Eragon, the king of overrated stories.

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

I know that site, but it currently says....

Forbidden

 

You don't have permission to access /pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InheritanceCycle on this server.

So yeah.

[Mugen Kagemaru (Main)]

IDK why you're locked out. Sorry.

[Guest Random Dude]

A reason I think Elva might get (insert name of green dragon here) is because she is already marked by a dragon. Roran if anything would become the king of Alagaesia since he can convince people on a massive scale with his speeches, no doubt he would make a good king. On top of that he is a descendant of the original royal family so he should become the new king.

[Mr.WHAM]

Hmm interesting concept

 

3 reps if your right

 

anyhow Brisingr is beter than Eldest and Eragon is pretty sad as in depressing

[Shradow]

I don't think it's overrated at all. It's an awesome series, for me it's my favorite, tied with Artemis Fowl.

 

Crystal Alien, if you think the movie was good, when you read the books, you'll s*** bricks when you realize how awesome the books are compared to it.

[DARKPLANT RISING]

You probably need an active imagination and love for fantasy stuff to fully enjoy this sort of book.

 

I like fantasy. I only read fantasy. My favorite is Bartimaeus.

 

But oh well, maybe it's just my way of thinking. It depends on the person.

[Mugen Kagemaru (Main)]

Whoa, now, how did this happen?

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

If it's over-rated, it's awesome. From A Certain Point Of View.

[Guest Supreme Gamesmaster]

Harry Potter was genius and not really overrated at all -- I liked it a lot in spite of its horrible lack of continuity, which is ordinarily enough to turn me off a story alone.

 

Eragon... is not that good. But at the same time it's not that bad. Its heinous unoriginality turned me off it completely, but its writing was passable and the first book was pretty good on the whole.

 

Eldest is horrible, though. And don't even get me started on the movie.

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

...Eldest is not horrible, in my opinion. But I agree with you on the movie.

[Guest Supreme Gamesmaster]

I don't really think it can qualify as overrated, though. Far more people I know hate it too much than like it too much. :/

[Wrathos]

Lost its appeal to me when I realized I was reading Star Wars in a fantasy setting.

[DARKPLANT RISING]

Harry Potter was genius and not really overrated at all -- I liked it a lot in spite of its horrible lack of continuity, which is ordinarily enough to turn me off a story alone.

That horrible lack of continuity is the reason I hate it.

[Hydra of Ages]

There are few (published, at least) books I would call 'horrible'. Even Twilight, in my opinion, is merely bad, rather than an horrendous.

On a whole, the Inheritance Sequence is horrendous.

 

Before you ask, yes, I have read the entire series thusfar. I own all of the books, just so I can look up how not to write my fantasy novels. I've contemplated doing a chapter-by-chapter riffing of the series.

 

Eragon, the first book, is bad but not really offensive. The early bits are riddled with plotholes, cliches, and just plain bad writing, but its standard fair for an airport fantasy. I could see just about every twist before it came, but I guess originality is a bit much to ask from a book called 'Eragon', based off a kid and his dragon...

The later bits, on the other hand, shift between 'not all that bad', and 'painful to read'. Basically any bit with Murtagh were alright, since he interjects the only real sense of 'gray' into the black-white morality scheme- he comes across as the only character I actually cared to know more about. Otherwise, I had to sift through annoying purple prose, Eragon being boring, and an obligatory war scene with a deus ex machina resolution.

 

Eldest is when it really started to break down. Firstly, the entire thing feels ridiculously underpolished- it almost seems like a first draft at times, minus the spelling errors.

Secondly, its here where Eragon becomes less 'bland' and more 'unlikable'. Paolini seemed to try as hard as possible to make his elves the embodiment of why everyone in the world hates stereotypical elves, and does it with a straight face. To make up for the fact there is approximately zero action happening around the main character, we instead have a B-plot focusing around the essentially pointless exploits of his older brother, whom is a slightly better protagonist than the previous one.

The "twist" in this book is that the blatantly-evil allied characters are, indeed, evil, and the only main character that wasn't portrayed as amazingly heroic switched sides... and Eragon's father is essentially the Darth Vader of this universe. Which he angsts over for about five minutes, before abruptly getting over it and removing any sort of point that plot point had.

 

The last book thusfar, however, is by far the worst. Brisingr is what I call 'all of the stuff Paolini's editor forced him to remove from the final book'. Eragon makes the distinct transformation from 'unlikable' to 'complete a******', the previous B-plot protagonist retains relevance for about the first ten minutes and after that point, seems to exist just to add padding to a book made up almost entirely of padding. Eragon then learns of the the villain's evil plan (essentially making the point of the book to provide exposition for the next book) and finds out that his father actually WASN'T Darth Vader, thus opening another barrel of plotholes and proving that yes, everything in this world is black and white. He then gets a sword, and the mentor character dies.

...That's quite literally all that happens. The sum total of everything that happened in the book could easily be compressed to a three-sentence summery, and if we're talking novel-wise, about three or four chapters. It's almost entirely padding, padding, and more padding, sandwiched between pointless B-plots and poorly-thought out background information.

 

Before I finish this off, I just want to mention two things- Arya and Eragon's relationship is possibly the most painful romance I've read since Bella and Edward, and Paolini's languages are actually just poorly-written variants of actual languages, which makes it annoying when he seems to boast that he's created entire fantasy languages. He did not.

 

Tolkien took the time and effort to design entirely new languages for his fantasy races. Paolini stole existing ones and removed the difficult grammar rules and the like to get his. That wouldn't bother me if he bothered to admit it, which he does not.

 

...So in essence, yes, I believe Eragon is overrated. As in, it having any positive rating at all is overrated for it.

 

All my opinion of course, but I feel I can back it up well enough for it to be notable.

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

Paolin was fifteen when he made Eragon. What did you expect?

[Hydra of Ages]

Paolin was fifteen when he made Eragon. What did you expect?

 

The fact that he was fifteen doesn't change the fact it's a horrible novel.

 

If this was an assignment in grade school I'd give him props, but this a professionally produced novel, and as such, should be held to the same standard as everything else.

 

Also, he obviously hasn't gotten any better since then, looking at Eldest and Brisingr.

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

Maybe so, but every story is overrated for a reason. Some people think everyone hates Twilight, but they never use their brains to find out how Twilight became so famous and popular, in the positive way.

[Hydra of Ages]

I know exactly why Twilight became so popular. It's an escapist story that allows the reader, typically a woman, to imagine themselves in a scenario were multiple fantastic creatures are obsessed without them having to do anything in particular themselves to warrant such obsession. Since the lead has such little personality and only has slight flaws, it lets basically anyone who reads replace her with themselves in their fantasies. Since they see themselves -as- Bella, they don't care about personality flaws in the other characters and feel that the romance is intense and real, even if it isn't. People who read the books are rarely heavy fantasy readers in the first place either, so they don't notice the issues with the prose or the pacing.

 

Also, its about vampires. Which allowed them to capitalize on practically every type of subculture ever.

 

Eragon got popular for a similar reason, though obviously to a lesser extent and to a smaller crowd.

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

True enough. The Twilight movies are a lot better than the Eragon one. I mean, come on. Rotten Tomato's overall review of Eclipse is 'a second sequel that actually works', and they don't say that to just anybody. They said it to Toy Story 3 as well, but yeah.

[Shalltear Bloodfallen]

True enough. The Twilight movies are a lot better than the Eragon one. I mean, come on. Rotten Tomato's overall review of Eclipse is 'a second sequel that actually works', and they don't say that to just anybody. They said it to Toy Story 3 as well, but yeah.

 

To be honest, I think the only movie that is worse than the Eragon movie is Dragonball Evolution

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

The Last Airbender was worse than Dragonball Evolution, the reviewers say.

 

If I see a a movie like Dragonball Evolution, I treat it as if it was original, and not a Dragonball Z adaption.

[Hydra of Ages]

Evolution was far more riffable than Airbender. Now mind you, Airbender was pretty riffable, and it'll probably be better when it comes on DVD, but I still say Evolution edges it out a little.

 

Mind you, this is Riff Factor, not actual quality. Both of them are horrible abominations of cinema I can't really give a rating.

[Guest Supreme Gamesmaster]

Forgive me if I'm interrupting something, but... isn't this the Literature section? We should probably be back on topic nao.

 

OT:

Bob: Eragon is overrated and suxorz.

Alice: It doesn't suxorz that badly.

Bob: Yes it does.

Alice: Oh.

Charlie: Also I don't know anyone who likes it.

Bob: I do though.

Charlie: Oh.

 

GOGOGOGOGO

[Guest Merciful Idiot]

I love it. I didn't know Alice knew me. I know Clarisse but....

[DARKPLANT RISING]

Paolin was fifteen when he made Eragon. What did you expect?

Not much.

Then again, he's a writer. Writers don't care about age.