I read this book when I was in middle school, many and many a moon ago. This book had everything my eleven-year-old heart called for: adventure, traveling, beautiful princesses, dragons. Everyone else had read LOTR (we were an ambitious middle school) but I just couldn't get into the fancy prose and narration - Paolini's Eragon was so much more easy to read and enjoyable because of it. The next year, the second book came out - and I snapped that up voraciously. But by the time the third book was announced, I had forgotten everything that had happened in both books (an amazing feat for someone who could recall events in books I'd read in first grade even in high school).

And re-reading Eragon, I can totally see why. This is not a memorable addition to the fantasy genre - it is neither very bad nor very good. The things that happen are things I have read (and myself written when I was around Paolini's age) numerous times before. He does nothing to buck the tropes of the fantasy genre. There's a beautiful elven princess that Eragon lusts after but doesn't deserve: she's everything a mortal woman cannot be (super-powerful, super-beautiful, super-graceful and all-around perfect) and yet will clearly fall in love with him as this series continues. The entire Varden rallies around Eragon without really knowing who he is and where he comes from. Paolini sets certain characters up to be "bad guys" - Murtagh is clearly one, The Twins another - and while their evil intentions aren't revealed in Eragon I can just see it coming from a mile away. The author is a clear fan of "tell, don't show." Is this character the love interest? Better make her a beautiful princess with magical powers and sword-fighting abilities better than everyone else's and not a single physical or emotional flaw in her. Is this character a bad guy? Better spend all our time telling the readers about how Eragon's flesh crawls just looking at them or how Eragon and Saphira don't know what to believe.

Eragon is by far the worst part of it. He just simply lacks a backbone. The whole book, he is acted upon: by Saphira's egg, by Brom's tutelage, by Angela and Solenbaum's prophesy and general weirdness, by Arya as she lays dormant, etc, etc. Even his great big battle at the end is brought about because the Shade, Durza, goes looking for him (and I think the Twins lured him to that spot alone, but that is neither confirmed nor denied at the end of this book). That entire fight scene, Eragon is reacting - or not reacting, in the case of his new-found scar. Yet even as Eragon is passively shuffled from point to point, he spends a lot of time whining and wondering about how much power he can exert. Listen. If I had a megalithic dragon perched under my bony little butt, I definitely would be making hardcore decisions from the gate - especially when those decisions are vital to my survival. But Eragon can't handle whether or not he'll become a part of the Varden until he's, oh, twenty pages away from stumbling into their mountain. He'll dither about the slave trade and how Galbatorix treats the Common Man, but decide to actively take up arms against him? Psht. Clearly too much effort. Even the dragon was rolling her eyes and snorting over Eragon's complete inability to decide what he was going to do.

Angela is definitely one of my favorite characters. I know she's a woman, but I feel like she would wear a curly, Salvidor Dali-type mustache if she could grow one. Who else would wear funky-looking armor and tell fortunes with dragon bone runes? Likewise, Saphira the dragon has quite a bit of sass in her pants, when she's allowed to show it. Jeod also peeked my interest. Life spent secretly shipping supplies on the open seas to your kingdom's arch-enemy must be deathly exciting. Besides which, what about his friendship with Brom? Will his wife ever be satisfied or is she going to divorce his butt? Why is it that most of the side characters are more interesting than the protagonist and his love interest?

Reading this book is like putting on a cozy pair of slippers. Your mind is nowhere near to being blown. Nothing has changed: the women are stereotypically "strong girls" (meaning they have to be distant and cool and need to faint at least once before the series is done and/or be saved by a man); the main protagonist has made no real mistakes that have led to deep soul-searching and final triumph on the side of good; the main protagonist's daddy is probably the evil king Galbatorix AND HOW DO YOU FIGHT YOUR OWN FATHER? People love these kinds of books because they are comfortable - you know what's going to happen, even when it's a whole new setting with a whole new cast. For me, though, I want to see a book where the girl gets a dragon (and kicks butt, no fainting allowed), or the main protagonist initially falls for the comforts of serving the bad guy before having an attack of his/her guilty conscience, or SOMETHING. Just...something NEW. However, if you like the fantasy genre and like the general tropes and want to see a whole new way of having them, you'll really love this book.

PS. I do plan on continuing through this series because I hope it picks up with Brisingr but thus far, I want to know what eleven-year-old me was thinking.