Paolini's Inheritance Cycle

[kayd_mon]

I haven't read them, though I have students that have. Anything that gets them interested in reading is good, even if it's the excessively poor writing found in Twilight books (which I have read portions) and supposedly Paolini (whom I have not read), who in this thread has been called worse than Meyer.

 

[Steerpike]

Meyer isn't that bad. Mediocre, at best. Paoloni's writing was just awful, as I recall from my initial attempted reading.

 

[kayd_mon]

Meyer obviously struck a chord with her story and her depiction of what so many people desire. Her writing by itself, based on my limited reading, was comically poor in my opinion. Some of her story elements are admittedly quite good, however.

 

[Steerpike]

Meyer obviously struck a chord with her story and her depiction of what so many people desire. Her writing by itself, based on my limited reading, was comically poor, in my opinion. Some of her story elements are admittedly quite good, however.

I read the first Twilight book. It didn't appeal to me, but the writing wasn't terrible, on the whole, though you might find a turn of phrase here or that that is pretty bad. Her book The Host was actually fairly well done, I thought. Both she and Paolini seems to have struck a chord with a certain readership, but in the case of Eragon, I just couldn't get more than a few chapters into it. At least with Twilight, which I read for the sake of my daughter, I was able to finish the book. I've seen a lot worse on the shelves (for example Eragon; a certain D&D novel by Douglas Niles I can't remember the name of but which was truly atrocious). I guess it all ends up being rather subjective at some point, however.

 

[Mindfire]

I wouldn't say eragon struck a chord per ce. It sold well, but it's pretty low profile, especially compared to twilight. I'd say eragon just combined LOTR and Star Wars and the residual awesomeness of them propped it up. It's only real claim to fame is that it became infamous.

 

[myrddin173]

Well, it seems that there is another Eragon book in our future...

 

[NovaPowered]

Well, it seems that there is another Eragon book in our future...

As long as it doesn't inlcude Eragon himself then it might be good...

 

[kayd_mon]

I read the first Twilight book. It didn't appeal to me, but the writing wasn't terrible, on the whole, though you might find a turn of phrase here or that that is pretty bad. Her book The Host was actually fairly well done, I thought. Both she and Paolini seems to have struck a chord with a certain readership, but in the case of Eragon, I just couldn't get more than a few chapters into it. At least with Twilight, which I read for the sake of my daughter, I was able to finish the book. I've seen a lot worse on the shelves (for example Eragon; a certain D&D novel by Douglas Niles I can't remember the name of but which was truly atrocious). I guess it all ends up being rather subjective at some point, however.

I suppose it is subjective. Still, since they both encourage more young readers, I think they serve their purpose well.

 

[Steerpike]

I suppose it is subjective. Still, since they both encourage more young readers, I think they serve their purpose well.

Yes, I agree!

 

[thedarknessrising]

A new Eragon book? I just shed tears of joy.

 

[joe]

Dah.
I did read 1st book in one day. I was totally into it. However, it was years ago. I read another book very quickly, than waited for the third. It wasn't so hyper ultra maxi then. In the meantime I had read some real fantasy novels, so when I had finished the 3rd book I knew i wouldn't read the next ones. Anybody to spoil from the point where Roran is hammering Ra Zacks on a hill? Cause I won't read it, surely. Too much great writers awaits on dusty shelves.

 

[Shockley]

First off, I have to address the ragging on Paolini for ripping off Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Granted, granted, what Paolini presented is Star Wars in fantasyland. And Star Wars (A New Hope) is little more than The Hidden Fortress wrapped in Flash Gordon. LotR is a basic rip off of the Nibelungenlied (and you can go to the Fantasy section of any good bookstore and by the Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, a Norse version of the Nibelungenlied, translated by one John Ronald Rauel Tolkien). William Morris, one of Tolkien's favorite writers, had a wizard named Gandolf and a horse named Silverfax.

Everyone steals and everyone has influences. We have to criticize Paolini on other things.

Paolini can't write and he sucks at characterization. But he's more successful than I am, so hell, good on him. I hope he continues to be successful and put out work.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I haven't read any of the books but I did watch the movie.

Honestly, I found it to be kind of a guilty pleasure. It felt very much like one of those generic 80s fantasy movies - CGI dragons aside, it could have been made in the same era as Dragonslayer and Beastmaster and Willow.

It was cliché, sure, but somehow it felt like they knew they were working with clichés and decided to run with it: "Screw it, let's make the swords gaudy as all hell and cast freaking Jeremy Irons as the mentor."

 

[Zireael]

I read the first 3 books around the age of 16 in Polish translation, which wasn't too bad, just your average book. So I can't comment on writing style. I agree that some details of other cultures were quite refreshing. While Inheritance didn't immediately strike me as 'SW in fantasyland', I didn't like the plot holes and overly complicated family story in Brisingr. Eragon was good, Eldest was nearly as good, but Brisingr was worse and I didn't read book 4. I also didn't like the Ra'zac and the orc lookalikes, whatever their name was.

As for the film, I liked the fact that the cast wasn't all-white.

 

[aliciamarie]

I read the first two and was recently considering attempting the other two. Maybe I will.

 

[Philster401]

Why do you guys think Christopher Paolini books are like star wars movies if it because you think Eragon's father is Morzan it isn't its Brom. Also the Inheritance cycle is one of my favorite series along with The Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel, and Harry Potter among others. Although I'm am a teenager.

 

[Tom]

Urgh. I read all four books a few years ago, and to be honest, I didn't like them.

The prose was purple, the characterization was flat, the elves were self-righteous, Arya was a jerk, Sapphira was a walking (and flying) deus ex machina, and Eragon was a blank slate who occasionally exhibited sociopathic tendencies. Actually, the only times I was genuinely interested in him as a character was when he was acting like a sociopath. It's not every day you read about a sociopathic hero.

The only characters I enjoyed were Nasuada and Murtagh--Nasuada because she was badass without ever once picking up a sword (and proved that diplomacy can be badass as well), and Murtagh because he was the only character in the books who was sympathetic and morally grey at the same time (though Eragon did spend a fair amount of time demonizing him for no good reason).

By the way, Galbatorix was made out to be a madman, but to me he came across as the most reasonable person in the series. I was very sad to see him die. Plus it appeared that the most "evil" thing he was doing was levying taxes on the populace to maintain the infrastructure (to make travel easier), the army (to protect the kingdom), and a stable economy (to make sure people can, y'know, eat).

I think Paolini had some very good and original ideas, but those ideas are few and far between. Most of the content of his books is filler. If he had excluded filler and made an effort to avoid all the stereotypes and cliches he happily employed, I would enjoy his books, even though the concept has been done before. As it is, there are a few gems buried in a load of writing that's somewhere south of mediocre.

Plus, the linguist in me hates the fact that to make his "languages", he ripped phrases and words from Welsh, Old Norse, Old English, and Japanese and strung them together with no regards to structure or syntax.

You may now lower your rant shields.

 

[Philster401]

First Galbatorix was insane he killed all the Dragon riders.
Second elves are always self-righteous but they do have a greater understanding of the world around them.
Third why do tou say Arya is a jerk.
Fourth Dragons are great and powerful creatures i loved how described th chapters that were from saphira's point of view.
And finally i guess i have to agree a little about how quickly he learned to do tasks but people can do amazing things when they are fighting for their lives but I absolutely can not agree the their characterization was at all flat I think I literally cried at the i think.
One thing i did hate was how quickly things were solved before the book ended and how Arya and Eragon's relationship was never solved among a few other things.

Then i shall pick up my sword and drive it through your own defenses.

 

[Tom]

First Galbatorix was insane he killed all the Dragon riders.
Second elves are always self-righteous but they do have a greater understanding of the world around them.
Third why do tou say Arya is a jerk.
Fourth Dragons are great and powerful creatures i loved how described th chapters that were from saphira's point of view.
And finally i guess i have to agree a little about how quickly he learned to do tasks but people can do amazing things when they are fighting for their lives but I absolutely can not agree the their characterization was at all flat I think I literally cried at the i think.
One thing i did hate was how quickly things were solved before the book ended and how Arya and Eragon's relationship was never solved among a few other things.

Then i shall pick up my sword and drive it through your own defenses.

Galbatorix was insane from grief over his dragon's death when he killed the dragon riders. Insanity from grief isn't very common in the real world, but it's almost always some form of temporary. It's never proved that he stayed insane. My theory has always been that he snapped out of it, saw the mess he'd made, and vowed to protect and guide the land he'd damaged. (Which would be way more interesting to read about than generic evil.)

The elves are extremely narrow-minded. They killed off a party of human loggers who were harvesting trees from the edges of Du Weldenvarden without even asking them why they were there, then proceeded to attack a human town without warning and destroy it (and don't even tell me it's because they knew the humans were evil. That's no excuse to go on a genocidal rampage). They have no tolerance for beliefs other than their own. The scene where Arya provokes the dwarf priest and smugly leads him on to make him look like a fanatical old fool? That nearly made me throw the book against a wall. Plus, they teach Eragon Elvish beliefs, expecting him to give up his human beliefs and traditions because they're "narrow-minded" and "old". No excuse for depriving someone of part of their culture. I'd like to see Paolini's elves try to understand and empathize with the humans for once, not preach down to them from their thrones in the trees.

For an example of "why Arya is a jerk", see the paragraph above.

I honestly enjoyed the dragons. Sapphira's chapters were much better than the others, and I really liked her characterization. However, she was treated like a plot device instead of a character most of the time. That really bugged me. I wanted to get to know her, not see her be "awesome" and save everyone's ass every ten pages. (Although both would be nice.)

I don't boast to have characters with amazing depth, but I can see flat characterization for what it is. Strangely, it affects mostly Eragon and Arya. Besides his sociopathic tendencies and occasional interesting moment, Eragon is characterized like a generic hero. He's morally upright. Insightful. Reluctant at first, but then enjoys and accepts his new role. The "generic hero" is just an archetype, not a living character. Archetypes need to be expanded upon to produce a complex, memorable, fully fleshed out character. If Eragon had had more character quirks--be it a phobia, an intense interest in a certain subject, a favorite memory, a tendency to get defensive in a conversation, you name it--he would seem more real to me.

I'm glad you found it frustrating that he learned all those things in such a short time period. People can't just pick up a sword and go from absolutely no experience to mastering even the most basic of moves. First, you've got to rip all your muscles apart doing drills over and over to hammer the movements into your muscle memory before you even think about sparring. Then, when you get to a level where you're ready for sparring, you spend ninety percent of the time being beaten flat-out and ten percent of the time thinking you'll get a score but then having it work against you. When you finally get better, it's only from grueling drills, being beaten in every bout, and tearing down your whole physique to build stronger, more responsive muscles. (And it usually takes about three years to get to that last point.)

And then there's the issue of a fifteen-year-old learning to read in the space of roughly a month. Urgh...language does not work that way. There's a reason kids learn to read at six or seven. Young kids can soak up languages like sponges. By the mid to late teen years, you start to lose your capacity for learning new languages (which is why I will never speak Spanish or Irish Gaelic at all fluently). That includes written language. Written language is foreign because you need to take the sounds you know form words and associate them with markings on a page, just like when learning a new language you take words and concepts in your own language and associate them with a whole other set of sounds. Once you've got it you've got it, but if you don't learn to read by your teen years you most likely won't ever be able to read at a very sophisticated level.

And mostly--in regards to what you said earlier about fighting on instinct--when people are fighting for their lives, instinct kicks in and they resort to biting and clawing. You can only instinctively perform a movement you've done before to some extent. For example, on the first week I started fencing several years ago, in my first bout I would not be have been able to execute a feint-ballaestra-lunge attack that I had never learned just because instinct kicked in.

Actually, when my instinct kicked in I grabbed my opponent's blade while he was attacking and tried to pull it out of his hands. I got chewed out for that one. Base instinct doesn't work to make you execute an attack using precise technique associated with a certain fighting style such as swordfighting. Base instinct works to get your ass out of a fight alive, even if you have to resort to dishonorable tactics and fighting like an animal.

Because this post is already too long, I won't say anything about Eragon and Arya's relationship or the issues solved at the end of the book. Just that both could have been handled better.

Then I shall pick up my foil, parry your blade, disengage, and go for the attack!

 

[Steerpike]

I just couldn't get more than a couple chapters into the first book due to the quality of writing. Nothing to do with the story itself.