NovelCritic

With the movie coming out in a few weeks, I feel it is a good time to review the book Eragon, which was written by Christopher Paolini.

Without giving too much away for those of you haven’t read it, the title character Eragon is a young boy growing up in a small village near a range of mountains with treacherous passes. On one of his adventures in these mountain passes, Eragon recovers a dragon egg which was left behind under mysterious circumstances.

The Dragon hatches, and Eragon begins to care for it in secret.

Powerful forces, both good and evil, learn of the secret soon enough, and thus begin the adventures of Eragon and his dragon.

I only really have two problems with Eragon.

The first is that most of the first book isn’t all that original. If you have read the Dragonriders of Pern or any of the other many books that have been written with people raising and/or riding dragons, you know what I’m talking about. He does a good job by the end of the book of moving away from some of the other Dragonriding novels, but the first half of his book is very similar.

The second problem that I have with Eragon is that it gets pretty slow at times. Most of you who have muddled through some of the very slow parts of the Lord of the Rings will probably understand the best. I have a few friends who couldn’t finish it, and that’s really too bad. It’s possible that some of the things to which Paolini tries to give extra time have some importance down the road, but I think he could have made some of the slower parts more interesting, or at least drag a little less.

Where Paolini really excels are in two areas: his character development and his climax.His character development is superb. You really find yourself cheering for the good characters and loathing the evil characters, and you have no trouble believing why the various people act the way they do. By the end of the novel, I was drawn in so much that I could almost see everything through the eyes of Eragon.

And I cannot heap on enough praise for the final battle sequence. I have often read books that tell a good story only to have the ending fall short. Eragon does not have that problem. The climax of Eragon is masterfully told on every level. I have only read a handful of books that have an ending that draws you in as much as this one. It is truly one of the greatest final conflicts that I have ever read in an epic fantasy novel.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS