Eragon

Christopher Paolini

The Inheritance Cycle #1

Summary:

When poor farm boy Eragon stumbles upon a strange blue stone in the forest, his journey into a world of magic and adventure has only just begun. For the stone is in fact a dragon’s egg from which will hatch his beloved blue dragon Saphira. Overnight his simple world is changed.

Eragon and Saphira must take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders to rescue an Empire that is ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds. There are bloody battles ahead and lessons to learn, and it is only Eragon who can restore goodness…

Plot:

This was a great story. It was well paced, without long descriptions of the setting, and with just enough action and mystery to keep me interested. Paolini’s way of writing has just the right mixture of old and modern English, making it easy to read, but keeping the medieval feel of the book alive. The story itself is fascinating, with secrets, adventure, a long journey, war and the sparkle of magic (I love the word sparkle J). Although I’m not a huge fan of fighting scenes, or war etc this book had just enough. It wasn’t fighting from beginning to end, but had enough action keep it interesting.

Characters:

I loved the characters in this book. And I loved their names. The dragon, Saphira, is a wonderful, witty character, keeping Eragon (Eragon..Dragon, am I the only one who picked up on this?), who is prone to lose sight of reality, in check. You have bad guys, and good guys, and guys you can’t figure out. You have humans, and dragons, and elves and dwarves. Some of the characters are all out evil, which I always appreciate in a fantasy novel.  The hero, Eragon, develops throughout the book, and goes from a normal young boy to a strong warrior. This book has a lot of characters, but they are all different enough to not get confusing.

Who should read this?

13+, because of violence. Also this is a long book, and if you don’t like spending a lot of time on one novel you should probably skip this one. I think fans of the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien would enjoy this, or those who tried to read them, but found it too hard. This book is written more simply, I think and is easier to read. Any fan of fantasy books should read this.

My rating:

I loved this book, and I can’t wait to read the others in this series (which I will review if I get around to it!). Also, when I read that Paolini started writing this book when he was just  15 I was like…whaaat??? I’m sorry, that wasn’t a very grammatically correct sentence, but I just had to say it like that. So my rating for this book is: 5/5

Quote:
Saphira: “If anything happens, I'm going to pin you to my back and never let you off."
Eragon: "I love you too."

Read my reviews for 'Eldest' and 'Brisingr' here, as well as the movie 'Eragon'.