I’m going to echo a bunch of other reviewers and say that Eragon is okay, but I liked it better when it was Star Wars. There are a plethora of reviews and wikis out there that painstakingly lay out the similarities between Eragon and Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and David Eddings’s The Belgariad (OMG, the silver mark on the palm. How did I not notice that the first time I read this? How?!), so I’m not going to exhaust myself by reiterating oft-repeated points (some of which I covered in my progress updates, which I’ll link below). Basically, Eragon is Star Wars in LotR cosplay at a Belgariad-themed LARP event.

To say this book is derivative would be putting it mildly. And you can argue that Star Wars is derivative in its own right, but it’s not lift-an-entire-scene-including-dialogue-from-another-source derivative. This isn’t a standard take on the classic Hero’s Journey. This is a clumsily constructed Frankenstein’s Monster of several existing heroes’ journeys by someone who may or may not have read any Joseph Campbell and just thought Star Wars would’ve been cooler with dragons.

And who can blame him? I mean, dragons are awesome.

There is something to be said for derivative novels. If nothing else, they’re easily accessible to a wide audience and can act as a gateway to better, more original stories. So if this book got any kids into reading fantasy, then it’s got at least one redeeming feature. But I can’t help feeling that this is a mediocre work of fiction made exceptional (and I use the term loosely) only by the age of the author.

It’s a pity about that movie adaptation, though. Yikes, that was awful.

Reading Progress Updates (contains spoilers):

1. Page 10

2. Page 102

3. Page 260

4. Page 278

5. Page 353

6. Page 466

7. Page 484

Angela winked at Eragon mischievously, then dashed away, whirling her staff-sword like a dervish.

Er . . . Does Paolini know what a dervish is?

Paolini went off-script again after the rescue. If you ever though it was silly of the Rebel Alliance to give an untested farm boy one of their precious X-wings and chuck him straight into a zero-G dogfight on his word that he can fly speeders in atmosphere and shoot defenseless rodents, you might approve Paolini’s decision to have the Rebels Varden test Luke Aragorn Eragon before deciding what to do with him. And I might have approved it too if it hadn’t brought the pace to a screeching halt for a good 85 pages. All that momentum built up by having the Uruk-hai Urgal Kulls chase the heroes all the way to the very gates of the Rebel Varden base hit a stone wall and died from blunt force trauma. I’m 31 pages from the last page of a 497-page novel and the climax hasn’t started yet.

Luke Aragorn Eragon and Han Murtagh have rescued Princess Leia Arwen Arya from the Galactic Empire Empire and are racing toward the secret Rebel Varden base so Leia Arwen Arya can recover from her torture at the hands of Emperor Palpatine’s King Galbatorix’s henchmen and deliver information crucial to the survival of the Rebel Alliance Varden. The prison escape naturally involved someone’s body disappearing and leaving behind a pile of clothes, though no Alagaesian trash compactors were featured. Alas.

The timeline is a little hard to pin down, but I think the events of the book have so far spanned several months, and the majority of that time was spent traveling with the characters. I’m starting to wish their horses had hyperdrives. Speaking of their horses, has anyone else noticed how horses in fantasy novels are basically Energizer bunnies and only have regular horsey limitations when it suits the plot? These two horses Luke Aragorn Eragon and Han Murtagh are riding would totally be dead by now. They rode them into the ground many leagues ago and now they have ghost horses, and that’s why these noble beasts don’t need to stop and graze and sleep at reasonable intervals.

Actually . . . This is could be happening in all fantasy books everywhere. A ghost horse epidemic and I never suspected. Hmm. I’m going to have to research this more before moving ahead with my plans to form Pedants for the Ethical Treatment of Horses in Fantasy Novels.

I have a migraine and backlit screens are torture, but I had to record this for posterity.

Han Murtagh the self-serving rogue has entered the story. He has no love for the Galactic Empire Empire, but he wants nothing to do with the Rebel Alliance Varden either. Obi-Wan Brom just sacrificed himself to save Luke Aragorn Eragon, who in turn suddenly decided this hermit he hardly knew was like a father to him, and now he’s grieving more than he did for the man who actually raised him. And then we get this little gem:

A tear slid down his listless face and evaporated in the sunlight, leaving a salty crust on his skin.

Listless. Face. The prose is killing me. Also, I can’t tell if it’s super arid where he is or if he just sat there for ages while his single tear artfully evaporated.