ERAGON : The Next Harry Potter ??

This review is strictly for fantasy book lovers :)

People might have known from my bloglinks that i am a hardcore fan of HarryPotter series :) .Yes, i keep a close watch on the happenings at the wizard world. At one point i even thought there is no novel in the fantasy space that could overtake HP. Be it a journey through the surreal world, where imagination defies reality,logic and reason goes for a toss, where the sixth sense becomes just another sense, where smart wizards and hot witches date in fairyland, fly in dragons, fight with daimons, HP (both movies and the books) provides you everything,in plentitude. So it should not be suprising when i say,i was shocked to death to read that "A 15 year old author had overtaken J.K Rowling". Yes Eragon by christopher paolini pushed harrypotter and the half blood prince to the second spot in terms of bestsellers. This piece of information was enough to prompt avid fantasy readers like me to go get the book, which i did.

The Plot:

Eragon is a trilogy series similar to LOTR. Eragon is the first book, followed by Eldest , the third one is yet to be named. Agency news says it can be Empire ;).

Eragon is the name of a boy who is the protagonist as well. One day, in the midst of Spine, a dark forest,he gets a blue stone. Little does he know that this stone is going to change his life forever.The stone actually turns out to be a dragon's egg,out of which comes the female dragon, Saphira. Soon eragon is entangled in the web of myths and mysteries concerned with the legendary Riders and the evil king Galabotrix. The Razacs (beasts in the form of human) come to his village hunting down for him and saphira. This makes Eragon flee along with the dragon. Also circumstances force him to confess the truth to Brom, a story teller. The razacs kill Eragon's father and destroy his house. Eragon, then decides to hunt these razacs and seek revenge. And so they (Eragon,saphira and Brom) begin their great journey. Paolini then brings in a lot of characters and twists which i can't be detailing here as he would put a copyright violation case on me ;).But the spoiler is this, Eragon becomes a rider, brom too was a rider who finally gets killed. Eragon joins forces with the Varden, elves and the dwarfs to fight Galabotrix's army.So end's eragon. I was so much engrossed with the plot, that i decided to get the next book Eldest as well :).

In Eldest, eragon becomes a full grown strong rider. Paolini makes us to smile with his intelligent humour via saphira's sarcasm and euphemisms. Also the romantic plot between Eragon and Arya - the elven princess, begins. Towards the end, eragon comes to know of his parentage as well. Eldest matches eragon in story and writing that it also keeps you engrossed till the end. The worst part is i came to know that Eragon was a trilogy only after completing Eldest :(. The plot was so captivating, that i was shell shocked to find that i have to wait another year for the next part.


Some Cons :

Firstly i am not a very good critic. Yes, as for as fantasy series are concerned i love them regardless of their drawbacks and hence my review would always be skewed. Yet some shortcommings were pretty apparent and palpable in Eragon which i have discussed below.

The character portrayal : This reminds a lot about LOTR. Yes, the elves, dwarfs, magic,there is already a best selling trilogy which i persume everyone would have read or heard. Yet the compromise here is the plot is different though the journey taken by Eragon reminds us of the journey by Freudo baggins. Also to add there is nothing much you can add to the world of magic :).

Second is the characterization of Eragon. One thing which made harry's character in HP popular is inspite of being a wizard, he was vulnerable. Yes, he was not a super strong boy doing wonders, though his acts can be classified as little more than ordinary. Paolini has adopted similar lines to develop the character of Eragon. Inspite of being a rider who have legendary powers, Eragon feels Human.This greatly aids in bonding the character with the reader.

Hmm.. apart from these i can't find anything. As i have said before, my criticism might be biased.

So thats Eragon for you people, Go get a copy today.

In addition i also happened to read Kavya visvanathan's How Opal got kissed got wild and got a life. But then, because of the plagiarism issue, i beleive everyone would have read the reviews or the book as such. I personally feel, the book is worth the hype.