Eragon/Eldest Poll

[burgs]

On Amazon, it's interesting to note that most negative reviews are noted as "helpful", and most positive reviews are noted as "not helpful". Even though the book has a respectable 3.5 star rating, if the helpful/not helpful "votes" were taken into account, I think the books would fair poorly.

[Ainulindale]

I can't comment on 'Eldest' but there is no way anyone could call 'Eragon' original, and while I find it hard to believe anyone above the age of 6 could find it 'good', the opinions of others have perplexed me in the past.

[Warmark]

I've read Eldest, its light, fluffy and not excellent but it was a preety decent read with a couple of nice elements.

[burgs]

Reading Eragon was murder for the first 100 pages or so, then I became interested in the story (still thought the writing was awful), but was ultimately *extremely* disappointed.

Eldest was worse. I can't believe this kid is making money rewriting LOTR and Star Wars.

He has characters named Morgothar (god of fire) and Elessari. We all know who Morgoth and Ellessar are. Even his character's names are rip offs.

In the final battle of Eragon, a dwarf was "hewing" off the heads of those orc like creatures; I don't recall their name.

[burgs]

Well, only seven votes. Certainly not the most popular poll of all time.

In a way, that's good.

Honestly, no insult intended, but I just don't understand the "positive" vote. It's crap. There isn't a single original idea in the story, and the writing is positively abominable. Most of us here could write better than that - we just won't allow ourselves to write something not worthy of being considred amongst the "top ten" high/heroic fantasies of all time, and we have enough reverence for LOTR and Star Wars not to copy their plots.

Personly, if my own book doesn't fall into a decent number (say, top 100), i'd rather it not be published. (Unless I make obscene amounts of mone)y. So i'm not as altruistic as SRD. Obscene amounts of money would allow me to experiment, and if I suck with my experiments, then so it is,and i won't make a penny.

[Variol Farseer]

The constant threat of destitution has forced me to abandon that kind of scruple, burgs. If someone wants to pay me for my work, I'll sell it, even if it's crap. But not even for money would I sell something as derivative and ill-crafted as Eragon. It would only jeopardize my ability to sell anything else under the same name.

[Kenaustin Ardenol]

I enjoyed Eragon, haven't read Eldest so can't comment, but I found Eragon as original as any other fantasy novel, for a piece of work written by a sixteen year old it can be considered quite good. But then I never let critisizm get in the way of a good read.

[The Leper Fairy]

I ranted about how much I hated Eragon in the Library awhile ago. I don't think that the fact that "he's just a kid" is really any excuse for that book. *shrug*

He's from Montana so when I read it I thought it was just a local thing to support him and whatnot... I didn't realize it was so huge.

[Romeo]

I was scanning through IMDB.com's list of movies to be released in 2006, and I believe I remember seeing Eregon listed toward the end of the year.

[duchess of malfi]

I have a bad cold right now and am having trouble concentrating. So I thought I would read something light and fluffy. A friend lent me Eragon last week, so I thought I would try it this weekend.

I thought that there was some pretty serious suckage throughout.

Poorly written, horribly edited - I thought it was like reading a vanity project from a not particularly talented middle schooler without an original thought in his head who has been spending a lot of time reading authors like Tolkien and McCaffrey.

Then I got to the end and found out that it was originally published as a vanity project by a teenager...

And he thanks a long list of people for editing it, and for making him rewrite parts of it.

Good God - how bad was this thing originally?????

I honestly do not know what to say to the friend who lent it to me and who loved the bloody thing when I return it to her.

[duchess of malfi]

I should say, in fairness to the author, that the extreme opinion expressed in the post above is probably rather heavily colored by a nasty sinus headache.

So anyone reading it should definately take it with a grain (or a big handful) of salt.

[MsMary]

I like the expression "pretty serious suckage." .

[burgs]

It's interesting, what you say about not knowing what do you say to a friend. My cousin's daughter was reading it, and I was horrified. I gently asked if they had read LOTR, and was surprised to hear that yes, they had, and loved it. (They are teenagers.) I asked if they had seen Star Wars. They had, and loved it.

And yet they loved this drivel and didn't see the blatant plagiarism.

Then again, I liked The Sword of Shannara the first time I read it, when I was 14. When looking back as an adult it sickened me.

[Holsety]

The constant threat of destitution has forced me to abandon that kind of scruple, burgs. If someone wants to pay me for my work, I'll sell it, even if it's crap. But not even for money would I sell something as derivative and ill-crafted as Eragon. It would only jeopardize my ability to sell anything else under the same name.

Sorry, but I think you're wrong here . I betcha everything Paolini puts out will sell well from now on!

It's interesting, what you say about not knowing what do you say to a friend. My cousin's daughter was reading it, and I was horrified. I gently asked if they had read LOTR, and was surprised to hear that yes, they had, and loved it. (They are teenagers.) I asked if they had seen Star Wars. They had, and loved it.

And yet they loved this drivel and didn't see the blatant plagiarism.

Then again, I liked The Sword of Shannara the first time I read it, when I was 14. When looking back as an adult it sickened me.

Same thing here. I loved the Shannara series, though I was something like 7-10 when reading it. Around 12-14 I started realizing it wasn't as good.

I think one's taste in fantasy/sci-fi develops in years of experience, not so much in age. Once you start reading things that are original and different, you start realizing the difference between the originals, like Tolkein, and the take-offs. That being said, Sword of Shannara can be considered a copy of LotR, but it's not total crap. Eragon...is, even without LotR and other series already existing I'd say it's no good. I mean, I actually feel the Potter books are ok for kids, at least, but Eragon is just a bad book on its own.

[matrixman]

I hadn't paid attention to this thread before because I had never heard of this series. Then yesterday I saw a huge billboard-sized poster on the side of the local multiplex advertising the movie "Eragon: Part One of the Inheritance Trilogy."

Judging by everyone's comments about Eragon, I guess I haven't missed anything terribly important.

I wonder how this teenaged writer will view these books of his later on in life. If these tomes are making him rich (and if not, the movie deal surely will) then I imagine he'll look back on all this rather fondly. Hard to hate something that made you filthy rich, eh?

No one likes a spoiled brat, though. How did he manage to get such apparently awful writing published? He must've already had a respectable online fan base or something for publishers to have taken notice. It makes me think about how hard it was for SRD to finally get the Chronicles published, the emotional toll it took on him. This kid is having it easy.

[Holsety]

I hadn't paid attention to this thread before because I had never heard of this series. Then yesterday I saw a huge billboard-sized poster on the side of the local multiplex advertising the movie "Eragon: Part One of the Inheritance Trilogy."

Judging by everyone's comments about Eragon, I guess I haven't missed anything terribly important.

I wonder how this teenaged writer will view these books of his later on in life. If these tomes are making him rich (and if not, the movie deal surely will) then I imagine he'll look back on all this rather fondly. Hard to hate something that made you filthy rich, eh?

No one likes a spoiled brat, though. How did he manage to get such apparently awful writing published? He must've already had a respectable online fan base or something for publishers to have taken notice. It makes me think about how hard it was for SRD to finally get the Chronicles published, the emotional toll it took on him. This kid is having it easy.

Actually he makes for an interesting story as an author. One of the better articles on him and his stuff is at www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/ ... 2003269547. I totally disagree with the excuse that "fantasy is a genre with firmly rooted conventions." IMO lesser fantasy is, the best authors are original and write works good outside their own genre. And I fail to see how it can compare him to a "tweedy professor" since there are a number of times when he misuses words, painfully IIRC. All that being said the image I've gotten of Paolini makes it hard for me to really dislike him...but that doesn't help me accept him as a good author.

AFAIK his success has been overrated. I've heard it stated that "Eragon sold more copies than the entire Harry Potter series combined" (books 1-5). Sorry, not buying it. There's a hell of a lot more publicity about HP, book parties in nearly every bookstore every time a Potter book comes out...if Eragon sold more it'd be garnering even more attention than it does. Actually, while I don't much like HP I at least consider it a fair work, and it pains me to see a mostly worthless work like Eragon rate near it.

In his defense, it's not much worse than most poorly written derivative fantasy series.

[burgs]

Anyone that states or believes that Eragon has outsold all Harry Potter books combined (1-5) needs to be institionalized.

Eragon sold 2.5 million copies.

The first printing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was 10.5 million copies.

I ain't no good wit figurs.....

[matrixman]

2.5 million?! That's still a crapload of books. Meanwhile, I just read in the GI thread that, according to SRD, Runes has sold between 60,000-70,000 hardcover copies in the UK and US. Sigh.

So a not-particularly-talented teen amateur hack outsells a mature, master writer. Something is not right with this picture. Oh the injustice...

[burgs]

It annoys me to no end.

[duchess of malfi]

Well, I tried to respond to this once, and my reply was eaten by one of those demonic internal Watch errors.

I will now try again.

Since I do not have a terrible sinus headache today, I can be a bit less biased.

And one of the biggest problems I had with Eragon was the editing (and lack thereof).

I have to ask the question:

Do the large publishing houses really edit books anymore??? Or do they just run the manuscripts through a word processor to catch spelling errors and them send them out to be printed?

The last few bestsellers I have read have had lots of errors in them. Grammar errors (and those have to be pretty bad for me to catch them), one word (spelled correctly mind you ) used in the place of a similar word which would have made a lot more sense in the context, words used that just do not work (misuse of larger words seems to be particularly common, why don't editors catch it when an author uses a word he or she just doesn't know the definition???), and in one especially annoying example - one author seemed to have cut and pasted entire scenes from some of her previous books and plopped them down into her latest release - and it wasn't for a flashback device, either.

What is going on? Are books not being truly edited to save money???