Still, these two are amazing enough as it is. :)

sara jones: you really did not have to bee quite so rude about the book. i enjoyed it and considering the age of which he wrote it, it is a great piece of work. i think the pictures while kind of humorous were uncalled for.

Nathan: Stone actually can be 'rotten'.

As a climber of mountains and cliffs for most of my life, I can tell you that stone that flakes and breaks in your bare hands due to softness, erosion, flakiness, etc. is referred to as 'rotten'.

I don't recall if he used it correctly, but that's how we use the word.

VoodooPuppy: Thankyou so much for your opinions on Eragon and Eldest. They have taught me so much about writing more than any English Teacher I have ever had! I'm planning a fantasy novel, and without your essays (and some others) I', quite sure I would have made several Paolini-style mistakes.

Thankyou!

Ari: When are you going to post the Brisingr essay? It's been almost a year since the book came out...I really want to read it. I know you're busy with work and everything, but please?

Dewey: This made me chuckle. Someone close to me who does not read much fantasy gave it to me to read and I don't have the heart to explain anything more than that Paolini is an inexperienced writer. I do support everything you said in your essay but you may want to correct some of the statements about Tolkien. He did borrow many ideas from The Saga of the Volsungs and The Nibelungenlied (Wagner based his Ring Cycle operas on those two poetic works as well). Tolkien did what CP did but with much more originality and he spent his whole life fleshing it out. I was not aware his parents were publishers. I wish I had his familial connections, then I too would not be toiling in obscurity.

For anyone looking for all of these plot elements without the excessive embellishment read the two above, The Iliad, The Poetic Eta, Beowulf and The Ramayana.

Rachel: Actually, regarding his use of an apostrophe in the word "ra'zac", an apostrophe is how linguists usually transliterate a glottal stop. A glottal stop is like the catch in your voice when you say "uh-oh".

Not that this helps Paolini's case any--the word would still be pretty hard to pronounce, and glottal stops aren't generally used in the Old Norse languages he was trying to mimic. Your guess that he was just adding umlauts and stuff to make it "foreign" is spot-on.

Danna: LMAO.......

Zirou: Well I just wanted to note a couple of things. See I think his use of magic not being consistent deals with basic fantasy games. In a game such as Dungeons and Dragons, Monsters cheat. Now granted I get it [this is if you play or have played 3.0-3.5] that it would technically be his companion but at the same time Saphira may apply to the monster manual dragons with wizard/sorc. levels not so much the player-dragon companion. A lot of what Chris does is based around D&D, which is in fact based around LOTR [previously Chainmail was the beginning of D&D, little of fantasy game fact] This was all inspired by LOTR and what have you, if Chris is even going by this even a 'tad then it would make sense why the magic levels are 'off'. Just something to ponder your thoughts on.

Kaa: I think I have to go straight to the point:
Thank you for summing up everything. And thanks for being so good when it comes to this.

When Eragon was first recommended to me, the very first thing that came to my mind when I saw the book on Amazon was: "What an ugly cover". But well, as it is said, you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover ... but in this case, that's totally wrong. Most comments I read on Amazon were about how the little kiddies loved the book. I became sceptical about it. Turned out there were good critics too. This is when I learned that when something creates a hype, you have to read the comments first that don't praise the piece of work too much. Or maybe just those that don't praise it at all.

I personally never got past the point in the story where Eragon folds his dragon's wings. (I just read this stuff for the fun of it, since there are nice sporkings out there.)
Maybe that's because I as well enjoy making up stories that include dragons. Mostly dragons. Intelligent ones that don't serve humans and shun them. But not those fursona thingies... D:
Ah, well, I think you get the point.
What I'm trying to say is ... keep up your great work! I know there will always be people who are blinded by their "love" for something like a book or a movie. I think you know that too. For me, personally, there's no such thing as the perfect book. Hence, I couldn't even read 'The Lord of the Rings', because of Tolkien's way of describing things too much - though I know he created something really great. But I can't force myself to read it. :'D Have a nice day.