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A review by soartfullydone
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
At least one of those stars is for pure nostalgia alone, and I own that.
It's been a mortal age since I read Eragon,, one of the few books I read religiously as a kid who dreamed of dragons and a life of adventure rather than the endless parade of school assignments. Rereading it as an adult has been incredibly fun, not just to remember what I loved about the book in the first place but to realize how much my reading tastes have changed over time and how many story formulas I've experienced since then.
If I read Eragon today, cold but with much hype surrounding it, I probably wouldn't care for it too much beyond it being a cute story for kids. Instead, I get to high-five my younger self for finding dragon lit on her own and finding it early. I still love this early Eragon and Saphira. I still enjoy Murtagh and Durza, the latter of whom isn't in this book nearly as much as my heart and mind want him to be. Brom and Angela used to be easy favorites of mine, but my enthusiasm for them has clearly dampened with age. Solembum remains the GOAT, however, and I'm deeply intrigued by Nasuada. Cannot for the life of me identify whether the feelings she evoked in me with her appearance are positive or negative. Can't wait to find out.
Eragon is incredibly formulaic in its plot. If you've read a lot of classic fantasy and chase anything resembling the hero's journey, then you've read this story before. However, if you're a kid growing up with parents who didn't read fantasy, then it serves as a great, more accessible starting point than what most classic fantasy offers. And I did read all of The Lord of the Rings in 7th grade, but could I tell you anything concrete about it today without relying on the films? Nope. But I remembered a lot from reading Eragon, and it served as a wonderful foundation to explore other stories.
Some might argue that the predictability of the plot is the novel's weakest attribute, and I do agree with that to a point. However, since Paolini followed an incredibly tried-and-true formula, it left him a lot of room to focus on world-building, even developing multiple languages, one of which is key to the magic system that has its own rules (even if Eragon wants to be super special sometimes, he is still affected by these rules). Readers get a map full of locations that actually feel explored by the end of the book, with more exciting traveling on the horizon, rather than it acting as set-dressing for an incredibly narrow story.
The extra effort results in Alagaësia feeling lived in and memorable enough to stand out from the score of fictional worlds so many authors have tried to build but failed to make much of an impression with. I know critical readers give Paolini crap for writing and publishing Eragon at nineteen, but I gotta be honest: this book tells a story, plainly at times, yes, but still more skillfully and earnestly than most recent books coming out by authors aged 20-24 that I've read in the past decade. Sad, but true.
The flaws of Paolini's nineteen-year-old writing show in many ways. There are obvious limits to his descriptions and the graceless way he conveys information. He was not a poetic writer at this point, so he didn't rely on flowery language to either paint a picture, conceal emptiness, or be Pinterest quotable. He leaned too hard on adverbs and exclamation points when it came to dialogue, and he couldn't let the reader hear how Saphira, Eragon, Brom, Murtagh, and so many others sounded like when they speak at all. (As much as we don't acknowledge the film version, I could not picture Jeromy Irons playing Brom the way Brom is written, yet it happened, didn't it?) My child brain was clearly doing a lot of lifting and filling in the gaps way back when.
However, his writing isn't without its strengths, either. Eragon is an adventure story through and through, and you can tell that Paolini had a blast writing it. Usually, when characters go on a cross-country journey, the story starts to drag and gets monotonous, but Paolini keeps the pace at a near-steady clip, having moments of character-bonding, magic-learning, and exploration interspersed with fast-paced action. It's not a perfect pace, and there's one too many times where Eragon passes out in the middle of the action, but it sure does keep the pages turning. What does it say that I'm used to 500+ page books feeling sooo long because they're accomplishing a whole lot of nothing, while Eragon seems incredibly short for its page length?
If anything, the book at times feels too ambitious for the limitations set by its plot. We're introduced to many intriguing concepts we have little to no time to explore here: Angela's prophecy; Solembum's warning; the intricate politics within the Varden; the fragile alliance between elves, dwarves, and human rebels; the brief memories of Durza's past; whatever's going on with Murtagh. Even though most of these are obvious setups for the next books, you're still left wishing you'd gotten more than a taste of them before rushing off to the next scene or battle.
Luckily, Eragon, like the reader, is dipping his toes into all these issues, too, and trying to figure out what comes next. Paolini's age at the time of writing lended a lot of credibility in capturing who Eragon would be as a mid-teenager living in a medieval-inspired fantasy world. Eragon is emotional and empathetic. He's quick to anger and judgment but inspired towards forgiveness. He desires vengeance against monsters like the Ra'zac and Urgals for personal wrongs done to him but balks at the murder of slavers because they're humans just like him. Freeing slaves is just, but murdering their captors in cold blood when they're defenseless is dishonorable. Like most young people, Eragon's sense of right and wrong is anchored more by feelings and concepts than experience, so he flounders when he's faced with a reality or worldview that contests those anchors. This is a source of potential growth for him but also incredible future conflict because Eragon truly doesn't know who he is or what he stands for.
He's also a young person who has been placed in a position of considerable authority and power now that he has a dragon, both of them independent from any one faction. How do you remain true to your deeply-held convictions when you have all these outside influences seeking to use you for their own gain? How do you know which is the right path to take when you can't see where the road leads in front of you? The Blessing scene illustrates how messy this is going to get quite beautifully and horrifically and is one of my favorite scenes of the book.
And sure, I groaned when the stuff began with Eragon meeting Arya, an elf warrior who is well out of his league and who just isn't that into him. I think I would've liked Paolini applying a fey-like nature toward the elves IF Arya wasn't the only elf here. Can we get humans being weird towards both male and female elves because they're so magically entrancing, and not just Eragon being cringe towards Arya, one of the very few female characters around who matters to the plot? (Hang on, is that why I didn't originally continue with the series, because Paolini didn't give ME a beguiling male elf to be cringe about? More as this story develops.) At least I'm also getting some nice dwarf content with Orik and the dwarves anti-dragon stance, a thing I definitely did not appreciate as a kid.
Despite its flaws, I'm really happy that I decided to reread and continue this series because I had a blast remembering how this first book went and reconciling my current feelings about it with my past memories. Onto Eldest!
It's been a mortal age since I read Eragon,, one of the few books I read religiously as a kid who dreamed of dragons and a life of adventure rather than the endless parade of school assignments. Rereading it as an adult has been incredibly fun, not just to remember what I loved about the book in the first place but to realize how much my reading tastes have changed over time and how many story formulas I've experienced since then.
If I read Eragon today, cold but with much hype surrounding it, I probably wouldn't care for it too much beyond it being a cute story for kids. Instead, I get to high-five my younger self for finding dragon lit on her own and finding it early. I still love this early Eragon and Saphira. I still enjoy Murtagh and Durza, the latter of whom isn't in this book nearly as much as my heart and mind want him to be. Brom and Angela used to be easy favorites of mine, but my enthusiasm for them has clearly dampened with age. Solembum remains the GOAT, however, and I'm deeply intrigued by Nasuada. Cannot for the life of me identify whether the feelings she evoked in me with her appearance are positive or negative. Can't wait to find out.
Eragon is incredibly formulaic in its plot. If you've read a lot of classic fantasy and chase anything resembling the hero's journey, then you've read this story before. However, if you're a kid growing up with parents who didn't read fantasy, then it serves as a great, more accessible starting point than what most classic fantasy offers. And I did read all of The Lord of the Rings in 7th grade, but could I tell you anything concrete about it today without relying on the films? Nope. But I remembered a lot from reading Eragon, and it served as a wonderful foundation to explore other stories.
Some might argue that the predictability of the plot is the novel's weakest attribute, and I do agree with that to a point. However, since Paolini followed an incredibly tried-and-true formula, it left him a lot of room to focus on world-building, even developing multiple languages, one of which is key to the magic system that has its own rules (even if Eragon wants to be super special sometimes, he is still affected by these rules). Readers get a map full of locations that actually feel explored by the end of the book, with more exciting traveling on the horizon, rather than it acting as set-dressing for an incredibly narrow story.
The extra effort results in Alagaësia feeling lived in and memorable enough to stand out from the score of fictional worlds so many authors have tried to build but failed to make much of an impression with. I know critical readers give Paolini crap for writing and publishing Eragon at nineteen, but I gotta be honest: this book tells a story, plainly at times, yes, but still more skillfully and earnestly than most recent books coming out by authors aged 20-24 that I've read in the past decade. Sad, but true.
The flaws of Paolini's nineteen-year-old writing show in many ways. There are obvious limits to his descriptions and the graceless way he conveys information. He was not a poetic writer at this point, so he didn't rely on flowery language to either paint a picture, conceal emptiness, or be Pinterest quotable. He leaned too hard on adverbs and exclamation points when it came to dialogue, and he couldn't let the reader hear how Saphira, Eragon, Brom, Murtagh, and so many others sounded like when they speak at all. (As much as we don't acknowledge the film version, I could not picture Jeromy Irons playing Brom the way Brom is written, yet it happened, didn't it?) My child brain was clearly doing a lot of lifting and filling in the gaps way back when.
However, his writing isn't without its strengths, either. Eragon is an adventure story through and through, and you can tell that Paolini had a blast writing it. Usually, when characters go on a cross-country journey, the story starts to drag and gets monotonous, but Paolini keeps the pace at a near-steady clip, having moments of character-bonding, magic-learning, and exploration interspersed with fast-paced action. It's not a perfect pace, and there's one too many times where Eragon passes out in the middle of the action, but it sure does keep the pages turning. What does it say that I'm used to 500+ page books feeling sooo long because they're accomplishing a whole lot of nothing, while Eragon seems incredibly short for its page length?
If anything, the book at times feels too ambitious for the limitations set by its plot. We're introduced to many intriguing concepts we have little to no time to explore here: Angela's prophecy; Solembum's warning; the intricate politics within the Varden; the fragile alliance between elves, dwarves, and human rebels; the brief memories of Durza's past; whatever's going on with Murtagh. Even though most of these are obvious setups for the next books, you're still left wishing you'd gotten more than a taste of them before rushing off to the next scene or battle.
Luckily, Eragon, like the reader, is dipping his toes into all these issues, too, and trying to figure out what comes next. Paolini's age at the time of writing lended a lot of credibility in capturing who Eragon would be as a mid-teenager living in a medieval-inspired fantasy world. Eragon is emotional and empathetic. He's quick to anger and judgment but inspired towards forgiveness. He desires vengeance against monsters like the Ra'zac and Urgals for personal wrongs done to him but balks at the murder of slavers because they're humans just like him. Freeing slaves is just, but murdering their captors in cold blood when they're defenseless is dishonorable. Like most young people, Eragon's sense of right and wrong is anchored more by feelings and concepts than experience, so he flounders when he's faced with a reality or worldview that contests those anchors. This is a source of potential growth for him but also incredible future conflict because Eragon truly doesn't know who he is or what he stands for.
He's also a young person who has been placed in a position of considerable authority and power now that he has a dragon, both of them independent from any one faction. How do you remain true to your deeply-held convictions when you have all these outside influences seeking to use you for their own gain? How do you know which is the right path to take when you can't see where the road leads in front of you? The Blessing scene illustrates how messy this is going to get quite beautifully and horrifically and is one of my favorite scenes of the book.
And sure, I groaned when the stuff began with Eragon meeting Arya, an elf warrior who is well out of his league and who just isn't that into him. I think I would've liked Paolini applying a fey-like nature toward the elves IF Arya wasn't the only elf here. Can we get humans being weird towards both male and female elves because they're so magically entrancing, and not just Eragon being cringe towards Arya, one of the very few female characters around who matters to the plot? (Hang on, is that why I didn't originally continue with the series, because Paolini didn't give ME a beguiling male elf to be cringe about? More as this story develops.) At least I'm also getting some nice dwarf content with Orik and the dwarves anti-dragon stance, a thing I definitely did not appreciate as a kid.
Despite its flaws, I'm really happy that I decided to reread and continue this series because I had a blast remembering how this first book went and reconciling my current feelings about it with my past memories. Onto Eldest!