Over the past few months, since I found Anti-Shurtugal and joined the ranks of people who despise Eragon, Eldest, and Christopher Paolini, I’ve noticed that a great many of the Antis do not seem to understand why people like Eragon, outside of the fairly typical reasons like “You’re stupid” or “You haven’t read enough good literature”. While these reasons generally play a part in why Fans like the Bricks, speaking as someone who did enjoy reading Eragon the first time (though not Eldest), I think that it goes slightly deeper.

 

Which is what I’m going to try to get into here. And to do that, I’m going to describe my reactions to my first reading of Eragon.

 

About a year ago. I’d arrived home and noticed my sister sitting on the couch reading a book with a dragon on the cover.

 

“What’s that?” I asked.

 

“A book,” she said. My sister enjoys being ‘cute’.

 

“What’s it called?”

 

“Eragon. It was written by a 15-year-old homeschooler.”

 

At this point my interest was piqued. I was a homeschooler, been homeschooled all my life, and I’d been writing since the age of eleven.

 

“What’s it about?”

 

“About a boy who finds a dragon egg and becomes a dragon rider.”

 

“Is it good?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Spurred on by this overwhelming endorsement, I decided to give it a try. But she returned her copy to the library and it was immediately checked out, so I didn’t get a chance to read it. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) my birthday was later that week and I received a gift card to a store – where I found a hardback copy of Eragon and Eldest packaged together at what seemed like a good price. I bought them, and began reading.

 

For me, at least, nearly every book I read falls into one of three categories. The first category is known as ‘good’: it’s well-written, with identifiable characters that I can empathize with, I generally want to reread it, I’ll usually discuss it with my friends, and it becomes a part of my consciousness. I feel like I know the world, and the characters are real people who have feelings and desires of their own. Tolkien, Lewis, Dahl, Arthur Ransome, Rowling, Adams, and many others fall into this category.

 

The next category is ‘entertaining’. This one was more all-encompassing: the only thing a book needed to be placed here was for me to have enjoyed reading it. These books tended to be more of the thriller/crime genre novels that you see in airports. Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, and (my favorite) Harlan Coben. Well-written, three-dimensional characters are few and far between, but they’re fun to read.

 

The final category was ‘crap’, and most books that I read that fell into this category were either required reading or a suggestion from someone that I didn’t know very well. Like my mom.

 

As I read Eragon, I could feel it slowly sliding into the Entertaining category. The awkward prose was irritating but not damning, the thesaurus abuse didn’t bother me too much (I’ve always had a pretty good vocabulary, and could usually figure out what CP was getting at). The book had other flaws, most of which would have bothered me more if I was reading critically. The overly purple prose wasn’t one of them – I just skipped over it. After the first badly phrased and poorly chosen metaphor, I wasn’t interested in reading any of the rest. In fact, the only really jarring things were the names he stole from Tolkien, which infuriated me. Later on in the book, as Eragon and Murtagh were journeying to the Varden, I would pause frequently to swear at the book in multiple languages.

 

Even though I could tell that the book wasn’t worthy to be in the ‘good’ category, I was still entertained while I was reading it. And the reason for this was simple: it was all so new, so fresh, so original.

 

No, I’m not being facetious. And this is the main point that I’m driving at here, so please do take careful note of what, exactly, I’m saying.

 

The fact that the plot itself was a blatant ripoff of Star Wars isn’t really that noticeable while you’re reading the book. When I look over the comparisons on Anti-Shurtugal, I was amazed that I hadn’t noticed the similarities between the two. But the packaging for the plot is so different that it’s difficult to notice how identical the two are. Until it’s been pointed out.

 

What really sold me on Eragon was the dragon-rider concept. The entire idea of having eggs that didn’t hatch until the dragons inside felt the presence of the rider was completely new, something I’d never encountered before. Likewise, the entire Ancient Language and magic system that Paolini had devised was elegant, a masterful stroke of genius. Or so I thought. The exact moment – and I do mean the exact moment – that I discovered that the dragon-rider concept was taken from The Dragonriders of Pern and the magic system was taken from Earthsea, I lost any and all respect I had for Paolini. Quite frankly, those were the only redeeming qualities that his book had, the only things that elevated it out of the ‘crap’ category and into ‘entertaining’.

 

And this, I think, is why a lot of people like Eragon.

 

Let’s face it. There is an appalling lack of good fantasy on the market. In fact, the overwhelming majority of fantasy books are either blatant Lord of the Rings ripoffs, are filled with Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus, or are simply bad. Good, well-written fantasy books are few and far between, and until recently (when I started searching the internet and relying on the opinions of people I trust), outside of Tolkien and Lewis, there weren’t very many decent fantasy books I’d ever read. When I read Eragon, I’d never even heard of Anne McCaffrey or Ursula Le Guin.

 

So the problem, I think, is ignorance.

 

The average Eragon fan seems to be appallingly under-read. Chances are, they’ve read Harry Potter and seen The Lord of the Rings, and think that Eragon opens up exciting, unexplored ground in the fantasy genre. Under-read people also tend not to notice when characters are walking Mary-Sues, and if they haven’t read any decent literature, they aren’t aware of just how bad Paolini’s prose is.

 

So, if I may be permitted to insert a small moral into this essay – if you simply cannot understand why someone would enjoy reading Eragon – it’s probably not their fault. They simply haven’t been exposed to enough good literature. So pat them on the back. Say “You enjoyed Eragon? Would you be interested in reading some more good fantasy books?” Then hand them a list of decent authors and encourage them to read it. With any luck, they’ll reread Eragon a few years down the road, realize just how bad it is, and promptly wedge their books down the sink destruction unit. And even if they don’t, you’ll have hopefully succeeded in gathering a few more fans for an author who actually deserves it.

 

On a final note – Eldest is on an entirely different level than Eragon. I hated Eldest – and I read it before I found Anti-Shurtugal and began hating Paolini. But Eldest, I think, is something that probably deserves its own article, which may or may not be written, depending on what kind of reaction I get from this.