The Meaning Of Paolini
It is most probable that the legacy of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle will be that of derision. I agree with most of the critiques. The florid “purple prose” can be awkward and overtly descriptive, the plot is too derivative of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and that the characters can be either unlikable (Eragon) or bland (Galbatorix). While I think that the original Eragon can make for a brisk and decent read, the later entries were often too bloated with endless description and tedious battle scenes. Which is a shame, because there are some good elements here, such as the concept of werecats, the alliance with the Urgals, the religious traditions of the dwarves, and the cover art by John Jude Palancar. I even grew fond of some of the characters, Saphira with her laconic humor, Nausada having to prove herself at the trial of long knives, Roran’s struggles to lead within the Varden, and Murtagh bearing the chip of his father. I found myself enjoying Roran’s perspective more than Eragon’s. Roran wasn’t a Chosen One with magical powers, so every trial he endured had risk and weight. Murtagh was also interesting with his moral conflicts, but his turn to the Dark Side was poorly executed, being more the result of Galbatorix’s control than of his own decisions. Whatever good can be gleaned from Inheritance is ruined by the bad, particularly the protagonist, whose only distinguishing trait from other Chosen Ones is that he obsessively pines after Arya, even though she’s about as interesting as Padme Amidala. This could work if Eragon grew out of his crush as a sign of maturity, but his dogged persistence strangely gets her growing on him. Paolini certainly isn’t the worst writer I’ve read, and he definitely has talent and passion. He even occasionally hits the mark, with passages like so, “When dawn came, the dragon was sitting atop his bedpost, like an ancient sentinel welcoming the day. Eragon marveled at its color. He had never seen such a clear, hard blue,” but the rest of his writing reads a lot more like this, “Half of the young men gave their frames a vigorous shake when they stepped forward with their right foot, producing a dolorous cacophony of notes, while the other half shook their frames when they advanced upon the left foot, causing iron tongues to crash against iron throats and emit a mournful clamor that echoed over the hills.” What he needs is refinement (and originality). Though to be fair, I’m not particularly fond of much fantasy prose in general. The prologue in George R.R. Martin’s A Game Of Thrones suffers from many of the prose problems I disliked in Paolini. Inheritance is to fantasy what Twilight is to vampires. Fanfiction to impress young readers until they can find more challenging stuff. What needs to be said, however, is that Paolini’s work has a legacy wholly outside of whether or not his work is good.
He inspired many of us to write.
For a lot of us, Eragon rose to popularity while we were in middle school. We had grown up Harry Potter as kids, and the Lord of the Rings films were still fresh in our minds. Many of us began to make up stories ourselves, our imaginations stimulated, but writing a whole book seemed a much too Herculean task. Writing seriously was something far and away, something for adults. What chance did any of us have to produce a worthwhile work? Then one of my teachers told me about a fifteen year old boy named Christopher Paolini, who penned the novel, Eragon, a New York Times bestseller. Then I saw the film, which impressed me, a kid like me thought of all that? I had to read the book, and so I did. Some of my best memories in the otherwise dreary atmosphere of middle school were of sneaking readings of Eragon during class. I was addicted.
I became fascinated by Paolini’s story. He was home schooled, which allowed him to finish high school at only fifteen. I was jealous of him. Paolini was a far superior writer than I at his age. He didn’t have to deal with the nonsense of public school. He already had a book out and was making millions. All of us were anxious, we wanted to be the next Paolini. So we got to it, we got to writing our first drafts. Much of what we did was crap, sure, but nothing else can quite beat the feeling of writing several pages of things that came right out of your head. Much of media surrounding Paolini made his accomplishment seem far more extraordinary than it actually was. Had he not been fortunate enough to have the novelist Carl Hiassen pick up his book (he needed something to entertain his kid), I imagine that Paolini would still be promoting his tale at high schools in full medieval garb. The books were bestsellers, less due to the quality of his writing, and more due to the sweet spot he hit with kids who needed something to hold them over before the next Harry Potter. Had Paolini gone through publishing the traditional way, I think his editors might have pushed him to clean up his prose. Again, there’s talent here, but it’s too undisciplined.
As I became more aware of the similarities that Eragon shared with Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, where the plot went from Eldest onward became glaringly predictable. While I found Brisingr to be fairly entertaining, for all its clunky prose, I found Inheritance to be incredibly frustrating. I put the Inheritance Cycle away, after that, embarrassed that I had ever read them, but there’s nothing to be ashamed about. If anything, Paolini taught us what mistakes to avoid in our own stories. Julie Sondra Decker did for Inheritance what Red Letter Media did for the Star Wars prequels, pointing out, in great detail, how the series fails to craft a compelling narrative and why. Even Anti-Shur’tugal, a site dedicated to critiquing Inheritance, provides plenty of writing advice many otherwise wouldn’t know of had they not read this series.
Paolini’s success, whatever one may make of its quality, was a symbol to a generation of aspiring writers of what we could achieve. He showed us that it could be done, it needed to be done, and we could be the ones to do it. The Inheritance Cycle was an important boost to those of us still unsure if the pen and paper befitted us. And I still hope that he can reach the fullness of his literary potential.
Thanks, Paolini.
