I loved Eragon and Eldest with a passion normally reserved for uber hot celebrities and she ruined them in one fell swoop with a very simple phrase "lord of the star wars" At fist I backed up against the wall of denial, There was no way I would have missed something that major as the book being a rip off of star wars set in a middle earth style setting, she had to be full of shit. I may be a book whore but I like to think I am a book whore with standards!
****warning spoilers ahead, in fact if you don't want me to give away the entire plot you should stop reading now****
Her words stuck in my craw though , seriously what the fuck is a craw?
craw
[kraw] Show IPA Pronunciation 
–noun
—Idiom
| 1. | the crop of a bird or insect. |
| 2. | the stomach of an animal. |
| 3. | stick in one's craw, to cause considerable or abiding resentment; rankle: She said I was pompous, and that really stuck in my craw. |
OK so now that I have that bit of Googling out of my system.
I thought about it and thought about it and started to see teh similarities.
When the story starts there is one known dragon rider in the world and he is evil, as well as fucking insane (Vader?) but then a young boy (skywalker) discovers a dragon egg and takes off with an old man from the village who just HAPPENED to be an old dragon rider (ObiWan). The evil dragon rider king Galbitorix controls everything but the varden (resistance) are fighting to overthrow him along with the elves. Eragon (young skywalker) falls in in love with an elf princess (leah anyone) and is trained by another old (freaking ancient) dragon and rider everyone assumes in dead (yoda). At the end of book two we find out that one of the Crazy evil dragon riders is Eragons dad. How did I NOT see the "I am your father" moment coming?
So this was where I was when book three arrived.
I am not one who ever to let words go to waste and since I owned the book I decided to read it. Before I could read it though I had to reread book one and two because I have a weird compulsion that forces me to reread the prequels if there is more than a month between books so that I don't forget any important details, in fact this is the main reason I don't read sequels until they are completely written but I thought this was a two book set when I first bought it.
So I am rereading Eragon and Eldest and discover despite Lori's evil whisperings I STILL like the books. I became engrossed in them again immediately and finished both books in four days and moved on to book three.
I was very impressed as he seemed to move away from the star wars comparisons (at least in so far as my weak Star Wars knowledge was concerned) he went into a lot of detail about HOW Galbitorix had the powers he did and we learned more about his family tree including the fact that his mama was incapable of keeping it in her pants and that Brom (obiwan) and not Morzan (crazy evil dragon rider) was his daddy.
The one down side though was that the book was NOT a trilogy as I had been lead to believe and there is ANOTHER book coming. I will let you all know my final opinion in a few years.
So after rereading I have decided that although Paolini obviously draws on star wars for inspiration and may have in book one and two shown less creative ability than I would have liked the books are still enjoyable and well written with few plot holes and very little left unexplained, there are no sub plots left to wither, and the characters are believable. I can totally wear my Eragon shirt in public with my head held high (now I have to GET an Eragon shirt)
