Alas, Alagaesia! I did love thee, once . . .

~~~~ Melancholy

Hahaha. So I was perusing amazon.com for all things Eragon. Chanda and I went to see the movie last night and while it did have it's low points it also had some very high ones and I think I did like it overall. Anywhoo, I figured I better get around to reading the Eldest book. Even before I buy the paperback edition in march. So I requested it from the library, then I went to check out some reviews. This evaluation isn't the most positive but I thought it was really funny. Potentially it wasn't suppose to be funny but I got a laugh and I thought I'd share. It does make me a little worried to read the second book of the Inheritence trilogy but it won't stop me yet!

"Eldest" is the second book of the "Inheritance" series, and is a sequel to "Eragon". In "Eragon," we meet the title character, a fifteen-year-old boy, being raised by his uncle in a rural area (but his name isn't "Luke"). Eragon happens to find a dragon's egg, and a beautiful, blue dragon hatches, and chooses him as her Rider (but this is not Pern). The egg had been magically hidden by a beautiful Elven princess, Arya (not Arwen), just before the servants of the evil king Galbatorix (not Sauron) catch her and imprison her. Eragon does his best to care for the young dragon, but the king's men come and burn down his home, and kill his uncle (whose name isn't "Owen"). Eragon leaves his home village, to draw the king's men away, with an old story-teller, Brom (not "Obi-Wan") who is really a dragon Rider in retirement (and never was a Jedi Knight). Eragon makes many friends, and ends up living in a stronghold of those who oppose the Empire, er, I mean the King.Now, on to "Eldest," which starts off right after the huge battle that ended at the end of "Eragon," and during which Eragon defeated the evil Shade, but was also wounded most grievously. Eragon is recovering, and the Varden (think "rebel fleet" without spaceships) are trying to regroup, but one last attack by the Urgals (think Uruk'Hai, but bigger) leaves the king of the Varden dead. His daughter, who is named "Nasuada" instead of "Leia", takes command, Eragon tries to form alliances with all the factions, and then sets off to finish his training as a Dragonrider, with the elves. He is accompanied by Arwen and Gimli -- no! wait a minute! -- by Arya and Orik the dwarf. They travel through the dwarf kingdom, Eragon finds allies and enemies, they cross the desert, they enter Du Weldevarden (the great forest where the elves, led by Queen Islanzadi, instead of Galadriel, live), to meet his trainer/teacher. Yada yada yada, blah, blah, blah. There was more, but nothing interesting, or anything even equally uninteresting, but only more uninteresting. Really. Christopher Paolini's first book, "Eragon," was highly derivative and unoriginal, but I still liked it. I especially liked the one original character, the werecat Solembum. In "Eldest," there is no originality, and there is very little action. As soon as I saw the book, I knew I was in trouble (or it was), as it is twice as big as its predecessor. "Eldest" is bloated, inflated, and laden with endless descriptions of characters, characters' dress, facial gestures, buildings, languages, customs, rituals, history, traditions, and other minutiae. Nothing happens. Also, someone must have suggested to Mr. Paolini that he should beef up his vocabulary. His response appears to have been to ingest a thesaurus whole and, like some nauseated seagull, regurgitate indigestible words in a rather random fashion. I'm not done! The characters have almost all been flattened by steamrollers, leaving totally one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs of archetypes and stock fantasy-epic-story generics. Only Roran, Eragon's love-struck but heroic cousin, comes off as a real person. No one else is likable, realistic, or interesting. Well, now I might be done. I sold my copies of "Eragon" and "Eldest," with the money going to charity. In this way, those books will accomplish some good for someone. I hope that Eragon, Saphira the dragon, and their friends can go on without me. If they can't, too bad.