Rating: 2/5, bad
I read Eragon in freshman year of high school and I hated it. I think it’s so boring, trite, generic, formulaic, you get the idea.
I read a digital sample of it recently and I hate it now equally as much as I did then. I hate the name “Eragon” – it’s two letters away from Aragorn and one letter away from Dragon. I don’t hate the name Saphira but it’s pretty obvious for a blue dragon.
I get nothing from Eragon as a personality so far (the sample ends after the chapter called “Tea for Two”). He’s practical and strong… he has some intelligence. I can’t think of anything else, which is bad, because those characteristics don’t exactly paint a picture.
On rereading and trying to give it another chance I was trying to separate the work from my image of Christopher Paolini as a person. I was just looking at the prose, trying not to think of Paolini as a teenage prodigy initially self-published by his parents and just reading it as if it were by a nameless adult author.
It might be that there’s no humor in it? It’s very serious. I think it’s going for a sense of wonder but it’s not succeeding with me because it’s not presenting anything I haven’t seen before. It feels a little too by-the-book, like its checking off items on a list of fantasy things.
One thing that bothers me about the prose is that it contains a lot of unnecessary detail that doesn’t function as imagery or setting the mood:
“The evening before they left, Eragon went to a small clearing in the forest and called the dragon with his mind. After a moment he saw a fast-moving speck in the dusky sky. The dragon dived toward him, pulled up sharply, then leveled off above the trees. He heard a low-pitched whistle as the air rushed over its wings. It banked slowly to his left and spiraled gently down to the ground. The dragon back-flapped for balance with a deep, muffled thwump as it landed.”
That is a lot of words to say basically “the dragon flew towards Eragon.” Other writers would put some emotion into it, tell us what Eragon is feeling, or give us a description of Saphira’s beautiful scales glimmering in the sunlight, but there’s nothing for the reader to feel here. It’s almost disembodied. It’s just a description of action with no emotion or meaning to keep the reader’s interest.
When Paolini introduces Eragon and Saphira’s telepathic connection, it’s the same way. He’s describing what’s happening, but he’s not giving the reader anything to emotionally latch onto, like specific “images or emotions” that Eragon and Saphira are transferring to each other:
“The mental contact he shared with the dragon waxed stronger each day. He found that although it did not comprehend words, he could communicate with it through images or emotions. It was an imprecise method, however, and he was often misunderstood. The range at which they could touch each other’s thoughts expanded rapidly. Soon Eragon could contact the dragon anywhere within three leagues. He often did so, and the dragon, in turn, would lightly brush against his mind. These mute conversations filled his working hours. There was always a small part of him connected to the dragon, ignored at times, but never forgotten. When he talked with people, the contact was distracting, like a fly buzzing in his ear.”
SNORE! Notice how wordy that is! And how little emotion, meaning, or imagery it conveys! It’s so bad… I don’t know how people can like this. Maybe there are some people who don’t need the writer to help them feel, maybe there are readers who are fine with supplying their own meaning to plain action. That’s not me, though. I want a writer to tell a story, paint a picture, share some of how they see the world with me. I want to hear their authorial voice, not a generic narration of exciting events.
I don’t want to read plain action and then have to supply my own emotion, I want to feel the characters’ emotions.
It’s also way too much info-dumping in the first few chapters. Where other authors might show, Paolini tells. In great detail. I’m not a fan.
This is from the perspective of someone who reads primarily for meaning and secondarily for style. I’m not big on plot, action, or intricate worldbuilding. That might be the disconnect here—I’m into artsy fartsy literary stuff where style, novelty, and meaning are prioritized over plot. Pages and pages of explanation of a giant lore web or complex magic system with no physical or emotional groundedness and things like play-by-play descriptions of combat put me to sleep.
Therefore, I’m going to stop after reading the sample and not try to make myself read the whole thing.
I will also say that I’m a bit annoyed by the idea that we should judge Eragon more leniently because of the author’s age. I think it should be judged in the context of other books in its category. If it can’t hold its own among other popular fantasy titles, critics should point that out because that’s the job of a critic. It’s a little insulting to generalize that teenagers can’t write well, because some of them can. I’ve seen some excellent writing in high school and college literary magazines. Yes, I would be impressed if I saw an excerpt of Eragon in one of those magazines, but Eragon is occupying the same space as fiction written by adults, so I think it should be judged by those standards.
Here are some dragon books that I like:
My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett – one of the first books I ever read at around six years old. It’s very charming, has a dry sense of humor, and is a great adventure story. I don’t recommend the movie; on top of being bad, it somehow broke our TV speaker (I think the music in the fight scene at the end had too much bass).
Dragon’s Blood by Jane Yolen – admittedly I read this in middle school and I don’t remember it that much, but I remember really liking it. I think it was pretty violent and intense. It’s about a slave boy who trains a dragon to fight in gladiatorial combat so that he can win his freedom.
Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon – this one was more recent. I really enjoyed the writing, the characters, and the setting.
Trigger warning for SA and content warning for sexual content:
I happened to have a quite horrifying but slightly funny experience while I was reading this book in high school.
I was in study hall and the study hall was set up so it was two groups of three rows of desks facing each other across the room (I don’t know why they had it set up like that—so that people would feel watched and not act out?). I was minding my own business, doing my math homework. My eyes got tired, so I looked up to give them a rest, but then they encountered something strange. My brain and eyes were fuzzy from the homework, so it took me a couple seconds to register what I was seeing.
It was a very large, very pink, slightly hairy p*ssy. I stared at it a little bit longer because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The girl across the aisle was sitting in a mini skirt with her legs spread wide open. I slowly and gingerly looked up toward her face and she was full bore staring at me. She was a big girl (about 300 lbs) with long, straight blond hair cut blunt at the ends. I don’t know what was going through her head at the time, but she looked like she wanted to kill me.
I put away the math homework and switched to Eragon. I thought that would be easier to keep my brain and eyes occupied for the remaining time in study period. It didn’t work. I was reading “Blah blah blah Alagaësia blah blah blah Galbatorix elves dwarves Dragon Riders backstory blah blah blah…” and whenever I got tired I looked up and tried not to look at it but it was hard not to see it because it was right front and center. I feel like if I had a more interesting book with me that period, that experience would have been easier hahaha.
Anyway, I peeled out of that class as soon as it was over because I was afraid she was going to follow me and beat me up. Luckily, that never happened. I saw her one or two more times, fully clothed and acting normal. I never talked to her or heard anything about her. I don’t know if she had an accident in her underwear or mental issues or trauma or if she was trying to catch someone’s attention.
So yeah… choose what you read carefully, because you never know when you might be in dire need of some very interesting reading material.
Post a Comment