Eragon/Eldest by Christopher Paolini
Lots of hype about Eragon and later about Eldest, written by first time novelist Christopher Paolini when he was a teen. I didn't have a lot of expectations and he didn't fail to meet them. Eragon starts off pretty rough in terms of writing, but picks up a little as the novel progresses and he finds and falls into a style. Almost all the elements are stolen from other novels but woven into a story of his choosing. I've never read any of the Dragonriders of Pern books but subtracting away the Tolikien, Terry Brooks and Terry Goodkind from Eragon, I can guess from the remains what it's about (People riding Dragons I'm guessing). Don't get me wrong, it's a charming story that has some unique elements of it's own and it's impressive, but it's definitely in the young-adult fantasy camp. Eldest is a more of the same, but a little more complicated, the writing is a little better, plot is slightly more complicated and there is at least one Blazing Saddles joke which I laughed at.
Not bad and I'll probably stick in for the third book as Paolini finds his own voice. Right now I view him as a kind of reverse Goodkind (whose novels get progressively worse as time goes on).
OTOH, I also read Donaldson's The Runes of the Earth, the Last Chronicals of Thomas Covenant. I know, I know, how can Donaldson possibly ride the corpse of the Unbeliever for not just one more, but four more novels? Why would I even look at this, especially after the unreadable "Gap into Mediocrity" series (there are only so many forced rape scenes even I can stomach)? Donaldson can write. Long, ropey sentences which occasionally twist enough to lose their meaning until a paragraph or two later. The man can really write and the book, at least so far, has the least amount of rape and torture I've read in a Donaldson book. I can't say I enjoyed it, but when book 2 comes out next year I will likely have it delivered to my door in it's plain, brown wrapper.
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