So I’ve been working through the modern fantasy canon, mostly by hitting up used book sales and buying armfuls of mass market paperbacks. My shelf’s now overloaded mostly with well-loved copies of the Dragonriders of Pern, ASOIAF, and Shannara, which means I need to start digesting the collection I spent tens of dollars on.
Eragon was one of those books I picked up from a book sale, opting to give it a crack since I can fill a big bag of books and pay $10 of the whole thing, so it was basically free. I knew the gist: the archetypal “boy finds a dragon egg” story, a teenager’s debut novel published by his parents’ publishing company. It had a (in my opinion ugly, horse-looking) dragon on the cover. As dcb astutely pointed out, “Eragon” is one letter off from “dragon.” Huh.
15-year-old farm boy Eragon finds a dragon egg while out hunting in the woods. He, not knowing what it is, brings it home. As you do. When the dragon hatches, Eragon decides to raise her in secret. When a pair of the King’s agents sniff around his town, burn down his house, and kill his adoptive father, Eragon takes off with his mentor across the empire and vows to take revenge.
The most diplomatic way I could phrase my impression is that Eragon is very inspired by other works. It’s entirely what I’d expect from a teenager; when I was 12, I wrote a short story that was just The Iron Giant (hey, also a “boy finds a dragon egg” story!) but modern fantasy. I had to consciously pack away my knowledge of tropes, or I could guess every story beat. The elves are the most elfish, the dwarves are the most dwarfish, and the not-orcs work for the evil king.
My biggest reservation for judging this book is that it was written by a kid, for other kids. But then, my copy is slathered in reminders that this is an award-winning bestseller and global phenomenon, so I’m going to judge it anyway.
It’s fine. I can see why a kid would love this, with its dragon riders and matching swords. It probably would feel epic if I was 12 years younger and didn’t have to pay taxes. The prose ranges from a bit purple and silly to enjoyable enough, and I’d say is impressive, for a teenager. It’s obvious Paolini was a well-read kid. I got the feeling he probably went on to become a very good writer, with a bit more practise.
The little paperback version I have feels deceptively small; it’s 730 pages, and a good 200 of those could be cut without losing much. When I caught on to a lot of the beginner mistakes I made in my early drafts of Desertbound, I got itchy every time I saw them again. There’s far too much transit, and Eragon starts half the chapters by waking up and ends half of them by falling asleep. The chapters are usually extremely short, too, which means this kid is waking up and going to bed (or being knocked unconscious) all the time. It’s like getting a TED Talk from someone with a penis drawn on their face.
I’d give Eragon a decidedly mid 2.5/5 on my personal scale. I think a young, less experienced reader would have much more fun with this. I’m just not the target audience. Still, it’s made me reflect much more on my own debut novel—maybe I’ll give Desertbound another editing pass before I publish in August next year.
I listened to this novel as a Spanish audiobook from my local library 🙂
You can probably guess how much i understood of it…
That said I am surprised the dragon isn’t named Eragon. I would’ve guessed that was the case.
I remember a time when passages from Eragon were posted on Reddit every other day so the people could make fun of how awful the kid’s prose was. I didn’t think the prose was that bad. A little amateurish and in need of a mean editor, but totally fine for what it was as a kid’s first novel written at like 15 years old.
Never read the whole thing myself (Cornelia Funke’s Dragon Rider was my choice of a book with an ugly blue dragon staring at me on the cover as a kid, and that book was actually pretty damn good from what I remember), but I did see a bit of the movie and play a bit of the video game tie-in. The movie seemed average. The game sucked ass. And I also thought the dragon’s name was Eragon until just now. Goes to show how little that stuff stuck with me 20 years ago lmao
The book is good for being written by a teen. I’ve read books written by adults that are worse—but I’m also convinced Paolini’s parents did not hire a developmental editor. I think that disparity’s the trickiest part of talking about this thing. It was written by a child and if there was a fanfic of this quality written by a kid, I’d consider it excellent. But this is a published novel (put out by his parents’ publishing house, so basically self-published but with a professional veneer) which went on to become a huge hit. So I get when a redditor would deem the book shit by that metric.
There are several moments that cracked me up, though. My favourite (spoilers for anyone who cares): While breaking out of prison, Eragon faces the book’s villain, and his dragon’s up on the roof tearing shit up and literally bringing the house down. When the villain taunts Eragon about his weakness as a dragon rider, Eragon hits him with the line, “You forgot about one thing … the dragon!”
And then the book’s Sasuke beans the villain in the head with an arrow. Villain poofs out. Played 100% straight.
Honestly, if the book was packed with more funny (intentional or not) cheese and less transit, I’d probably have liked it way more.