A Weakness of Mine

I have a weakness for fantasy novels. Yes, I admit, even bad fantasy books provide me wtih endless entertainment. They always have, at least as long as I've been able to read something besides "See Spot Run." I'm not sure why that is, exactly. Maybe it's because I like to read books in series (single novels end too quickly), and any self-respecting fantasy story comes in at least a trilogy, or a series, or a cycle, or whatever. After all, if you are going to go to all the trouble to create an entire world, populated with creatures with outlandish names, you might as well milk it for all it's worth, right? One of my favorite series is ten volumes long, with two "companion books," and I must admit that I own them all. (Yeah, I'm pathetic.)

My latest weakness came in the form of Eragon, a fairly recently published work that was a runaway success a few years ago, and whose sequel Eldest (it's a trilogy, of course) is currently on some bestseller list or other. I expected it to be terrible, but I was curious, especially since the movie comes out this December (starring Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich). It wasn't exactly something to be placed next to Lord of the Rings on one's bookshelf, but I am not gonna lie, it's a guilty pleasure of mine, not a victim of the scathing review I had jokingly promised. I liked it enough to go out and buy Eldest, while Eldest still isn't in paperback yet. Grr, yes, I gave in. :)

Perhaps I enjoy it because I'm aware of the fact that it was written by a teenager. Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon when he was fifteen and sixteen years old, and it had achieved some serious success (including the New York Times Bestseller List) by the time he was nineteen. When you take that into account, it's an incredibly complex and ambitious work. Not perhaps the most original, but after all there's a lot of more worthless drivel that gets published every year. And if he's borrowing flagrantly, at least it's from the good stuff. His ideas about dragons and their riders come straight from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, his ideas about magic strongly recall Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle, and the coexistence of elves, men, and dwarves naturally brings Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy to mind (and some of the names are so similar to Tolkien's, it makes me laugh). Naturally, I've read all of those books and their endless sequels, so I'm fantasy-savvy enough to see what he's doing. If I weren't such a voracious reader of fantasy myself, I would have no idea how little of Eragon is actually the creation of its author. Therefore, it doesn't surprise me that it gets such a positive reception from its mostly teenaged audience. (Apparently because of the fact that it was written by a teen and isn't raunchy, it's been relegated to the kid's section of bookstores and libraries. However, like the Harry Potter series, it is far too complex and mature for anyone younger than, say, twelve or thirteen to read and appreciate.) Still, I have to admire Mr. Paolini for his ability, not only to sit down and write such an ambitious project, but to follow through on publishing and publicity and all the rest at such a young age. And, amazingly enough, he even looks like a halfway normal person in his photograph (I was expecting a far more pitifully geeky type). Kudos to him, really. Hopefully this is just his juvenalia, and he'll develop more complexity, originality, and polish as he gets older. But then again, even if he doesn't, he'll still have helpless fantasy addicts like me buying his books. :)