eragon

I finished reading Eragon today. It's a very good book, and I highly recommend it. The wife and I saw the movie version in December, and I could tell from the movie that there was a very good story behind it, but unfortunately not enough of the good stuff ended up in the movie.

I remember that when I first saw Eragon during one of my post-Costco-hotdog-kill-some-time-before-nannyfest-institute trips to the store, I thought it was just another attempt at cashing in on Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings mania. My friend Melissa later recommended it to me, and since we often have very similar taste in books, I decided to read it.

The story keeps a good pace, the plot is complex enough that I never get bored, and the writing was simple enough to easily follow even on a crowded smelly train full of people. I have almost no ability to use my imagination, but this book's descriptiveness was better than most at helping me see the story in my mind's eye. It also had a lot of little quirky bits of imagery thrown in for fun, and I could tell that the author could distinctly see everything he wrote about. It was a well crafted story, and very well written.

My only complaint is that Eragon was constantly losing consciousness. He overexerts himself using magic, he passes out. He's battling someone(s), he always finds some way to get knocked out. He and the dragon fly too high, he passes out. Over and over again the guy is constantly losing consciousness. Lucky for him he has a dragon and a bunch of magic friends to help him out in such situations!