Book Overview #13: Eragon

So I finished the first Eragon, the book with the ugly dragon on the cover. Everybody was calling it a masterpiece a decade ago, simply for being written by a 14 year old. Hm, what does that remind me of? (Kawahara Reki, duh) Just like Kawahara wrote fan fiction after playing a few videogames, Paolini did the same after watching the Star Wars movies. What, you don’t believe me? Let me give you the summary and tell me what it reminds you of.

There is an empire, ruled by a man who betrayed and killed all the dragon riders, an order of knights who kept peace in the world for countless years.

The story begins with the bad guys, commanded by an evil cloaked man, attacking a party of good guys and abducting their leader.

Our protagonist is an adopted teenager living in a small village with his uncle.

He finds an item that reveals great information to him.

The bad guys are looking for that item, attack his house and kill his uncle in the process, forcing him to leave with an old mentor.

The mentor gives him a rider’s blade, and teaches him about the ways of the old order.

Then a fortune teller reveals he is the chosen one, has special powers nobody else possesses and is destined to save the world.

Then his mentor dies valiantly in battle, leaving him alone to take his own path.

Then he accidentally meets up with someone who is rogue-like and is willing to do evil acts.

Then they go to the rebel base where they are attacked by evil imperial forces.

And the book ends with the protagonist using his mystical powers to save the day with a single shot that instantly defeats an overwhelming army.

I know that both stories are just following the formula of the Hero’s Journey, but this is ridiculously similar and it’s nowhere near as fun. The plot is slow as a snail, and 90% of everything we learn about the characters or the world, is revealed by the protagonist sitting on a table and asking short questions that are followed by 50 pages of a guy having a monologue about stuff we should be seeing instead of told. It was terrible in Sword Art Online, it’s terrible here as well.

It’s as if the protagonist is in an RPG, and is asking an NPC about the lore of the world. It’s fine if it’s optional and you can skip it in a game, but in book format this is unacceptable. I was bored out of my mind, waiting for something to happen.

I keep hearing people complaining about Tolkien spending a lot of time in descriptions, but at least those descriptions were narrated based on what the characters were seeing. I could visualize it because it was in front of them. It wasn’t about sitting on a table and talking for hours about stuff happening out of screen.

It was boring, derivative, slow, and predictable. I am not even the only one who believes that. I made a topic or reddit where almost everybody agreed with me. These books are bad. They lowered the bar of what counts as quality writing and saturated the market with copycat trash.