Eragon wars. a book review of Eragon the book. Revamped.

By Robert w Kingett.

Now here's a book that will surely captivate your eye, heart, and a headache. The cover will be staring at you menacingly as you try to decide which book you should steal. Ah yes. The cover I do have to admit looks nice, with a blue backdrop covering the whole cover. A dragon is staring at us and the words Eragon are below all this blue in white letters. If the cover is the only thing that captivates you’re eye and the only thing you like about the book, then this is the book for you! The inside however, just like my imagination, is an ancient curse…

I first have to say something about the title. Eragon, which is such a unique title I was shocked at how original it actually is. Take Eragon, and replace the E with a D, and what do you get? Yep. Dragon! I just have to applaud our young author for thinking of something so original!

The author is just a 19 year old kid. I can't help but praise this young soul for spending so much time dribbling out some piece of stolen work. I guess home schooling didn’t teach him the ponderous, yet dire consequences of stealing someone's plot line. I'm not sure if there is a law to this or not, but I do know that this is just wrong. Funny yes, but also wrong. He didn’t plagiarize, but come on, now. Doesn’t this plot seem a little like the plot to star wars?

Eragon, a young farm boy, also known as Luke Skywalker, finds a marvelous blue stone or a little white droid in a mystical mountain place, or at a droid selling area... Before he can trade it for food, or work in the similar plot, to get his family through the hard winter, also known as harvest. It hatches a beautiful sapphire-blue dragon, or in the similar plot, produces a beautiful blue hologram of a woman. when his family is killed by the marauding Ra'zac, or the sand creatures, he discovers that he is the last of the Dragon Riders, also known as Jedi knights, fated to play a decisive part in the coming war (…do I honestly have to tell you what the connection is here?) between the human but hidden Varden, or the rebels, and the diabolical Shades and their Neanderthal Urgalls, also known as the empire with their storm troopers. all pitted against each other and the evil King Galbatorix. Also known as darth Vader. Eragon and his dragon, or light saber, set out to find their role, growing in magic power. Or can be described as the force, and understanding of the complex political situation, also can be referred to as the Jedi code, as they endure perilous travels and sudden battles, dire wounds, capture and escape just like in the fourth star wars movie called a new hope.

With that obviously stolen plot in mind, I started to look at this book with even more of a critical eye, not stolen I might add. The synopsis on the back of the book, which is supposed to draw you into getting the book, made me want to light it on fire then use it to invent a new fire cracker. Dull and not posing any suspense at all, the synopsis briefly explains the plot. Underneath all the fancy elegant words I could hear it crying one simple message to me. Don’t read this book. The summery even seemed bored. However, I believe in giving any piece of work a chance, even stolen work. So despite my headache after reading the back of the book, I took 6 aspirin tablets and decided to give it a whorl, and take it with me into hyperspace, and let me just say I was shocked.

When I say I was shocked, I mean that in a bad way. The prologue of the story opens up in Eragon’s home town of Alagaësiawhichis in fact where most of the story takes place. It's obvious that the writer wanted to create a big bang right from the beginning, because right away we are thrust into a battle where a lone girl is fleeing through dark trees to escape the bad guys. As she does, she hides an egg, or a lightsabor in the strangely similar plot… that makes my eyes bulge, and my headache subside some. A book that starts out with action surely has no where to go but up right? Well, that's what I get for assuming things, because I was dead wrong.

After I was spoiled by that awesome prologue the first chapters made that whole thing seem like a tease. I don’t know about you, but I never actually had an inert object tease me before, let alone lie to me and trick me. This book did just that. After the prologue chapter one pourd out some random horrible mindless dribble that he calls sentences. It was almost as if the book was saying “I'm going to mess with your head! Ha. I'm going to do Jedi mind tricks on you! I don’t like it when things lie to me. I read on however, knowing that all beginning chapters of every book are a bit droll, but I soon found the book repeating what it was talking about in chapter one, on chapter 8 as if I were retarded, and it knew I was. I could have sworn as I was planning ways to make the book more interesting, like reading it upside down, or skipping pages, or reading it out of order. The dragon on the front was looking directly at me and grinning from ear to ear, knowing what it was doing to my sanity. It was almost as if chapter one could have been completely skipped and you could still understand the story. Time and time again characters explain things in later chapters that should have been explained early on in the story so more focus can be drawn to the plot. The plot is stripped away and tossed aside to make room for explanations of things, people, events, objects, and so many other things I forgot what they were. Pretty much all we learn, and need to know in the first chapter containing more than 11 pages, is that Eragon is a farm boy who hunts, and what his town is like. Why couldn't he just do that with one paragraph?

Things don’t really start to kick off until chapter 14 or so. The beginning parts of the book are completely drawn out and don’t impel the story at all, like the bonding with the dragon. It shouldn’t take 6 chapters to develop a bond that we pretty much understood when it was first introduced. We sort of got that there would be a connection when they first met. Other people liked the fact he keeps dwelling on their bond. However, this irritated me so much I almost had my mystical dragon who I named dragon set fire to this tragedy.

The style of the writing is very descriptive and dull. It reminds me of some old documentary I would see on TV or my grandmother talking. It does however; paint a clear image in your head of what things, people, places, and trees look like. Yes, he even describes trees in great detail. I don't know about you, but that in my opinion takes talent. I didn’t know there were 12 different ways you could describe the trunk of the tree. That is not how I like my books. While others may be thrilled by that prospect, I am not.

The writing almost gave off a kind of air that he was stalling for time until he could think of something that can happen next. I judged from this book that our young author would not be a good political speaker. When he runs out of things to say, then he will start describing what someone's hair looks like until something pops in his brain, and he continues with the speech. There is a smidgen of mystery in these pages, but getting to that part is like eating animals. Very hard to do, and you wonder why people even bother trying.

It definitely has the fantasy element in there, but that takes away from itself by having so many things you have to remember. There is a glossary in the back of the book which helps out a lot. However, when I was reading the book I found myself flipping back to the glossary more than actually reading the story. There are over 13 different people, places, spells, terms, horses, blades of grass, and types of trees, and lakes to remember. When you sit down and read a book don’t you want to enjoy it, not have it feel like you just picked up a fictional history text book? Unlike the plot to star wars, this plot is not easy to follow, which is a shame because it has such a cliché outcome, and falling action that many readers will, and do like. In my many years of reading, this is the first time I ever had to look in the glossary just to try and remember who the good guys and the bad guys were.

As I said the beginning is dull. It's kind of like arguing with grass. You could read the prologue, and skip to chapter 16, and it would still be talking about something mentioned in chapter two. Aside from that it’s also very predictable. With ease you can figure out when Eragon is supposed to get a surprise attack, or have something bad happen to him. You could even predict the ending, and get it right. At least star wars had a twist in its woven web of plot points.

It's not until the very end when you will get interested in what's going on. My aspirin bottle was almost depleted as I struggled through this book, getting more frustrated and angry and even bemused as I read on, I actually wanted to read my history book. The fantasy part is really shown in this tale as I mentioned before, but it's supposed to be a story, not an encyclopedia. Towards the end of the rising action, which takes chapters to get through, I finally had my breaking point. Sure, there were many others, like having to look at Wikipedia just to see if I was not mistaking the name of Eragon’s sword for a character, when I had to go back and forth and even ahead of where I was reading to figure out what they were talking about, but that was not the last breaking point I could take. When I had to look online at a map of his town just to try and figure out where some tree was, I knew the author had something against me, that his plan was to drive me eventually to insanity. He probably planned that on purpose, but hey, we will never know. I had just signed my own death letter by reading this book, and by that point I also had one other horror happen to me, I used up every aspirin tablet I had. I was doomed.

When the climax came I was astonished that I had not died yet. The climax and events after it are the real page turners that other people are talking about. Usually the climax is the best part, but in other books I read I wanted to read on until I got to the climax to see what was going to happen. This book tried to get me to read in reverse order. Read the climax first, then go back and look at the rising action. He must have been bored starting the book, so he must have tried to think of some clever way to make humans read out of order, which I almost did. You could even read the ending and still get the complete story, because like history, it repeats itself. Like history, it repeats itself.

Some readers may love this book, but I don’t. The writing style does not appeal to me, I didn’t get into the story, and when I have to look in the glossary, and online some place to remember just who in fact the bad guy is again, that kind of irks my tidy mind. This book shouldn’t be set carefully aside; it should be hurled deep into hyper space, or in front of the death stars main guns. There is a sequel to the book, but I shall use my Jedi mind tricks to be sure that eldest never comes into my hands. With weak story elements, lagging story telling, and character distinction issues, this book goes on the bottom of my recommend list. There are better books out there, but if you like hearing star wars all over again in a different binding, then this book may be for you. I however, give this book a one lone Jedi knight out of 5. Let’s hope when that the force grows stronger in the final book, he can go back and give this Palawan some lessons, because this one doesn’t even pass Jedi training. The force is not strong in this one.