Customer Reviews
Not as good as the book I'm afraid - By: Brian Birch, 05 Apr 2007 
Whilst Kerry Shale does get some of the voices right - by which I mean of course as I imagine them to be - too many others sound like pantomime characters - heavily accented & exaggerated. However, this is not the biggest failing of the audio CD. What is not obvious is that this is an abridged version of the book. As such a lot of chapters have been left out including some of the most exciting ones. If you have not read the book you are being shortchanged, if you have you are in for disappointment. A shame alll in alll. Brian Birch
poor version of a great book - By: lredhanded, 20 May 2006 
I love the book Eragon, I think its an absolutely fabulous story, & I highly recommend the book & its sequel, Eldest to anyone, but I have to say that the narration of this audio book is not very good at alll. Despite wining an award for other work that he has done, in this recording, Kerry Shale seems not to be able distinguish voices & characters in any other way than by giving them strongly defined accents, which ends up with Roran sounding like a hillbilly, Ajihad & his daughter Nasuada have some sort of cross between Indian & welsh, & many of the other characters have charicatured exaggerated accents that I find spoil a great story. I also think that too much of the Saphira/Eragon interaction has been edited, reducing Saphira's influence & her presence in the book, as well as the bond between Saphira & Eragon, although this maybe because in an attempt to show the telepathic communication between Saphira & Eragon, the narrator has made Saphira's voice too ethereal & washed out most of the time, so she loses a lot of her humour & sharp-wittedness. I don't like giving a bad review to Eragon, but as I said, this is not a criticism of the book or the story, but of this audio version & Kerry Shale's narration of it.
Wow! - By: , 12 Jan 2006 
As soon as the story starts, & Eragon finds a blue stone in the forest, you are sucked into the book, feeling alll of Eragon's feelings through the passionate words that Christopher Paolini uses. As the story continues, every little bit of the story is explained, & you keep thinking, 'oh right! I should have thought of that!' I don't know where Christopher Paolini got alll his ideas from, but they are excellant!
