Eragon Inheritance Series (Author: Christopher Paolini): book review

When Eragon finds a mysterious stone in the mountains, he doesn’t realize the trouble that it is going to cause him. The stone happens to be a Dragon’s egg and much to Eragon’s surprise, the stone hatches and becomes a young dragon named Saphira – he is even more shocked when he finds out that he can communicate with Saphira!

Once Kill Galbatorix learns of the birth of the dragon, and of Eragan he sends his evil minions to Eragon’s village and destroy the farm that Eragon lives on. Fleeing for his life with Saphira, Eragon is initially mentored by Brom, an enigmatic man from the village, and eventually ends up searching for the mysterious Varden who seek to destroy Galbatorix…..

Eragon is a pretty standard fantasy series that has most of the major elements that similar fantasy novels have; dragons, magicians, evil enemies, love, war and danger. Christopher Paolini has drawn on influences such as Tolkien, Edison and Pullman and really doesn’t provide anything new to the fantasy genre.

Having said that, the series is well written, with some decent characters, a decent and exciting plot and some intriguing mysticism; Paolini does have the ability of creating a story that drags you in, and his strength is perhaps the way in which he has the ability to describe the scenery and really make it come to life.

The pace of the books is excellent and generally, aside from a few parts, the story moves along nicely and you don’t find yourself getting bored, or getting inundated with too much ‘facts’ that would otherwise drag the story down.

The lack of originality aside, this is one of the better fantasy series available, and perhaps is a great introduction to the genre for teens; it’s not as daunting to read as Lord of the Rings, but is very easy to read and finish. It’s not one of those books that you won’t be able to put down, but it is interesting and the plot is good enough to make you want to finish it. It should also be noted that some of the best fantasy series around today (Sword of Shannara, Wheel of Time series) are all heavily influenced by Tolkien, and have many similarities, so Paolini isn’t the first to do this.

Paolini is a very young author – he was only fifteen at the time he wrote the first book in the series, so there’s no doubt in my mind that as he grows older, and really begins to work on his craft, that we will begin to see originality in his writings – it’ll therefore be interesting to be able to step back and take a look at his earlier work and compare.

As I said, this series is a good series; some fantasy fans won’t enjoy it because they see it as a rip-off of Tolkien, but this shouldn’t detract readers from trying out the series.