Tom
Istar
I picked apart all four books, wrote down Paolini's mistakes in a list, and now check my stories against that list to make sure I'm not making the same mistakes.
I just read something online about how he got published on his first try or at least that he wasn't refused by any publisher.
They also used Paolini's age as a marketing device--you know, setting him up as some sort of "child prodigy". Really his writing was decidedly average for an early to mid-teen. I've compared it to my own from when I was that age, and the mediocre style is depressingly similar. He just happened to write four huge books; I barely finished any stories during that period.
I will give him credit for having a whole novel finished and getting it published. That shows an incredible self-discipline many older writers, myself included, would covet. And I don't really mind the superficial Tolkien influences, as that's par for the course for the genre. It was really the Star Wars plot parallels that raised my red flag, but I suppose those would be harmless if he had passed it off as a simple medieval reboot.Honestly, I didn't think Eragon was that much worse that the typical first book for an epic fantasy author. It wasn't worse than say, The Eye of the World or The Magic of Recluce or Lord Foul's Bane or many others. I read through it easily and while I didn't enjoy it to the point that I wanted to continue the story with book 2 (the same way I felt about The Eye of the World and The Magic of Recluce and Lord Foul's Band, among others) it also didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth (like The Eye of the World and The Magic of Recluce and, say, Witch World, among others). I didn't really have any complaints. It was just an average epic fantasy novel.
I think a lot of people heard about it being written by a teenager and being a Tolkien ripoff and went into it expecting it to be horrible and so they found what they expected. Either that or they went in thinking, "Oh, so this book got published when he was a teenager? It had better be good then." Thus unconsciously applying standards to Eragon they wouldn't apply to any other author's first book which it was all but guaranteed to fail.
Man, people are hard on Paolini. But didn't we all wish we could publish our crappy fantasy stories when we were teenagers? Did we all think we were writing the best thing since sliced bread? At least the guy openly acknowledges all of his influences. And the story of the publication is actually kind of inspiring.
I will give him credit for having a whole novel finished and getting it published. That shows an incredible self-discipline many older writers, myself included, would covet. And I don't really mind the superficial Tolkien influences, as that's par for the course for the genre. It was really the Star Wars plot parallels that raised my red flag, but I suppose those would be harmless if he had passed it off as a simple medieval reboot.
I think Paolini made the Robert Jordan and Stephen Donaldson novels cited look like Dostoevsky. But Eye of the World wasn't Jordan's first fantasy novel.