors & Illustrators, A-Z > ( P ) > Paolini, Christopher

• This is item 1 in The Inheritance Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I Am Split, June 6, 2006

By	Dorcas Meadowes "The Irritating Teen" (NJ) - See all my reviews

In my opinion, Eragon (and others in the Inheritance Trilogy) was for me as guilty a pleasure as any chick-literature would be. Pleasure in the loosest sense of the word.

As a young adult reader who loves fantasy, I enjoyed Eragon at first. It had action, it had some beautiful writing.

Until I realized how unoriginal it was. As a young writer who hopes one day to get published, I was disgusted with the quality of the plot and the characters. The plot was recycled from many sources, from Lord of the Rings, from Ursula LeGuin, from Anne McCaffrey...the list goes on and on. Furthermore, the characters were flat to the point that would put a fanfiction writer to shame. (Fanfiction being stories based on published fiction, sometimes being very clichéd or of very low quality, and often written by teens. Don't get me wrong; many fanfiction writers are excellent.)

The characters were who I had the most problems with; the plot can almost (not quite, but almost) be excused, as it is extremely difficult to come up with something new in the fantasy category. However, the characters fit too nicely into their niches. Garrow as the grudging, bitter, father-figure. Brom as the wise, mentoring, guide. What was most annoying was how perfect Eragon and Arya were. They were good-looking, they had positions of power, they were intelligent, they were educated, they were magically powerful, they were skilled swordsmen (swordspeople), they were skilled archers. I was about to gag on the self-idealization; Paolini said that he based Eragon on himself! I'm not going to insult his looks or his athleticism, as I know little about either, but there is no way that anyone could be all that.

Paolini may have promise, but that is all buried underneath the over-marketing of his book and the fact that he was self-published. He has not improved within seven years (when he was fifteen to when he was twenty-two). I would appreciate the books more if I didn't know how easy it was for him to get them published.

This may be a great book for young readers who are not mature enough to read J.R.R. Tolkien or Ursula LeGuin; if it gets them interested in reading, I'm all for it! But for people who want genuinely good fiction, it is a waste fo time and money.

70 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mythic, but perhaps too much so., May 25, 2004

By	nelyk (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

Everyone here seems to be extremely divided in their views of this book, and I'm afraid I fall in the dislike camp.

Okay, let's start with the plot. I must admit it is quite enjoyable, if you are in such unlikely circumstances that you are both inclined to like fantasy, and have not read most of the modern classics in said genre; or, perhaps, you have to have read enough awfully-written stories to know cliches when you see them. Basically, Eragon embarks upon a quest for revenge against shadow forces he doesn't know much about, but which will undoubtedly have something to do with his 'mysterious past.'

While most people mention fantasy books as inspiration, I find Eragon's plot more reminiscent of Star Wars than of anything else. There's the dead order of peace-keepers with amazing powers, the main character's mysterious past (Who's his father? He doesn't know!), the magical power, the old man with long-dead secrets of the past, which of course he teaches to this headstrong youth without really bothering about whether he's _good_ or not, and most tellingly, the destruction of the boy's farm and death of his uncle, which in both Star Wars and Eragon sets the main character off on a quest of revenge. Just thank heaven there's no C3P0...

In terms of concepts, there are very few original ideas, either. Paolini draws from Tolkien's works, not just Lord of the Rings but background materials as well, and, I am told, Anne McCaffrey's (sorry if I misspelled that) Pern books. Personally, I can't stand McCaffrey's writing, which is why I can't speak for myself on that one. Anyway, all of the races are almost exactly the same, down to the origins of the elves across the sea (Tolkien came up with that one, folks!); while Urgals and the Ra'zac are original, as far as I know, they are shadily described. Indeed, the Urgals always remind me of the Knights who say Ni, a la Monty Python, which rather kills their potential as villans.

Paolini attempts to make his world original and fresh by adding in what he seems to think is his own idea, judging by the care he takes in explaining it: an ancient language, a true language, with magical power. Unfortunately, his implementation of this idea has two flaws: 1) lacking a proper knowledge of the mechanics of language, he has created a set of _words_ with absolutely no grammar involved, so that to get across a complex idea you have to smoosh words together and hope that it works; and 2) the words seem to have been created by randomly pounding on the keyboard, and adding vowels where he thought them necessary. They're not unpronouncible, as this has created a tongue with a phonology similar to Russian, or perhaps closer to Czech; but I doubt that was intentional, as my high school is one in, I think, a little over fifty in the United States that actually teaches Russian. 'Brisingr' is a word that simply could not exist in any Romance or Germanic language, and, as I said, I doubt that Chris Paolini put much thought into making his language original (even Tolkien, a philologist, only used harsh Slavic sounds in his black speech, the tongue of evil) when all the rest of his work has little or no thought in that area. Originality, I mean.

One more thing. Eragon is grammatically correct throughout, a fact for which I am thankful, but shows distinct signs of having been written by a ten-year-old - and yes, I know the author was fifteen at the time of publishing. So what? I'm sixteen, and I can still vary my sentence structure. Learning to do so was an integral part of my 7th grade English education! All of Eragon's sentences are short, less than a line long, and generally begin with either an article (a or the) or the subject of said sentence; occasionally you'll find another adjective there instead, if you're lucky. I have not noticed a single subordinate clause in the entire book, and have been appalled at the blatant lack of semicolons. Semicolons! What is the world coming to, if people can say a story without semicolons is worth reading?

Still, Eragon did wonders as light, mindless reading material - besides, of course, the choppy writing style inherent in a book with uniform sentence structure and a dearth of semicolons - and so, rather than a one, I give it two stars out of five.

P.S. - I haven't seen anyone else comment on this particular name theft, so I thought I'd mention it. You know the Bid'duam? Turn it around and what do you get: Muad'dib. Frank Herbert alone could sue the kid for plaigarism; I'd hate to see what the Tolkien estate would do if they got word.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More Of The Same Fantasy Dreck., December 22, 2004

By	Nathan Sharp "aspiring author" (Krasnodar, Russia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm reviewing Eragon, by Christopher Paolini.
He started writing this book when he was fifteen, and it shows. At the beginning of the book his writing is childish, he goes out of his way to describe meaningless details. (Who needs to know exactly how many left and right turns there are on the pathway? The readers aren't going to be quizzed on that, now are they?)
Unfortunately, the book does not get better as its writer ages. It is full of lamentably overused fantasy cliches (elves are, surprise surprise, once again the "perfect" race of creatures with superintelligence and fabulous good looks. The orcs- excuse me, "Urgals", are the dumb, beastly pawns of the 'terrifyingly evil overlord'.) and story lines that a four-year-old could see coming. The main character's wise old mentor is actually a knight of the ancient order? Who would have guessed! Eragon's new friend has a mysterious past? Oh, horrors!
Halfway into the book, our 'fearless hero' (merely a Luke Skywalker in Frodo Baggins clothing) begins to have dreams about the standard-issue Beautiful Heroine. Of course, she is a beautiful Elf that will fall madly in love with our hero after he rescues her. I was rooting for the Elf to die before Eragon was able to save her. Young Master Paolini had the perfect chance to skew the fantasy stereotypes that plauge this genre, but instead he chose the safe route and it paid off: his book is a bestseller, a title that is in no way deserved. Do NOT lap this book up and proclaim it to be the "next harry potter" or, god forbid, the next Lord Of The Rings. THOSE two series have good, thought-provoking books and are always willing to shatter fantasy stereotypes. Don't waste your time or money on this same-old, same-old book. Your money shall be better spent elsewhere.
I honestly think that the only reason this book was published was because the author's PARENTS own a publishing company.