Customer Reviews
Depends on what eyes you read this book through... - By: Mr. Stuart Boland, 23 Jul 2008 
As you can see from the star dispersal that this, depending on what eyes you read it with can be a gripping read or if you hold preconceptions in your head as you read it can seem cliched.
But not I, I read it with the knowledge that any good fantasy book would no doubt have elves, good & evil, dragons etc. & were essential to any good fantasy read you'd want to emmerse yourself in. And Eragon delivers that in strides as light reading with some wonderful warm characterisation & development of relationships between who are essentiallly the two main characters: Eragon & Saphira & for once we see a dragon as a fleshed out character & not a mere plot device. This book does seem to focus mainly on Eragon & Saphira's bond for relationship development & is always good for a laugh considering how different they are. The other characters always seem there for support & with exception of a few (Brom for instance) arn't gone into in some detail.
Bottom line? A wonderfully good adventurous read that you'll love to pick up & read for hundreds of pages at a time & feel very reluctant to put down without being forced to spend hundreds of pages being introduced to new concepts & races just so you can remotely get your head around the plot.
This is the beginnning of a brilliant fantasy series that you will want to read the contiunuation of without a doubt
An excellent read... why disect it? - By: B. Obank, 21 Jun 2008 
I thoroughly enjoyed reading 'Eragon' & 'Eldest' & I am sure that I will enjoy 'Brisingr' when it is released; in my mind that's alll that matters. While I am happy to acknowledge the similarites that it has with many other fantastic novels, I do not believe that these similarities detract from the books.
Many people who have reviewed this seem obsessed with disecting the book, focusing on which parts are similar to other books & so on, but surely if a book is entertaining to read, then it has fufilled it's purpose. Books are not written to be analysed, they are written to be enjoyed.
To conclude, if you want to read a book simply to bask in it's literary genius & ingenuity, then walk away, but if you read for pleasure, then buy it & enjoy a fantastic read.
P.S. The film is terrible...please don't bother with it.
Absolutely fantastic!!! - By: Anja Schmidt, 08 Jun 2008 Boy, how I loved this book, & the next one... I could hardly put them down, & only did so because I had to go to work, so I didn't get much sleep for a little week... but the books are amazing, as simply as that!!
Use a dictionary - By: Mr. R. S. Keys, 31 May 2008 
I read this to my children, who found the story exciting, BUT... they frequently had to wait until I stopped laughing! Yes, this book manages to be funny! Paolini likes to use nice sounding phrases, but without any regard for their meaning. I love absurdities. The blurb says it alll, when we are told that at 16, he has an 'abiding' love of fantasy! But it is a bit long for the same joke - the comic misuse of words shouldn't extend over so many pages. The plot - a character goes from situation to situation, like in a computer game, on & on & on. We are told that he develops, which is useful, as we don't experience it.
I can't believe I used to be a fan of this. - By: Lin. Family, 17 May 2008 I first read this when I was about 9, & it was great to me at the time. I'd finished the Harry Potter series up to that point, so I hungered for more fantasy. The dragon on the cover drew me in & spat me out, covered in the saliva of unoriginality.
After I read it, I started to write, & went through the same process that Paolini did when writing Eragon - I stole the plot, threw it into somebody else's world, changed the characters' names & then wrote them into being more shalllow & clichéd, & overalll spun a horrible, messy web of purple prose from this.
To sum up the previous paragraph, as other people pointed out, Eragon is Lucas' plot in Tolkien's world, only bastardised.
I decided to re-read it recently & I have to say, what I used to think was a brilliant, vibrant, gripping tale managed to bore & irritate me within minutes, & I kept going, only out of search for something I might have enjoyed.
Don't buy this. As an adult, you won't enjoy it, & don't buy it for your child, since it'll mess up their grades in English.
