Just Finished Rereading Christopher Paolini's Eragon

I've mentioned in an earlier article that I decided to go back to Christopher Paolini's Inheritance fantasy series, which I had previously put down (both figuratively in criticism and literally, "putting it down on the table") without finishing.  Now I'm determined to see the reading project through and have successfully reread the first book Eragon without too much pain.  But now I'm on book # 2, Eldest, and the pain is starting to coming back...

First of all, let me say up front that Paolini's writing is good.  Others seem to think, though, and with good cause, that he coopted much of the story of Eragon from two sources: Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.  I agree that he could have been more circumspect with that, especially his naming his main hero character Eragon with such striking resemblance to Aragorn, the name of Tolkien's ranger hero (I get what he was thinking, though: replace the E with D and you get Dragon).  That having been said, though, Paolini did a good job of creating his own new world, with its own "rules of magic", that is clearly distinguishable from other fantasy settings.  And let's just be frank about all this: all fantasy series feed off each other! Robert Jordan, one of the all-time great writers in this genre, was very forthright in admitting that his first Wheel of Time novel, titled The Eye of the World, was written with the idea of recreating much of the narrative present in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings first book, Fellowship of the Ring.  In fantasy literature, you have specially named swords, reluctant "chosen" savior/heroes, dragons, elves, dwarfs, wizards, talking animals, questions about the hero's true father, sorcerers/sorceresses, witches, tyrant kings/emperors, important dreams, cryptic prophecies, magic with various limitations, monster enemy hordes, harrowing chase scenes, epic battle scenes, the hero rescuing the captured damsel, healing by magic and herbs replacing modern medicine, court intrigues, exotic invented languages, strange names with diacritics....all of this isn't just Paolini being a copycat: it is PERVASIVE throughout this genre and ALL draw from it to a degree, some just a little more than others.

So I did finish reading Eragon and am now beginning the second of the four books, this one titled Eldest.  So far, so good, although there isn't a lot of interesting stuff here...mainly, political intrigues going on between the various factions that Eragon has to figure out, although Paolini is at least making things interesting with the subplot about Eragon's cousin Roran.  Oh, by the way, I think that one of the reasons for such vehement criticism leveled against Christopher Paolini is that he was only fifteen when he came out with Eragon and that he had to do very little himself to get it published and promoted...seeing how his own parents ran an established publishing company.  I think a lot of aspiring writers resent his fast track to fame and fortune and consequently are likely to be more negative about their reactions to his writing.  And having a generally panned movie come out for Eragon doesn't help much either...