Book Review: Eragon

This review contains no significant plot spoilers.

One of the reasons I do not read a lot of fantasy fiction is that it all is more or less alike. It generally falls in to one of three categories of broad plot arcs, all of which can be found in well-known movies:

• Category 1: Hero comes of age and learns how to be a man. He fights the bad guy and wins by dint of new-found knowledge and wisdom. Example: Star Wars
• Category 2: Hero must recover a dingus to become strong enough to defeat bad guy (sometimes outracing bad guy to dingus). He then fights and defeats bad guy with the help of the dingus. Example: Clash of the Titans
• Category 3: Hero must destroy dingus so bad guy is vulnerable. He then fights the bad guy, and destroys the dingus and/or the bad guy. Example: Lord of the Rings

A common variant to category 2 and 3 stories is that the bad guy gets the dingus but is destroyed by it – for example, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Often, one can insert the phrases “meets girl,” “loses girl,” and/or “wins girl back.” Sometimes the hero is a heroine requring transposition of “boy” where “girl” is otherwise used for romantic plot elements; sometimes the hero loses a preliminary fight in order to win a bigger fight later on. Sometimes the dingus isn’t an object but a person, perhaps the girl herself. There are sometimes “B” plots involving the dingus or other dinguses or secondary characters and their dinguses. (A secondary character coming of age is never a “B” plot.) But at the end of the day, it’s all pretty much about finding a way to fight the bad guy and win – no matter how you slice it, it’s still bologna.

At its best, fiction provides an insight not into the nature of magic and dragons and such, but instead provides a look into the human character. Star Wars resonates on an emotional level with its powerful images as a backdrop to a coming-of-age story. Lord of the Rings provides an epic backdrop to a series of powerful statements about the flow of history and the difference that determined and morally upright individuals can make amidst the forces of powerful evil. The fantasy setting becomes secondary to the human story that is being told – one does not care about dragons and wizards and elves or spaceships and laser beams and technical do-dads.

At its worst, fantasy fiction becomes enmired in its setting and the trappings of a fantasic universe to no narrative purpose. The story exists simply to be a literary landscape in which the events are secondary to the setting in which the events take place. The story winds up being more or less about nothing important and is really just a way for the author to ruminate about his or her thoughts about a world different from our own. This sort of “elf opera” is the literary equivalent of an “eye candy” movie. (An interesting exception from this rule occurs in the world of “hard” science fiction, where the story explores some interesting facets of an unusual technical possibility; alas, deep explorations of scientific flights of fancy are only rarely translated into good movies.)

Somewhere in the middle are found books like Eragon. Eragon is the first of three novels in a series called “The Inheritance Trilogy.” It is pretty clearly an example of category 1 fantasy fiction, and it frequently comes perilously close to crossing the line from story-driven fiction to setting-driven fiction. The setting is richly-imagined and detailed. It is filled with tongue-twisting place and character names which get mentioned more and more frequently as one progresses through the book. The reader is initiated into the ways of this fantasy world, the ways of magic and swordplay, and the ways of dragons and other fantastic creatures, along with the eponymous hero. And although the author clearly enjoys inventing obscure-sounding, strangely-accented words, the hero bears a name that is only one letter removed from the word “dragon,” which is odd considering that dragons figure so prominently in the story.

The novel is essentially an extended chase sequence. The action sequences are well-written but use longer prose than the short, simple sentence structure I would have expected for combat scenes; the more contemplative, coming-of-age elements are not so well-fleshed out. To some extent, this can be forgiven in that the book was begun when its author, Christopher Paolini, was only fifteen years old. An author that young is busy coming of age himself and lacks some of the perspective necessary to adequately describe what is going on in a coming-of-age story. Structurally, the book is set up in a series of short chapters with cliffhanger endings, which is a good device for keeping reader interest up and tension high.

The story is absorbing enough to make the novel a good piece of escapist fiction. Eragon is not a great piece of writing – it does not provide any real insight into the human condition. In his defense, the author does not really aspire to that level – Paolini is only trying to tell an engaging (and marketable) story. He does so serviceably well, and I would not be averse to reading his second and possibly third books in the series.

Good sales of this originally self-published book have not hurt his prospects; the second book, Eldest, is to be released this August. Apparently the movie rights have already been optioned to Fox, which is rumored to have sunk $100 million into making the film in Hungary this year. While not the biggest fantasy story being sold today, I expect that the movie will turn out to be profitable despite its high price tag. Unlike that of the book’s many fans, it will not be a high priority for me to follow up with the story, but since The Wife really liked this book, I expect I will wind up reading the sequels anyway -- and maybe the movie will be really good.