Eragon: Book One

The story seems to have been meant to go something like this: a young, poor farm boy by the name of Eragon (Edward Speleers) comes across a strange blue stone while hunting in the woods. To his amazement the stone hatches and a magical dragon emerges, one of the last of its kind. A roguish old man from the village, Brom (Jeremy Irons), discovers Eragon’s little secret and reveals to him that the boy is the last of a dying breed of warriors known as the Dragon Riders. Eragon’s special bond with the dragon, named Saphira (Rachel Weisz), grants him the ability to use magic, and together the two will be able to defeat the evil King (John Malkovich) and his sorcerer henchman Durza (Robert Carlyle). Along the way he saves a warrior princess named Arya (Sienna Guillory) with the help of a mysterious ally, Murtagh (Garrett Hedlund). It’s a pleasant enough fantasy tale for younger teen audiences and even if that’s how it was meant to go, that’s not what comes across on the screen. The final product is the story of a young, poor, bizarre combination of Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter joined up with the female counterpart to Draco from Dragonheart. With the help of an Obi-wan meets Gandalf sort of mentor, he sets out to save the wizarding world and half of Middle Earth by using Elven magic to defeat the equivalent of Voldemort wearing Sauron’s Ring of Power and his right hand sidekick who is the perfect amalgam of Saruman, Wormtongue and a Balrog-riding Darth Maul. Oh, along the way he stops to save the love child of Arwen and Princess Leia with the help of Aragorn crossed with Han Solo. It’s free for all sci-fi/fantasy mad libs, only instead of verbs and adjectives the story substitutes in favorite character archetypes and plot from other films. And then comes the final battle scene. With time running out (both for the characters and the movie), all parties find themselves gearing up for some serious combat. As the audience you’re expected to be very concerned for the good guys, but you’ve been offered very little time to actually get to know anyone well enough to care. The heroes in the story are painfully underdeveloped and you don’t even meet the people they’re fighting to defend until the last possible second. It’s a horrific mess, an underwhelming ending to a poorly paced, overwrought movie.

I have the hard back paper version and the books are great. Anyone who thinks the book is a poor copy of the film has not read it and is sorely mistaken. It's well worth the money to buy but no offense I fined it slightly useless to spend 8+ pounds on a smart phoned version instead of either a kindle or normal book... Think about it ;-)

Nothing will ever trump this series, thank you. I absolutely fell in love with Eragon (way better reading the paperback by the way😁). I laughed, cried -poured with tears at some points(ice-cream worthy), but not important- felt anger, happiness, betrayal, excitement - never boredom. I feel as though I made the journey alongside Eragon and Saphira, through Brom's death, Murtagh's betrayal, Arya's rejection, to many beautifully written works of art to list. But the most prominent feeling is : AWE ; you wrote Eragon at only 16, same as the character once we join him, and then continued to write Eldest, Brisngr and Inheritance. I'm awed at your ability and skill, starting with the 573 pages of Eragon and ending with the 800-and-something (sorry) pages of Inheritance. The movie sucks though, I'm sorry about that, like 3% of the stuff is even half correct! Anyway, its been awesome. Thank you