Eragon - Christopher Paolini
This is billed as the next great fantasy, post
Potter. It's a good read, if not sporadic, with a nice world and a great take
on magic.
The author of Eragon was 15 when he wrote this.
He's clearly very well read in fantasy, there's a lot of derivative work here,
but it's a good synthesis of other books in the genre with some very good
nuances. At times I'd think "15, - are you kidding?" and other times, I was
absolutely certain that an adolescent wrote the novel. Of course, I knew in
advance.
It's a classic fantasy that
subscribes the small-world hypothesis of most fantasy. You know the secrets by
a process of elimination... not big surprises there. But, this is a very smooth
and well-down bit of fantasy. I like that magic takes energy from not just the
surroundings, but also from the magician. There's real danger in performing
magic - that's a nice twist. There's also the Shades, and a good take on
dwarves and elves... this is a good
fantasy.
I'm looking forward to the
promised sequel.
Posted: Mon - August 23, 2004 at 05:27 PM