With the release of Brisinger (2008) last week, I have been asked what I think about Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle. I only read Eragon (2003), the first book and haven't had much desire to read any of the others.While I was impressed that Christopher was 15 or so when he wrote it, the story just didn't intrigue me. I would suppose if I were younger and had not read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings or Anne McCafferty's Dragonriders of Pern novels, or seen Star Wars (1997), I would have found the characters, world, and ideas interesting. Since I have though, there weren't any surprises or real originality so I didn't continue with the series.
Besides the derivative nature of story, I have one other complaint. Keep in mind that I have read, seen and enjoyed plenty of books and movies that push credibility and I believe I give authors quite a bit of slack - but I still expect some internal logic. I bought the magic, history, etc. in Eragon except that Eragon himself was able to not only learn to write his own language in the space a a few weeks, but also other languages. I have studied languages and I just could not accept that a person could become proficient in either in such a short time. Perhaps I missed the explanation, or it was cleared up in the second book.
It is heartening that the Inheritance Cycle is getting so much attention with midnight releases and all. I wish Christopher great success. Maybe someday I will catch up on the series (I do understand his writing has improved and I would hope the story has started to incorporate more original ideas - even Terry Brook's The Sword of Shannara (1977) is a retelling of The Lord of the Rings and look were it has taken him), but for now there are just too many older stories I haven't read and new, original ones coming out.
