Eragon
by Christopher Paolini: Boy finds dragon egg, dragon hatches, boy goes on grand adventure. Actually, boy spends most of book fleeing for his life, when suddenly a random Big Battle is tacked on the end to add some sort of climax, with a convenient deus ex machina to tie things up and make way for the sequel. It’s not that it’s poorly written, just utterly generic. Now, if I didn’t like fantasy stereotypes I wouldn’t read fantasy, but I was even able to pick out specific universes from which much of the stuff was cribbed (McCaffrey’s Pern, Tolkien’s Middle Earth, etc.). All in all, pretty forgettable. A young newcomer to fantasy might enjoy this, but a fans of the genre will find nothing new here.
Also posted on BookCrossing.
I have this book sitting on my bookshelf. The children have no interest in reading it. I thought that I should crack it open and have a go. After reading your post, I think I will put off reading it for a bit longer as I have a list of books that I really want to read.
Thanks for the review and the heads up that this is fairly a generic read.