A long time ago in a fantasy world far, far away, a young boy living with his uncle on a farm dreams The Big Dream of adventure and excitement. When his uncle is tragically murdered by the lackies of Darth Vader - I mean, King Galbatorix - this young boy must escape with the help of an old Jedi - I mean, wizard, who will teach him the ways of the Force - I mean magic, definitely magic. This young boy has got to find the Rebel Alliance, the Varden, as the forces of the Empire closes in. That's never been done before, right? Eragon is not good fantasy. There is no innovation. The story is clearly structured after Star Wars, the cultures and languages are clearly taken from Lord of the Rings, and the magic system is stolen right out of Ursula le Guin's "Wizard of Earthsea" saga, the structure is based off of a wooden interpretation of the Hero's Journey, and his character and world names sound like sneezes (Durza, Murtagh, Galbatorix, etc.) Eragon is not good literature. Paolini's prose is clunky. He doesn't understand pacing at all, and he introduces irrelevant or unnatural details at odd points, like an aside about the nature of the magic system in the middle of an attack. All of his characters talk exactly the same, they have the social skills of ten-year-olds, and Brom's "wisdom" is clearly the pseudo-wisdom of a fifteen year old, and very often his descriptions are confusing or ambiguous. Why am I hitting so hard on Paolini? He's only fifteen, isn't he? Well, actually, no. He was nineteen when the book was professionally published, and it should have been totally rewritten. He was 21 or 22 when he wrote the second book. His writing should have improved, but if anything it has gotten worse. Another reason I am being so critical is that Paolini may have been 19, but he entered the real world of public discourse and so I'm going to treat his book like I would any other book and evaluate it based upon its artistic merit, literary value, and so on. A third reason is that Paolini is a success not because his book is good. It isn't. It really, honest to God, truly, utterly sucks. But it was written by a fifteen-year-old. The only reason it is making any money is because a fifteen year old had the commitment to write a book and get it published (which was a fluke, actually, and not based on any talent). It was a success because it feeds the desires of other angsty fifteen-year-olds who want to make it big by nineteen. I know I did. But you know what? I'm glad I didn't make it big by nineteen. Looking back, my work sucked more than Paolini's. There *is* such a thing as maturity, and it can only come with age. Nineteen is too young to be a New York Times bestselling published novelist, and Paolini is going to regret it later in life. A fourth reason is that Eragon is becoming an inspiration for kids as young as seven. This is disturbing because people aspire to aim for their inspirations, and instead of aiming for literature that is actually good, like Dracula, the Princes and the Goblin, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, the Odyssey, or, heck, even Harry Potter, these kids standards are being set by the likes of Eragon. Which means that these kids books are going to be *derivative* of Eragon, something that is itself *already* derivative. A fifth reason is that Paolini is an arrogant young man. He has publicly compared his own work to that of Tolkien, something which is entirely laughable, he claims he has created entire languages for the books, but these languages have no consistent grammatical structure and when spoken aloud sound like the speaker is having a seizure, and he talks like he knows everything there is to know about mythology, fantasy, and writing. I have no doubt that Paolini could grow up to be a good writer, but not if he thinks he has now learned everything there is to learn about writing. This book, however, by any objective literary standard there is, is simply terrible and I doubt very much if in fifty years they will be remembered as anything more than "those books that fifteen-year-old wrote." If that.