How can anyone actually enjoy Eragon? (fantasy, literature, harry potter, characters)

[leangk]

the thread about worst book movies adaptations inspired this thread. my hate began when my friend tried to push this book on me after reading my reccomendation (the runelords) and said that the "magic system in your book is cheap and unfair". i told him i wont read his crappy book, its probably terrible. anyways he forced me to and i admit i was wrong.. it wasnt crap. it was the biggest piece of **** i have ever read in my entire life.

the plot, characters ect not only ripped of the archetype of lord of the rings and star wars (and another dragon book), he went so far as to litterally rip of names.

here watch..

brom- obi wan
Imiladris>Imladris
Vanilor>Valinor
Ardwen>Arwen
Ceranthor>Caranthir
Bierland>Beleriand
Narda>Varda
Isenstar>Isengaurd
Melian>Melian
Mithrim>Mithrim
Isidar>Isildur
Turin>Tûrin

besides being a cheap copy, it is clearly poorly written. btu waht does its writer christopher paolini have to say??

"In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf"

how dare he!!! any tolkein fan here will raise a cry, go to paolini's house and burn it down. pfft. trying to compare his pile of crap to tolkein!

[SmerkyGrl]

I kind of liked Eragon. I suppose it could be a different story for Tolkien purists but all in all, I thought the story was pretty neat.

[eevee]

yeah, I have issues w/ "Eragon" based on how similar it is to LOTR, Star Wars and the Dragon Riders of Pern series. for someone not familiar w/ these stories, the story can be seen as original. there are, sadly, lots of LOTR knockoffs out there. I did like many characters in the stories, like Solebaum, Angela, and Saphira. I wish we had seen Galbatorix already, though, seems like a lot of build up for nothing. Paolini can get pretty long winded and uses "purple" prose a bit too much, but I didn't find the book to be horribly written. IMO, it's better than Twilight! "Eldest" is worse b/c a lot of the junk in the middle just wasn't needed (the whole training session should have been cut down in half for example). I haven't read "Brisingr" yet.

my major gripe w/ Paolini and "Eragon" is that, when people point out the similarities between his book and other popular works, his major fans just brush it off as "ah well, there are no original story ideas anymore", or "all fantasy is a knockoff of LOTR", or, the one that pisses me off the most, "well he was just 15 when he wrote the story". 1) yes, there are plenty of original story ideas left in the world, otherwise, the publishing world would be screwed! while the majority of stories follow a basic formula, that formula can be used to create original work. 2) there's plenty of good fantasy out there that bear little resemblance to LOTR. lots of fantasy books out there that use classic elves, as opposed to the statuesque Tolkien elves (think house elves from Harry Potter for example). hell, there's a whole genre of urban fantasy, steampunk, etc, that bear no resemblance to Tolkien at all. 3) I hate the idea that, just b/c he was a teen, it's ok to excuse his mistakes. people marvel at the fact he graduated from high school at 16 and got a book published, but neglect to remember/realize that the kid was home schooled and his parents had ties in the publishing industry. he's had more breaks than the average teen writer, or even the average writer in general. but it sold books to market him as a 16 year old "wunderkind"

I didn't hate "Eragon" and will keep w/ the series and even recommend it to people I know (and people I know won't do any heavy comparisons to other works). not my favorite fantasy book ever, but I've read far, far worse! my main gripes are w/ the author and his fanatical fans, not w/ the story (I absolutely feel that Paolini, should he actually take some advice, can become a much better storyteller and hopefully, "Brisingr" is much improved over "Eldest"). the movie was horrific though!

[leangk]

theres huge critisism about the 'true names". which is exctly the same to another book, ill look it up. also the classical fair, good elves is the same. as well as grumpy stout dwarves. besides the obvious stealing of names, some other things are the same too. his uncle is killed forcing him to go on a journey to fight the emporer (gabatorix).

besides this the writing was terrible. and he wasnt actually 15, he began writing it at fifteen, and it wasnt published and done till he was 17 or 18 when it was finally done. The cahracter development was probably the worst ive seen in a long time. i didnt see him "slowely grow". i saw him go from camp to camp, and watch paolini struggle to show his character getting "stronger" in a very poor and obvious way

[movingtohouston]

I enjoyed the first two books. Great literature they're not but they were ok summer reading material. I am now reading the third but I have to say its not holding my interest as much as the first two did. In fact I have had the book for like three weeks and I am barely a third of the way through it. Kind of disappointing.

[miguel's mom]

Now that makes me curious!
The bf of my cousin enjoyed the books a lot and I will have to look into them to understand if they really are that bad.

Let's see.

But you shouldn't get worked up about that so much. It's just a book and opinion always differ, so why are you so angry???