Amph ~The Inheritance Cycle, by Christopher Paolini~ Discussing its literary merits

I have to admit that I utterly detest Eragon -- not just because of its likeness to Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and many other fantasy books and movies, but mostly because of the writing style. Last year, my ISU (Independant Study Unit) presentation was basically why I don't like Eragon.

I'm also not a fan of Paolini. Arrogant people annoy me -- especially those who are convinced that this book they've been working on is the greatest thing in the world and the absolutely best book ever -- and this thing with his newsletter and writing with a quill just... agh. There comes a time when you just have to say enough is enough.

And that was pretty out of the blue for me because this is pretty much my first time on this board.

 

I saw Paolini speak at Comic Con in 2006, and he said that writing by hand actually makes him write faster because it's easier to fight the impulse to re-write everything as he goes along. (He also said that his laptop exploded one day while he was writing by hand, so maybe he's afraid of the computer now? ) I write as a hobby, and I can understand his reasoning, but I don't see why he'd use an ink-dip pen. I imagine the slowness of it would outweigh any gain of not fiddling with every other sentence. I agree with rebel_cheese, though, perhaps the pen helps him to get into the world he's writing about.

 

I've read the first two books and I enjoyed them. No, they don't have kind of originality that Lord of the Rings has, but they draw me in and they have well described action sequences. Overall, they are pretty entertaining books.

 

I personally prefer computers, because typing is faster for me (too much practise in fanfic ) and because it has spell-check and I can make edits. However, I understand people who prefer pen/pencil and paper.

I don't understand the quill thing at all. It just makes him sound weird, and it probably takes a lot longer.

 

I've done snippets of writing by hand, and let me tell you, for me, the amount of time it takes to write one sentence is agonizing when you just know you can write it in about seven seconds on Word.

I also usually go over the document multiple times and refine it continously. It usually takes a couple of days after the chapter, paper, whatever, can be declared 'done'.

I do understand writing by hand, though. You have to be much more careful with your words and grammar, because one mistake and there goes the whole page (if it's a big story error you can lose whole chapters or worse). This can force you to become better just because the margin of error is much smaller and the penalty is greater.

But I can't understand writing with a quill. It just makes the punishment too great, in my opinion, and it takes much, much longer to write a sentence than it is with a pencil or pen. In today's fast-moving world, you don't have the leisure to write with a quill. It's gotta be done with at least some speed.

If it makes the third book better, so be it. But considering the travesty that was Eldest in every category from inspiration to characterization to prose to everything else conceivable I really don't have my hopes up, especially when I glance at that excerpt from the Third Brick.

As for Paolini as a person, I think he's more naive than anything else. Though that can bred arrogance pretty well. I'm not even sure whether he even realizes he's making himself look like a self-absorbed braggart.

I'm stopping before this becomes one of my many, many rants about this trilogy of errors and everything and everyone associated with it.

 

Guess what? The "trilogy" has become a quartet.

http://alagaesia.com/kvetha/

Oy vey. Guess he couldn't wrap it up in one and needed another book to finish the story. I suppose that's why it's been taking him so long to finish Three?

 

Oy vey. I'm not sure there's really anything else to say to that.

 

Split into 4? Really seems like he's trying to draw this out now.

 

So it's a tetrology now, instead of a trilogy. I just hope that Paolini picks up the pace on his writing.

 

So what color will the fourth book be, then? Yellow? Black?

 

That just messes up the covers on the other two books now! Since they say Inheritance Trilogy, what are they going to do?

Reprint them?

 

ARRG!

That's one of my pet peeves! When book covers aren't consistent!

 

The best trilogies come in fours (cough*indianajones*cough).

 

What is weird for me is this: I really liked Eragon so I bought Eldest. Well when I first started to read Eldest I didn't make it past Ajihad's funeral. Something about that book just suxed!!! Well Eragon the movie came on HBO last month and I had never watched it, so I did that night. The movie was okay for me mostly because I really didn't remember that much of the book. So anyway the movie made me want to read Eldest, and this time around it has suxed at all. I am really enjoying it now and I am about 205 pgs in to it.

 

Eldest does take a while to get going, but once Eragon begins his tutelage under the Elves, the story gets really interesting.

 

So far Roran is reminding me of Perrin Lord of the two rivers from Jordan's saga

Is he on the road to becoming Lord of Carvahall?

 

I completely agree! And, I'm sorry to say, after reading Eragon, (is it just me, or does it sound like Aragorn from Lord of the Rings?) I concluded that there are tons of better writers out there who haven't had their works published. By the Force, I've read hundreds of fanfictions that I think are better written.

Personally, I can't see why Lucas or Christopher Tolkien aren't suing Paolini for plagiarism.

- Serena

 

IMO he took a LOT of stuff from LOTR; Eragon/Aragon is the least of it. And, again IMO, it's more than just the "most fantasies are like LOTR/there's a set formula."

 

I was extremely unimpressed by Eragon. It read poorly. It's flow was pedantic and presumptuous. The battles were poorly written and the mythology that Paolini attempted to construct failed to resonate. I thought it was by far the worst fantasy novel I have read.

 

Paolini didn't choose Eragon because of its similarity to Aragorn. Rather, he took the word "Dragon" and changed one letter.

 

Still, it sounds practically the same. And Arya the elf princess compared to Arwen the elf princess? The list goes on...

- Serena Kenobi

 

I didn't even think of Arwen.

I was thinking of Arya from Song of Fire and Ice.

 

I thought of Martin, too.

But it's the little things, too: the bad guys were someting close to Uru-Kai or whatever, there was a lake with a name similar to Isengard, etc.

 

I noticed the Uruk-hai similarities as well. Good grief, how bout on the front page you just slap up a sign that says: "ERAGON (only PARTIALLY) by Chris Paolini (with references and ideas from LORD OF THE RINGS)" ?

- Serena

 

Yay! I was so happy to come across this thread and read the news about the third and fourth book! I have been waiting anxiously for info on his third one. I liked Eragon and Eldest, despite what critics have to say. And I can't wait for the third to be released!