After writing my last book review on the final book in the Eragon series, I want to write this month’s on the first book, Eragon itself. Eragon was one of the first over-one-hundred-page books I really got into, and because of that the whole series holds a special place in my heart, but especially Eragon itself. It starts off very normal and not at all like a fantasy novel normally does. Other than it being set in a make-believe world, there is nothing special going on with the main characters and their lives. Eragon and his cousin live with their uncle on a small piece of land a few miles away from a small village. They are very poor and don’t have a whole lot going on in their lives. Shortly into the book Eragon finds a weird, big blue rock that for some unknown reason he decides to keep in his room for a little while but then he wants to sell it because his family is very poor and on the verge of starving. Anyway, he can’t sell the egg because a dragon pops out and his whole world turned upside down. For a little while he is able to hide his new dragon, Saphira, but she becomes too big, and a group of bad guys come to his house, burn it down and kill his uncle. His cousin decides to join the army because he’s sad and doesn’t really have a home anymore, Eragon meets up with this old hermit who (SPOILER) turns out to be his long lost father in a later book (but he dies too) and begins his journey of learning and becoming the newest and only surviving Dragon Rider.
So, despite this whole book of around eight hundred pages being just one big set up for the rest of the series, it’s extremely good. As I’ll repeat from my last review, Paolini is one of my favorite writers, even though these books are pretty much the only things he’s ever written, or at least published. I often stray away from writing fantasy, even though it is, embarrassingly, one of my favorite genres because world building is such a daunting task. Paolini manages to bring this whole world into your mind and not make anything too confusing. Of course, there are points to where you’re not really sure what’s going on or who is who, but he was very in depth with his world-making and nothing stays in the shadows for too long, unless he wants it to. Overall, because I’m biased, I give this book a 10/10, would read many times again.
