J.R.R. Tolkien has stated that he was writing history of our world (on HR Tolkien Board, Croatian web forum about Lord of the Rings, one member found that we would be living in 7th Age of Arda right now). I have an interest in history (nature of which I won't elaborate) and I think Tolkien's statement can be clearly confirmed by reading Lord of the Rings. Books themselves are complex, and even though I have read Lord of the Rings first time when I was around 9 or 10 years old, books still have an appeal to me. But important thing is, Lord of the Rings requires thinking, especially if one goes deeper into it. And they have a message.

Eragon is different. It is, despite its thickness, definetly what I would classify as "light literature" - something one reads few pages a day, between writing essays, to put mind on a rest. It is very fun book, but only if one does not think about it - although I may have a bias, as I like more or less anything medieval-themed. I also have difficulty finding a coherent message in what I know from plot.

It is obvious that Paolini, unlike Tolkien, did not do a research. And while Tolkien does have mistake(s) - only one I can remember right now is Minas Tirith having only 7 gates - more or less everything else fits with a theme of medieval setting, including battle tactics, travel times and so on. In Eragon, on the other hand... let's say that this covers it:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodTactics

( And I really don't know wether I should be putting it, but anyway:
http://blip.tv/the-literary-critic/eragon-part-2-3795372
Unfortunately, Part 1 seems to have been taken down.

There is also overview of movie here:
http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Eragon.aspx
but it also makes some good points regarding books. )

That is one of problems with Eragon - lack of research. And lack of research shows that author was not interested in how good his book will be. Paolini ripps off not only other literary works, but also real places and real people, such as that mad scientist king Orrin from Eldest, whose inventions were taken from a certain Italian scientists who was living far after the time Paolini's imaginary world is set into technologically.

As for Paolini's over-usage of flowery language, I believe he is just trying too hard to sound as Tolkien or some medieval author - former is more likely since I don't believe he has read any medieval works. They say that "copying is soncerest form of flattery", and if Paolini really is such Tolkien's fan, then I might have just found one thing I agree with him on.

2) Eragon is a Gary Stu. As pointed in another review I vaguely remember, anything he does is automatically correct and he is treated as infallible - to the point that Paolini considers it logical for Eragon to chastise some soldiers who fired on him, despite the fact they had no reason - or way - to know that he was coming (or even that he was Dragon Rider), and only other (if not just "only") Dragon Rider they knew about at that time was Evil King Galbatorix himself. That in itself is a major plot point, as well as a plot hole.

3) As for Eragon languages and unpronouncable words; Paolini is Italian, and while I don't know anything about that language except that I find it mildly funny, it is possible that words that may sound illogical to someone else sound logical to him. Or maybe he didn't give crap. But I know that even some of people who have been learning Croatian for years often have trouble with accent, and less said about grammar, that better (although I have heard that Finnish grammar is far more complicated - Croatian langage is actually very similar to Latin in its grammar structure. But Paolini steals both language and concepts - Eldunari/Eldunarya concept is similar to both One Ring of Power from Tolkien and Rowling's Horcruxes. Regarding Eldunari, he sets them up as important plot point, which, as I gather from wiki, they turn out not to be. I will also point out that "r" can be both vowel and consonant in Croatian. Gramatic, spelling and format errors may also be consequence of this.

4) Regarding names, it is not uncommon for same names to be same or very similar in different languages - for example, London is called "Londra" in German, while Zagreb is called "Zagreb" and city of Split is called "Split" in both Croatian and English. However, that usually follows when names are taken over from people who first named such places, and Paolini does note that Elvish name for Uru'baen was Ilirea (of course, Uru'baen sounds suspiciously close to Uruk, one of ancient Mesopotamian cities, but that's neither here nor there). On the other hand, in real world names of countries tend to vary, sometimes wildly, depending on language - which was issue Paolini ignored more or less entirely.

I will also note that in Inheritance Cycle, as in LotR, only elvish swords seem to have names. Human ones are usually unnamed (and if I remember correctly, Narsil was originally elvish sword).

5) As for Eragon rescuing Arya... (Aryan? Duh.) She does return favor at end of Eragon book.

6) I will now note some speculation (I think it may be even in one of books, not sure about it) about how Eragon just happens to discover word for fire... apparently, is is part of his "True Name", whatever that exactly is.

http://swankivy.com/writing/essays/info/inheritance/eldest.html

7) "Black Hand" is actually a historical terrorist organization, which was fighting to make Bosnia part of Serbia; they provided excuse for World War I by assasinating Austro-Hungarian archduke Franz Ferdinand, as you have noted. However, name is older than that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mano_Negra ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mano_Nera . As far as Mount Doom is concerned, it is name that northern Numenoreans, who still fought against Sauron, gave it; we don't know what was its name in Black Speech.

8) Nasuada probably has some type of personality disorder, same as Eragon. I doubt it was intentional on Paolini's part, however.

9) Dragon's magic. Well, Saphira can turn tomb into diamond or repair some stupid decoration, but can't turn sand into water when "heroes" are in danger of dying from thirst.

10) Surpirse, elves being "ageless" is lifted directly from Tolkien, as is elves being "old" - except that, in LotR, both descriptions are for specific elves ("ageless" is for Elrond, and Cirdan has "long silver beard", if my memory serves me correctly). It looks like Paolini missed the context.

11) Magic system. I assume that, while sound may not have control over magic, one still has to "speak" (either say audibly, or think) actual worded command for it to work. Brom said in Eragon that magic, when not controlled by words (spoken or thought) is erratic and dangerous, or something to that effect. My memory is little hazy on it though.

12) ""She said, 'Eragon.' It was a simple statement, neither friendly nor hostile." Yeah. Read it again. She came up and said his name, and this is a "statement" that didn't carry friendliness or hostility. Generally when you come up and say someone's name IT IS YOU COMING UP AND SAYING THAT PERSON'S NAME. Why make a big deal out of how it isn't carrying any other meanings? People don't usually come up and say names layered with other messages. What??" - I think he was saying that she did not shout his name as if she's angry with him. In Croatian at least, and I presume in Italian too, one word can carry multiple meanings, based on intonation.

13) Dawnless morning... maybe he used it because in Return of the King, they had morning without Sun? Except Tolkien gave a very solid reason for that.

14) "Silent as night". I believe there is saying that goes "in dead of night", but either way you turn it, it's wrong.

15) There are 9 Nazgul, or Ringwraiths. However, there are 13 Forsaken: http://steelypips.org/wotfaq/1_dark/1.1_forsaken1/1.1.1_forsaken.html http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Forsaken

And this (from wiki):
"The Forsaken were channelers who served the side of the Shadow in the War of Power." - Side of Shadow... didn't know Durza had something to do with WoT. "As time passed, The Forsaken came to mean the thirteen most powerful of the Forsaken, who were caught in the sealing of the Bore and imprisoned with the Dark One. The horrific deeds of each were remembered long after their disappearance. In the Third Age, these thirteen were such symbols of the Shadow that mothers would use stories of their exploits to frighten children."

Oh, and from same saga, there are Trollocs, who I hear are suspiciously similar to Urgals. Actually, writer of Agony Booth recap of movie notes that Urgals are Trolloc ripoffs, while Trollocs are Orc ripoffs (one more obvious than another, I might add). And reading through WoT Wiki, I noticed more than a few similarities with Lord of the Rings other than that. So Paolini ripped off Tolkien... and one Tolkien ripoff too. Ripoff of a ripoff. Way to go, Chris.

-------

Okay, now onto book I did not even touch other than what I gleamed from wiki:

http://swankivy.com/writing/essays/info/inheritance/brisingr.html

16) Palancar Valley. Nice find; I originally thought it is basically a Palantir valley with two letters changed (second-to-last Numenorean king was named Tar-Palantir.)

17) "And why must you name men things like "Harden"? Out of all the dumb pseudo-medieval villager-like things you could name a guy, you name him Harden?"

I think he simply took name "Hayden", switched "y" with "r" and did not stop to think about it. Which, of course, is pretty much his entire modus operandi.

18) "Please remind us of your sympathies for equal rights for chicks, Paolini." --- worst part is, he repeatedly stated that he based Eragon (character) on himself.

19) As for gods, I think it was implied that thing at Orik's coronation was sime kind of ghost. But I didn't read the book, so I don't know.

20) "Do you people realize how much shorter this book could have been if sentences like this were instead written like "They went southwest"? " One-third their current lenght, maybe?

21) "Kicked between fork of his legs" also appears in description of Galbatorix' battle with Vrael, if I'm not mistaken.

22) I believe that Lord of the Rings started that whole "Elves and mortal Men" thing. Of course, Tolkien's elves don't die in real sense of word (that is, leave "circles of the world") even if they are killed, unlike humans (there is reason why death is called "Illuvatar's gift").

23) "Watch me torture..." Eragon is Gary Stu. 'Nuff said. Same for his constant protagonist powers, lucky "accidents" (including those dragons watching over him) etc.

24) "Rider farts." I guess Eragon is just lucky Galbatorix is trying to be Orcus On His Throne.

25) As for Redbeard (was he pirate?) not noticing (as far as pain is concerned) his hand getting cut off, it may have something to do with adrenaline.

26) "I was gonna vote for you, but. . . ." If I'm not mistaken, that is actually known practice in US "democracy", where preliminary results of vote are published before voting is over. "Election prognoses" here in Croatia seem to have same purpose of swaying public opinion.

27) "Don't tell me precious stuff can't be done like that. Saphira's egg was teleported, dammit." Apparently, teleportation is imprecise over longer distances, which is why they had Arya carry egg instead of teleoprting it.

http://swankivy.com/writing/essays/info/inheritance/inheritance.html

28) "Are you sure Eragon isn't you, Paolini?" Actually, I believe Paolini has said at least once that he modelled Eragon after himself.

29) "This hokey business of saying the numbers in a pseudo-archaic way is Paolini's apparent attempt to make this sound like an old story. It's extremely silly. This is narration. This is not in the voice of a character who's using a dialect. Presumably, Paolini is "translating" a story from an alternate world. There is no reason to transform the numbers so they're outside of our usual conventions just to make it seem, I don't know, fantasy-ish."

Except, you know, Lord of the Rings did it a few times (even though I read only Croatian translation, Zlatko Crnkovic did a good job).

30) Crimson muscle? Looks like humans in Inheritance don't have skin.

31) "I would we could"? I don't think it exists.

32) "If Arya could use magic to teleport the egg, why didn't she do that in the first place?" From what I remember, such way of transport is quite imprecise.

33) "So . . . how many Rider's swords have you even seen, Eragon?" 4 or 5. Zar'roc, Brisingr, and several other swords in that elven forest kingdom...

34) "BEHOLD, THE DEADLY, NOTORIOUS DRAGON-KILLING LANCE" And lets not forget that dragons can kill each other by biting, so I don't understand why some special lance is required.

And I must say I was laughing like idiot at some of Paolini's idiocy. Thumb description? Eye = orb? WTH?

Corneel: I enjoyed your essays on the inheritance cycle books and now know better than to go out and buy them, or even read them.

One (very) minor nitpick however on the following phrase in your review of "Inheritance":

(I'm still confused about how he thinks royalty works. Arya explained at one point that she's NOT a princess just because her mother is a queen and her inheriting the throne is "not how it works," and then now we've observed both human and dwarf ELECTIONS for a king or queen. Why not call them Presidents or something that's generally actually elected?)

Historically quite a few monarchies were actually elective. Hugues Capet was elected King of the Franks by the nobles of the realm and his successors took care to have their sons elected as successor during their lifes.
Other well known elective monarchies were the Holy Roman Empire and Poland. Also elective monarchies seem to be a bit of a Germanic tradition (Anglo-saxon England, Scandinavia, Spain under the Visigoths,...). And since one of the inspirations of Paolini seems to be the Nordic world, an elective monarchy is not that strange (at least as long as the ones doing the electing are proper people - like nobles or high clergy, not the mud-dwelling rabble).

Ellie Sparks: Hi, Ivy! Love the essays, but I have one quibble with regards to your Eldest essay.

You said: "In talking about the novel's inconsistency with place names: Chris claims that all of Alagaësia's different areas are sorta mix-n-match because all the places were settled by different races. Umm . . . in real life, usually if that is the case then each race or culture has a name for each area, and depending on which language the map is in, you will see different names. English maps don't identify Japan as "Nihon" or Germany as "Deutschland." On a Spanish map, you will see "Estados Unidos" instead of "United States." If a bunch of different races named the places, each would call the areas different things."

Yes, this is often the case, but not necessarily. The area of the US I live in was settled by speakers of many different languages, and depending who lived where, or which name became the most popular, we wound up with quite a motley crew of linguistic sources for our place names: Dutch, Welsh, French, German, English, Spanish, and some from the local Native American language. And this is an area of 2500 miles, which is about a hundredth the size of Alawhatisthisidonteven.

Also, in a slightly larger scale, a lot of the US state names are pretty cobbled together, as well, in terms of origin, and we have official names for them all. We just don't necessarily think of them as mix-and-match because we're so used to them.

If that's not what you meant by your paragraph, I apologize, but it is possible to get patchwork place names.

Jocelyn: Hello, I'm Jocelyn, if you remember...I sent you an email some time ago...anyway, I wanted to compliment you on your essays, again. They were extremely funny and sarcastic and had me laughing my head off for most of the time, not to mention remarkably convincing. Anyway, on one of the books (I forgot which) you commented that you would not read the Twilight series because you don't want another Inheritance series on your hands. With all due respect, can you please read it anyway and write essays on it as well? Judging from your critique on the Inheritance Cycle, you'll probably hate it too. I have read the Twilight series, and I read it only to laugh at its stupidity. It's highly entertaining in that way. It suffers from much of the same problems as the Inheritance Cycle, like plot holes, flat characters, contrived plot, predictable events, and purple prose, and the editing looks like it was done by a dyslexic third grader. I really enjoyed reading your essays and ask you, again, with all due respect, to read the Twilight series and write essays on it. I'll totally understand if you consider it a waste of your time. This is merely a request.

Ivy: Gura, I would just like to say that I am 13 and have read many great classics, so there. I am an Eargon Fanatic, however, I like to hear other's opinions so thank you for creating this page so I can see what others think about it. even though the opinons are negative I am glad to hear that others have ideas about it even if they are negative, so thank you for your time.

LiraelAstarael: I admire how much devotion swept through your ever more so steel-like essay.
No, seriously. It's great to read a coherent rant like this, it helped me get over my annoyance with this book somehow. I'm still angry about some parts, but I enjoy the fact so many people think it sucked.
I can't think of any criticism whatsoever.

Izzy: Everyone can criticise a book to the point where it just sounds stupid. Just because maybe you think some things are obvious doesn't mean everyone gets it immediatly! also, yeah everyone knows that the main characters aren't going to die. But a book wouldn't be much fun to read a book where no character even comes into SOME danger. I don't know. Maybe you enjoy reading that sort of book where NOTHING HAPPENS. I personally enjoyed reading the entire series and u seem just to be poking holes where people WOULD NOT HAVE EVEN SEEN A FREAKING PROBLEM. This is just tearing up years of work with some idiots stupid comment

swankivy: Aww, Izzy here wouldn't leave an e-mail address to let me reply, so I guess I'll just have to do it here! Yes, it is bad to have a book that's predictable, and you can't defend it by saying "well I just am totally not insightful enough to see what you saw, so shut up!" And also, yes, sometimes main characters do die, in better books. But I wasn't demanding that they die. I was demanding that if they're going to face mortal danger repeatedly, I don't feel so bored by it. Since the author is going to save the main characters by making them lucky or letting them break the laws of physics, it has no meaning whatsoever to watch them run into dangerous situations. Do you really think actual good writers can't make me worry about the fate of a character? Because yeah, good writers can do that. Good writers can write battle scenes where I'm supposed to fear for the character's life and health and I actually do. I don't know what this twaddle is about suggesting I want the book to contain nothing. I actually said the opposite. It would be nice if stuff actually happened in this book--stuff that looks like the characters are actually doing it rather than getting led around by puppet strings. And though I'm assuming it's a lost cause for me to say this, claiming "people would not have seen a problem" when my comments on this essay--over 200 of them--are full of people who agree with ME, it's clear there's a pretty serious problem (or at least that there are a lot of readers who do, in fact, have a problem). But you didn't actually read my essay or any of the comments, because you're arguing against points I did not make, so this is pretty futile right here.

Kara: Hello, Ivy, I just wondered about something (since I'm reading this review always only as far as I got with the Inheritance audiobook: right now I'm at the chapter in which Nasuada sees funny stuff through Galbatorix' 'torture') when I read the paragraph about languages in Inheritance: Do you think it's okay to name a language (let's just say, in different regions of [name of fantasy world] people speak 'language A' and in another 'language B' and so on) but not show what it looks like in a story? Just asking because I can't wrap my head around creating fantasy languages but love using otherworldly settings. (And since these sort of worlds are usually very big it does seem a bit weird to me to only have one language.)

Yed: Lol, did you notice that Oromis' (Oromis's? I don't know.) full name is Oromis Thrándurin, known as Osthato Chetowä, The Mourning Sage, and Togira Ikonoka, The-Cripple-Who-Is-Whole?

What's insulting is that CP's creation of the name comes straight from Lord of the Rings!Thranduil king of Mirkwood + Durin = Thrándurin. Also Togira Ikonoka sounds too much like Japanese. Makes me believe Oromis has some Asian background.

just some guy: I've been trying to think of a single word to suit you, and I believe I've found one finally.

You're petty.

I mean, really, you can harp on about a kid who's made some (okay, a lot of) mistakes in a book he's written, but do you really have to make the same bloody points in three separate essays?

And there's the fact that some of what you mock, you just don't understand. Not as in Paulini being unable to explain, but as in you're unable to grasp the point.

For example, the verbal trickery thing. Eragon was saying that Angela didn't miss anything, by saying 'Nothing escapes you'

What she did was to take 'Nothing' as a noun, and saying 'let it escape'. I dunno bout you, but that does seem as a nifty bit of verbal trickery to me.

I'm not saying that Paulini is a genius and that you're an idiot for criticizing him. What I'm saying is that the vast majority of your complaints invoke a 'who cares about that!' feeling in me.

swankivy: Then let me give you some more pettiness:

Paolini is not "a kid." He was born in 1983. Do you people think he is going to be a child for the rest of his life and is therefore immune to criticism?

His name is spelled "Paolini," not "Paulini."

I wrote four essays, not three.

If you don't care about what I wrote about (unlike the vast majority of commenters here who said my discussion taught them how to be better writers by learning what NOT to do), then why don't you just do the big, mature, non-petty thing and avoid things you don't care about instead of pretending the real solution is to ask me to stop saying them?