Eragon   by Christopher Paolini

Mid Feb, 2007.     On loan from my colleague, Kerstin.

Young Reader book... fantasy... Dragons... yep. When a friend of mine saw that I was about to start reading this, he asked if I liked children's books so much. I didn't know at the time that it was a children's book, and was quite taken aback when he said it's something like Harry Potter. (Harry Potter was not an interesting read.)

Well now. Somewhat young, (16 year old,) simple farm boy finds the last dragon egg in the world, must become the new beginning of the league of Dragon Riders, is the only hope of the world, is chased and in danger, must mature, and become a young man, feels the first intimations of love, finds himself up against mysteries, and I'm sure, will eventually find out that he is in fact the son of one of the earlier Dragon-Riders. And all of that in tiny little six to eight page chapters. It's a very classic fantasy story and fantasy setting.

And the author... could have done a better job. My biggest criticism is... holes in the plot. Or inconsistencies. No, it's not either of those... I noticed about five glaring... authoring failures. One example: The Dragon, after it hatches has no knowledge of Humans, and in many places is shown as being young, naive, and, well, fresh to the world, (as a new creature, with no experience would be.) And yet often she is a repository of knowledge, thinks on human terms, much faster than humans. -opposed to other times when she asks "Why were you angry? He only called you a bad name." -without the slightest understanding of human psychology. I know that I still haven't explained the problem. I give one more little try?

HERE is an example: (I thought of one! Hooray for me!) An army of evil, humanoid monsters, around a hundred of them, come to a city. Then kill ever single person there, theoreticly going into every house, to get to the last child hiding in a cupboard, baby in a crib, and woman in the cellar. They then take every single body, and put them in the central square of the village. They then get themselves organised, and leave the city. By the time the protagonist gets to the city, the monsters are now where to be seen: they have left long enough ago that no where, (On the flat plain!) are they or dust from their marching visible. -And yet, a dozen chimneys have smoke coming from them. And that's what's not realistic. In the time it would take to enter the city, find and kill EVERY being, pile them up, and then leave, and get a good distance away, the fires would have burned out. (Unless some of the people who were hiding decided to put extra wood on the fire and make tea while waiting to be discovered by the monsters.) Is this called a "Plot Oversight?" Anyhow, there were a handful of them throughout the text.

Something I didn't care for was the... cramming of action into such short chapters. I expect it was done this way so that young readers (er, I think the author thought of them as SLOW readers,) would see things happening, and be able to read a whole chapter at one time! -all eight pages of it. (I'm too mean: randomly opening now, I found one 13 pages long.) But I just find that it's too sped up; ten pages for him to find out what a dragon rider is, 10 pages for him to travel to this new city, ten pages settle in there and meet someone interesting, ten pages to have an adventure there, ten pages to be attacked by the guards, ... and so on. It was like watching a contemporary Disney film, but not a well made one: which assumes that no one watching will have an attention span longer than two minutes. The author really could have drawn out parts of it a bit longer. (Robert Asprin's MYTH books and Lloyd Alexander's Prydian books might be a good standard to compare this against. -But I haven't read any of those for over a decade. Still, I have a feeling that they went deeper into... nuances. Deeper into detail. And deeper. Period.)

It was easy for me to forgive the endless coincidences in this book: coincidences are the stock and trade of Fantasy writers. After all the criticisms I've made, I must admit that the story is fine. Even good, -for what it is. It was not dull, (the chapters were too short to become dull,) and I read it all, to see what happens in the end. -And in the end, you find out that this seems to be the first in a trilogy. He has a fate, There are great evils in the land, and he decides that he will train to be a dragon-rider, -Following his destiny.

It's a book written for younger people, and the style of writing doesn't seem... mature as it could be. But in truth, if someone offers to lend me the next book, I would read it. I would quite willingly read it.

PS: Three hours after I wrote this, I took the book back to the friend that lent it to me, and she offered me the next book as well. So I'll be reading that soon. The other thing she said was that the author is (was,) only 18 years old. So I'm now quite ready to forgive the author for seeming like... writing was new to him. It seems that this is truly the case. I'm now curious whether or not his style will get much cleaner, and deeper, as he makes his way through the trilogy.

Eldest   by Christopher Paolini

End of Feb. 2007.     On loan from my colleague, Kerstin.

Well, my colleague had the second book of the trilogy as well, so I've read that now too. But I don't think I have as much to say about it as I did for the first book. I can start with how he's developed as a writer.

His chapters are getting better. They are not long, but they are much longer than before. There's also more continuity, (if that's the right word to use here;) Some ideas might be extended over two, or even three chapters, (as opposed to each chapter being rather self-contained.) It's a much rounder, and better form. I quite glad to see that he'd made that development.

The Plot Oversights, (if that IS the correct term,) are still there. This has, unfortunately not improved. There were, again, a number of places where I think, "No! It wouldn't be like that! It doesn't make sense." I don't know why the Copy Editors didn't ask those places to be changed. They are not glaringly bad, but they are less than... clean and perfect.

The Great Surprise, which is at the end of this book... was pretty obvious to me, after the first third of the first book. All in all, there was not very much... wondering about how things could turn out. (Though I thought the big big Battle at the end of this book would have to have a strange ending: With the Arch villain coming out, but neither defeating or being defeated by the hero, as that would end the Trilogy one book too soon.)

I was impressed with his Character Development of a secondary character; The simple farmers son, our hero's cousin, who's only ambition in life is to get over his father's death, have a small farm, and marry his sweetheart. This person's life is turned upside down, he finds himself an outlaw, and risks everything to go and join the rebels in the south. My point though, is that this change in mind wasn't done in a chapter, (or even two!) but extended over three quarters of the book. The author took at least ten chapters, in which his character gradually, continually, logically, changed from the Farmer's son, to the desperate outlaw, and leader of his people, (fleeing the unjust government.) Not even the development of the Protagonist was that well done, and showed that much skill from the author do convincingly have a character become something of a hero.

In all, it was much better to read than the first book. But I don't feel that it's quite up to the point where it's "One of the books I like." It's alright to pass the time, and I'll willingly read the last book, (when it comes out; It hasn't been completed by the author yet.) The only reason I'll be reading it though, instead of any other book, is because I'm curious to see if the author becomes still better, or if he's reached a plateau in his style.