The Inheritance Cycle // Eragon
 

Hey, is anyone else excited for the last book? (:

Personally, I love and hate these books at the same time.
They are unoriginal and childish at some parts, especially the first book, but I just REALLY want to know the end of the story.
(And I love Murtagh. Even more so thanks to Garrett Hedlund - but that movie... oh my god, don't mention it.)

I think it's great that an author of just 15 years managed to get his book published and turned it into this nice series.

I actually liked the first book. I tried reading the second and everything happened so quickly at the beginning I said screw this and stopped reading. It felt too rushed to me.

And he got it published because of his parents. Not because it is awesome or whatever. It's turned into a big profitable series, but it didn't get published because they thought it would be. Just saying.

I know that, but he would not be INTERNATIONALLY published because of that (:
Especially not if the first book's sales had sucked.

You should continue reading the series, then. I felt that the first book was just Star Wars' storyline/characters mixed with Lord of the Rings' setting. So yeah.
After the first book, the story became more original, though.

Maybe that's why I liked it then. I loved LOTR and Star Wars.

But I can't get past page 50 of the second book. So to tell you the truth, I have no interest in the series. Though...at the same time I like and hate the method of doing magic in the Eragon world.

But my main problem with him getting publish? I could write awesome poems or an awesome novel and it would never get published. He could crank out an utter piece of shit and it would get published. Maybe not on a mass scale, but it would have a better chance of getting published than my awesome stuff.

Well, in the world of literature it is the same like EVERYWHERE. You either have to be lucky, know the right people or have money.
If you have neither, then you're screwed. *shrug* That's how it works, I don't mind.

Why do you hate the way magic is done? I thought it was a clever way.
And at least SOMEWHAT original, even if the idea was "stolen" as well.

Yeah, I love Star Wars and LotR as well.
That's why I disliked that part. I don't enjoy my favourite moves (SW) being copied. XD

I mind since I want to be published but never will be. So there goes one dream down the tube pretty much.

Because that limits the magic even more. One can have the ability but never be able to use it because you must use its true name like in A wizard of Earthsea. Except in that one, they had people who could teach you.

I don't think it really copied star wars IMO because....I don't see light sabers or jedi mind tricks....or anything that's in there except (and I haven't read far) that that dude is Murtagh's father (and probably Eragon's too)

If you give up on a dream so easily, of course you won't make it.
Work hard, earn some money and publish it yourself. Publishing a book is NOT more expensive than a car xP

Okay, copied:

Eragon = Luke
A farm boy who grew up at his uncle's place somewhere in the middle of nowehere because his parents have "mysteriously" disappeared/are dead.

Brom = Obi-Wan
A teacher / friend of the farm boy's father who randomly appears, saves the farm boy from the Empire and takes him to more or less save the world.

Magic = The Force
Okay, that is easy.

Dragon = Lightsaber
The new "weapon".

Murtagh = Leia (lol)
The person who meets the farm boy and helps him on his quest to fight the Empire. Lost sibling with an evil father.

The Empire = The Empire (duh xD)

Galbatorix = The Emperor

Morzan = Darth Vader / Anakin
The guy who became a traitor and killed the other members of his order.

The Varden = The Rebel Alliance
The guys who fight the Empire and want the farm boy to help them.

Hmmmm... no, nothing copied except for everything. XD
Star Wars is sci-fi / FANTASY, so you just replace the Galaxy with Alagaesia and there you go.

Dragons and lightsabers do not equal the same thing. They're too different to compare. Lightsabers, when damaged, can be repaired. A dragon? Not always. They can die along with the people that ride them. Magic does not equal the force since with the force you don't need to know a name to do things with it. You can just do it cause you have the force.

From what I've seen you can't compare Morzan to Anakin. (I might be getting people confused) Is it him or someone else who's dragon got killed/died and they stole? whatever? another? Because if it was him....you can't compare either. Anakin was an idiot who believed the Emperor Palpatine (I can't remember his Chancellor's name)when he should've realized that the path he was going down would cause the things in the dream considering the dream did not change at all as he went down the path. But he's a rash young adult and so didn't see it. Losing a dragon that has been connected to you for YEARS mentally....never been alone thanks to that...and suddenly it has gone all silent in your head? That could easily drive a man insane I believe. (Or was is Galbatorix that that happened to? I can't remember now...It has been so long .-.)

The way you're looking at it....everything is copying everything else. Nothing is going to completely original...unless you can come up with a new gender which still wouldn't be original since everything we come up with is somehow based on real life in one way or another. So, it's all been done before.

I never liked first book. xD I didn't think of Star Wars (for the most part), but it copied Lord of the Rings to nearly place descriptions and conversations in few places and some character feels, too. xD
The next books never got translated here, so I have not had the chance to read them.
They are... okay, but nothing spectacular.

I don't know if I am excited or worried. I have the first three book and the first two weren't that bad but near the end of the third...well I hope it doesn't end up like the 50 cent sci-fi novels in used book stores. Not that some of those aren't good I just have higher hopes for this series. (although I have to agree the movie is just...-shudder-it should even be affiliated)

Yokuutsu, I think the point you may be trying to touch on involves the mytho-archetypes of the hero story that are ingrained in the human consciousness (as Campbell explores in "The Hero With a Thousand Faces". You can see similar stories arising in different areas of the world, at different time periods with no cultural diffusion between them. Hence them being part of what it is to be human on some fundamental level -- or that's what he says, at least.)

But anyway, the point is more that George Lucas (allegedly) read Campbell and incorporated those resonate archetypes into Star Wars, while Paolini (though he may or may not have read Campbell) followed in the generation after those norms were established as the framework for the fantasy genre, and hence ended up borrowing from authors who'd borrowed from Campbell, which makes his work seem rather derivative.

Granted, I've never read the books, but I've read summaries of them and followed several debates similar to this one, not to mention seeing that... thing they inflicted upon cinema audiences. So I'm not really going to weigh in on any specific details, or even take one side or the other, but I will just note that in the current literary zeitgeist of the fantasy genre, it's pretty much impossible to be original if your story resembles the Hero's Journey at all. But, on the other hand, originality isn't completely necessary in this case, since people have been enjoying such stories since the dawn of language itself, and they continue to resonate with something fundamental in our world-views.

I will also note that I do not believe, at all, that any 15-year-old (that was how old he was when he wrote it, yes?) is capable of writing a moving, original, masterfully-crafted piece of fiction. There simply isn't enough life-experience available at that point to have all the requisite skills and the insight into the craft of storytelling necessary to achieve something like that. Not to mention, a teenager is more than likely not going to be able to self-edit to the degree required to produce competent prose. It's a skill that takes years of honing, and it's rather simple logic that an older writer will be better at it than a younger writer.

Of course, that brings up the fact that Paolini is in his mid-20s now, yes? My personal theory would be that the effect of his success has insulated him from criticism or any drive to improve his craft, keeping him in a stasis where that teenage boy's skill at writing has not significantly evolved, even with a decade or more's opportunity to do so. This is something you see with a lot of authors as they become successful -- their fame reduces the publisher's interest in providing them editors since they know the books will sell anyway, so the authors' works have a tendency to actually deteriorate with time. See: Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, and many others.

Also, I will add my personal belief that monetary success is wholly divorced from the literary value of a work. The vast, vast majority of the book-buying public is not going into a book to examine it critically for its merits as a work of literature. Of course, you could argue that a "good story" or even the concept of "good" is a paradigm dependent on the perspective of a cultural majority, but I think I've said enough for the moment in this miniature essay. :p

You know that I was talking about the IDEAS?
The magic and dragon DOES equal the lightsaber and Force. It serves the same purposes in both stories, even if it WORKS different. =/

Morzan lost his dragon = Anakin went "insane" because he couldn't live with the thought of losing Padmé. The personality of both characters is different, but the STORY idea is the same.

No, of course there can be "original" stuff.
If he copied one thing from Star Wars, his story would be original.
But you see, for his first book he copied about EVERYTHING, changed some details about how things work and the setting and that's it.

And if you still don't see it: Christopher Paolini himself said that this is true and he took it from Star Wars. (;
So you can't really argue against it anyways, even if you don't (want to) see it.
This is not me trying to convince you - since it's a fact - I just wanted to let you know since you love Star Wars. XD

Edit:
You may find this interesting:
http://telpenori.blogspot.com/2007/0...iarism_28.html

Especially the part about magic copied from Earthsea, names copied from LotR (some even 100%) and storyline copied from Star Wars (granted, the author of the article is a bit more accurate than my comparisons were, so you have even more "proof").

Now go ahead and try telling me that Paolini did NOT copy. (:

I think it would be better serves to say the dragon riders are the equivalent of the jedi, rather than compare weapons.

Anyway, haven't read Eragon myself. I tried a few random pages of the book and found it either dreadfully tedious, (really, I do'nt care about how corridors the party apparently walks down or turns they apparently take while going through this fortress blindfolded) or boggy and some portion to me made no sense. None of the exerpts I've read make me inclined to read it either.

I agree with comments that I read on the site "Anti-Shirtergal" or whatever it's called, can't recall the second part fully, that compares Paolini's to fan fiction written by other fifteen year olds. I've read that too and they are about the same in terms of quality.

My sister has read the series so far and she can always be counted on for an opinoin very different than mine and she said that sheh enjoyed the series and when I asked about the writing she said that she felt they were as good as any other fantasy book out there, though nothing extraordinarily special.

Suzerain's right in that monetary success does not relate to literary value. Too many thing can affect the sales of a book other than quality of writing and I think that Eragon's fame is more a result of the hype and promotion around it than the sole merit of the writing. It's hard for a book to get noticed for it's writing unless the right people read it and that's more luck of the draw.

The magic system is borrowed from LeGuin, I noticed that from reading A Wizard of Earthsea after having watched the Eragon movie, and Paolini does list LeGuin as an inspiration of his along with Lucas and Tolkein. I would say though that he borrows a bit too much from his "inspirations," patterns of mythos aside. It's one thing to follow a general line of heroic growth, it's another for the details to be so similar.

Oh, please NEVER think the movie comes even close to the books.
Even the die-hard Eragon fanboys and fangirls loathe that movie. xD

Also: Even if you guys read Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr were better written.
The writing style in the first book was pretty bad, but in the others not so much.
But okay, I can only judge that to some extent because I read them in German, so maybe the translation did something to make it seem better in German than in English.

I love how you said COPIED shit could be original.

I have no reason to say anything more now.

Uhm, no? I said his book could still be original if he took only small parts, like ONE thing, not one hundred.
Maybe ideas, not details.
The order of the Dragon Riders being there to ensure the peace OR how magic works. (Because I think it's a great idea to use words as magic and it should be used more often than this wand-waving magic xD)

Taking basic ideas and turning them into your own stuff does not equal copying an entire existing movie, with all its details and characters.

You really don't want to understand this, do you. Did you even look at the article?

You said " I don't think he copied Star Wars" and now that you were proven wrong, you don't want to see it? Oh come on, don't be childish.
I enjoyed the books and I am excited for the last one. So I'm not here to BASH the series. I don't see your problem.

Donning my purple hat for a second: please keep it civil and avoid personal attacks. Thank you.

On the subject: there's a difference between being inspired by a work or idea, and incorporating it wholesale into your own work with the serial numbers filed off.

And, unfortunately (I suppose), having an original fantasy setting only gets you to 0 on the scale of quality fantasy. It's assumed that a good fantasy book will be innovative and creative in its use of genre conventions. (And, of course, that goes for any genre) There's still the lion's share of the work to be done melding prose, plot, theme, pacing, characterization, dialogue, etc... to actually produce of a competently-written novel that tells a story worth reading.

For my own personal purposes, Eragon (and it's sequels) doesn't do that, from the few pages I've made myself look at. But, I admit to having very high standards, and I've dismissed other successful authors for the same reasons I dismissed Paolini's series. So, my own views on the subject aren't exactly representative.

I do wonder how the translation reads, since from I saw from the English text, the prose was over-written, dense, and seemingly out of control on the author's part -- which is rather typical of a writer of that age.

Also, I'm aware of the status of the movie, I was just relying on it to have some basic understanding of what this story is about -- I can do that, yes? Or is it truly that unfaithful to the book?

Well, the BASIC plotline was still in the movie. But major parts were changed to an extent that the whole story didn't make any sense anymore when compared to the book.
They could never turn the second book into a movie now because the first one changed so many things that they would have to remake it.

The German version reads very well, speech-wise. They probably adapted the translations so that the language would sound good and consistent, so I can only talk about the CONTENT, not really HOW it is told.
That probably makes the book better :D

Also: I didn't attack him/her personally, I just think it IS very childish and insulting to twist the words of someone so that you can disregard everything else they said and claim they said something entirely different and completely contrary to their actual view.

Well, I've forgotten as many of the details of the film as I could manage to, so I ought to be okay. :p

And that's interesting, It's entirely possible (even probable) that the translator was a better writer than Paolini. :p

Well, I have the third book in English, though.
Since I'm not a native speaker it is probably harder for me to distinguish "good" and "bad" literature just based on the writing style, unless it is extremely ridiculous. And I have definitely read worse stuff before but I'm still kinda thankful for my German translation. XD

Actually, you just reminded me of this -- command of the language is another thing that doesn't earn you any points as a writer, it just puts you at the baseline. If the actual text shows signs that the author doesn't fully understand the conventions of their own language (or even the definitions and connotations of the words they're using) then that severely tarnishes, if not outright obliterates, any other good qualities the story might possess on its own. A story has to be readable to be good -- if the reader gets thrown out of the narrative time and again because of mistakes or improperly-used words, there's no way they can enjoy the story, or even focus on it.

Also, I'm on the opposite spectrum. I'm an English major and a writer, myself, so I tend to obsess over things like sentence structure and word choice. I'd be hopeless at reading a text in another language, though. :p

I wish I was as good as that in English, haha :D
My dream is to be fluent in English one day but it's such a looong long way to go.
My posts must be horrible to read for you, then. xD 'm very sorry.

I've actually written a lot of short stories before and all this talk makes me wish even more that I could just translate them into English easily. Because publishing them is out of question and you only get some readers on the internet if you're writing in English.

Anyways, I'm not into Eragon for the brilliant use of the English language or the original storyline. I'm just into it because it's a kind of story that just leaves me curious as to how it will all end. I just really want to know what happens to all the characters. xD

Translations can make or break a novel I believe. It may be that the German translation of Eragon is better written than the English one written by Paolini himself. By virtue of the change in language things are likely to be different.

I'm in the same category as Suzerain is, English lit major and a writer, but you could say I'm in another room at times. I don't mind reading an unoriginal or poor story if the writing is good enough. It's not the story of Eragon that bothers me as much as the actual writing of the book. I'd love to try reading it in German but unfortunately the best I might be able to manage would be a few words here and there.

Your English is very good by the way. I wouldn't have guessed from your posts that you didn't normally speak the language. :)

Ha ha, thanks a lot! I try to learn as much as I can (:

It's very seldom that a translated version is better than its original, though.
But I am very happy that I CAN read/watch most original versions of the books and movies I like.
Maybe I will pick up an English version of the first two Eragon novels at a local bookstore. If books weren't bloody expensive here in Australia, I wouldn't mind spending a few dollars on them. But they are probably +20$ each. :<

Personally, I enjoy the books. The first was a bit painful to get through, but to date I have not regretted reading the series. Eldest was good, and Brisingr introduced a lot to be expanded upon in the final book Inheritance. And the movie....don't even get me started. They need to just remake the first and start from the beginning.

that would be nice, im just glad they didnt try to make a sequel. o.O itd be like the narnia movies remade i guess, though the old ones werent quite as terrible....i just read the climax of the last book, no comments for spoiler reasons, but im enjoying it :P

at the risk of bringing your wrath down on me- i always try to avoid internet conflicts because they're so damn unimportant, so please don't take this as offense, I'd like to point something out. the person you're quoting didn't say anything about the movies comparing to the books. you may not be reproaching them for this reason, and i might be looking at it the wrong way , but it doesn't look very nice.
come to that, i took a look at the article you suggested, and i do find it very interesting. some of the points the writer makes are things i have noticed as well, as I've read several of the books Paolini was inspired by
in my own opinion, paolini's works are tripe that you can enjoy if you're a young kid who likes to think yourself intelligent by reading a book that is so big it could be used as a door stop. the books are also something you can enjoy if you turn your brain off. to me, they are cheap entertainment (though not by the prices in stores) hiding behind the cover of a tolkien-esque style novel. I read them with half-interest, but have no desire to own them. to each his own.
they don't hold a lot of interest to me, but I'm not going to freak out if someone else likes them - it's an opinion, for the love of Mary, and you've a right to it.
Something interesting to me is that his parents owned the publishing company that produced his book. if he had gone through more editing and used a little more originality, his books might have been better.
My problem with his books is not so much that he obviously lifted scenes, ideas, names, and concepts straight out of other fictional works, but that he was so damn blatant about it. Writers re-invent the wheel all the time, but if they're good, they're subtle about it. Paolini pretty much threw down everything he liked that someone else did in a book and expected us to be impressed, and that's the part that I think is a little lame. :cool:

Scylla, you just (maybe unintentionally :p) raised an issue that's pretty central to the whole Paolinni discussion, for me. You described the work as "Tolkiene-sque" which, on the surface, it appears to be, but that's the extent of it, the veneer. And I get the feeling that all of Paolinni's "inspirations" were carried over in a similar fashion -- i.e. just the surface of what makes them what they are, the spectacle, leaving behind the deep thematic elements and such that actually make them good stories.

I believe read a quote from him stating that he'd studied Old Norse to write Eragon? I... have a feeling that his understanding of Old Norse didn't (and doesn't) quite compared to Tolkien's, and I think that's emblematic of his entire modus operandi.

Hey hey hey! that is an EXCELLENT way to put what I was trying to say. hats off to you, i suck at equivocating.
that is my big problem with eragon and the inheritance cycle - it's all fluff and no substance. i think it's cheap that he made no attempt to cover the fact that he plagiarized or 'borrowed' a lot of things from other existing works.
and he studied old Norse...? what.....? no. just no.
I read the books in english, though it's my third language, so maybe some things were lost/improved in translations of the book.
that's the final point of my argument against Paolini's books - he plagiarized GOOD THINGS but failed to keep what made them so excellent. Och, if you're going to steal someone else's work that was successful, keep the most successful parts.
he also seems arrogant, if any of his book reviews and interviews are anything to go by. I won't pass personal judgement until i actually meet him though. If I do. Like I'd ever want to.
I also think his books were sold largely on the premise of HEY LOOK A NOVEL BIG ENOUGH TO KILL SOMEONE WRITTEN BY A 15 YEAR OLD WOW!!! I know no one i knew in Ireland took the book very seriously when it came out.

Eragon has NEVER seemed "Tolkien-esque" to me, actually... The styles in which they are written are SO different. (Even if he stole names, that doesn't mean the style comes even close to LotR, whch it dosn't)

The last book was disappointing. Eh...



@Scylla
About that movie comment:
I said that because trying to judge a BOOK by a horrible horrible MOVIE adaption does not work and is an insult to the book in my opinion. I was just pointing out that the movie was nothing like the book because someone who has not read them would not know.
This has nothing to do with "not looking very nice", I posted that to make sure that it is clear that you know nothing about the books after watching that... thing.

I think "Tolkien-esque" was meant more in the presentation of the world it's set in, not in the actual writing. (I don't know if I'd really consider Tolkien a very good *writer* but that's not the topic at hand...) i.e. the standard fantasy tropes which all sort of hearken back to Tolkien's original impact on the genre, though, like I said above, I think it was more the case of him being "inspired" by people who were inspired by Tolkien.

And just to lay it to rest, I didn't have any problem with your comment about the film (even ignoring that it's three months old. :p) It seemed perfectly good-natured to me, not to mention that it was more or less agreeing with what I'd said about not bring the film into the discussion. :p

Ah, I was just trying ti make that clear for Scylla as it was not MEANT in any mean way and I didn't think it sounded rude or anything.

I enjoy Tolkien's writing quite a lot, personally, way more than Paolini's. But the target audience is so different anyway, Eragon in Tolkien's style would just be even more ridiculous. (Really, LotR is not a book that many 14-16 year olds enjoy reading, as far as I know)

Then I get what you mean, though.
I thought you were talking about the style, not the setting.
And to be honest, it is ALMOST impossible to write a fantasy novel that involves elves, dwarves, humans (and dragons) that does not adapt some of Tolkien's ideas. I have never read one in my life and I never thought it was a bad thing.
I don't know who was the first author to write about dwarves, elves, etc. in a way like Tolkien did, as I am not very familiar with older books. But elves and dwarves that are not like "Tolkien's" would feel pretty wrong to me.

I would love to read a fantasy novel that feels NOTHING like Tolkien's books do... one day. I have just never found one.

hok then that was just my incorrect interpretation. sorry about that.

I never even saw the movie but I heard awful things about it, even from people who like the books

Suzerain, I know what you meant - that's what I've been trying to say. Not even the style so much as all archetypal fantasy tropes and inspirations have been shoved into the book. I personally enjoyed tolkienn's books, but you're right that's not the question at hand.

I feel like his books are just too shallow-the bottom line is they have no substance for me. It's not that i only like tolkien's special brand of fantasy -i don't want to read the same things over and over again.

I also read some of the books paolini plagiarized from, and that just really killed it for me.

Scylla, if you wouldn't mind, do you think you could maybe do a little comparison between the elements in his story and the stories he "borrowed" them from? Doesn't have to be anything elaborate, but I, for one, would be interested to see the correlations. I know some of them, but I remember from looking into it a while ago that I haven't read quite a few of his "inspirational" texts.

If it's too much trouble, though, don't worry about it.

i'd be glad to, though I'm no where near as competent or eloquent as this person, who brings up most of the ones I think of. I've summarized them here, though, in case you don't want to go read it. (the link is one Kotetsu very kindly provided way back in the beginnings of the thread, and it's interesting to note that the author of this blog noticed a lot of the same plagiarisms I did) namely...
The Earthsea novels, which I've read, probably gave Paolini the idea for his systematic Magic in the Inheritance - the whole bit about not being able to lie, about true names virsus everyday names, and the names of objects (like 'brsingr' for fire) let you control the object. The 'true name' idea was also used by Raymond Feist and Jonathan Stroud for sentient beings, but the idea makes sense and is easily adapted or modified to fit the story in question, so it's not surprising that it shows up a lot.
Also, i've read the Ruby Knight by David Eddings, which I enjoyed. I've reread The Elenium series so much I probably know the books by heart. Imagine my surprise when I saw the bridge scene in Eragon, lifted straight from the Ruby Knight. In both scenes, a seedy stranger charges a toll to get across, during which one of the characters secretly cuts the man's purse and steals his money. The characters then cross the bridge and at the end hear a "howl of anguish" [these exact words are in both books] come from the other side. There are other passages and sentences similar to David Eddings's writing throughout the series, usually descriptions (that I've noticed).
Another series, the Belgariad, by David Eddings again, likely gave Paolini the idea for his dragon mark on his hand. (I have not read the Malloreon which comes after the Belgariad)
Then there's the blatant names which were either identical or incredibly similar to landmarks/other names in Tolkienn's books. The ones I noticed (marked in the blog) were Fornost, Aragorn, Elessar and Imiladris, though the blog notes more. Some, like Valinor, he didn't even bother to change. However i have read another book - i forget the name though if I remember I will tell you - used or 'edited' some LotR names too, including Gandalf and Mordor.
If you take a look at some of Raymond Feist's books - it's interesting to see other people have noted this too - the blood ritual the elves perform in Brisingr is almost verbetim from one of his books
I have not read the Anne McCaffery series, but it's been said that the telepathic link btween dragon and rider was originally her idea, though Bruce Colville also used it in one of his books too, so there you go.
There's the obvious star wars link, in regards to the "Eragon morzan's yer Da" and the "Luke I'm yer Da" not to mention the plotline, which continues from Eragon into Eldest. I think that as Eldest and Brisingr continue they get more original, but more boring. I barely remember Brisingr, i'll have to go through it again and see what he may have taken in there.
EDIT: let's also not forget that Paolini tried to create his own Elvish (and Dwarvish) language, both of which I'm not about to bother translating. However, that was one true 'inspiration' rather than direct plagiarism.
Also, apparently the Wheel of Time series have a lot of 'inspiration' for Paolini, but i've never read them so i wouldn't know. I need to, though. but that's unrelated
I'm not at my best declaiming crap in english, but I hope that quick(lol) summary helped a bit
in the end, I'm still not sure what Paolini wanted when he published this book series. I don't know why he thought it was a good idea to publish plagiarised material. I'm interested to see how the next book plays out though.

Well, huh. That's, um, wow. And I did read through that blog post, that was... enlightening.

I remember when I was 11 years old, I wrote a fantasy story. It came out sort of like that, with some very heavily "borrowed" elements, including names. But, hey, I was 11. Then I wrote another book when I was 17... still garbage, but I dare say it was more original than that. Didn't see that becoming an international best-seller, though... I like to think I've gotten to somewhere around "decent" nowadays, though I haven't actually finished a novel since that one.

Anyway, that list of names is kind of funny. For a lot of them, it almost looks like he thought "who even reads the appendices to LotR anyway? No one will notice if I steal some names from there." :p

About the mark on the hand, though, I think I'd more or less excuse that. Sure, it isn't terribly original, but from what was described there, it doesn't seem like a flagrant of a plagiarism as the others.

it kind of blows your mind, doesn't it? What offends me most is that no one BIG has said anything about it or called him out on it.
yeah the biggest problem is they READ like they were written by a fantasy-obsessed fifteen year old who assumed NO ONE would notice if he picked and chose from other works.

I don't think the talented fantasy authors out there think about Mr. Paolini very much. :p

Oh, I meant to mention before, the borrowing-names-from-Tolkien thing isn't exactly exclusive to poor Christopher here. I know R. A. Savlatore did it a fair bit in his Crimson Phantom novels, and even George R. R. freaking Martin has started doing it in his later book, which is *really* annoying.

On the other hand, Scott Bakker blatantly stole the Mines of Moria sequence for one of his latest books, but he made it so, so, so much more awesome than the original that it makes Tolkien's version feel like a rip-off when I read it. :p Though, unlike Paolini, he admits he did that, and calls it an "homage". A lot of people still get on his case about it, though.

People get on cases about anything.
i don't many authors think very much of Paolini, or even think about him much as you said.
George R.R. Martin has started doing it? how late!?
I've heard about the Crimson Phantom novels, I know ripping names from Tolkien is done more than a few times.
the reason I'm surprised is that because I know tolkien was very jealous of his works and I'm thinking anyone carrying his franchise on would be too. But maybe they're not.
perhaps he's just ignored...