Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Eragon Update
Speaking of Eragon, as I was (Sort of. Tangentially.) in the previous post, I'm about halfway through it, and it's not bad. It's not great, and it's probably not even good, but it's servicable fantasy, and I've certainly read
worse.
I feared it would be as big of a rip off as
its detractors say, but while it's not original, and most of the elements of magic, dragons, the world at large, etc, are certianly derivative, at least they're not
outright recreations.
I don't have any huge complaints so far; just lots of nitpicks. For example:
A lot of the dialogue is very flat and lectur-y. Not at all how real people talk, and way too, "Let me explain exactly how I feel in one short sentence." It's an immature writing style, and I mean that more in terms of the writer's experience than his age. I've read plenty of work by much older writers that makes the same mistake.
The lack of originality is a problem, and it seems very avoidable. The world is basically Tolkien's Middle Earth, with some of MacCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern grafted on, and magic heavily-influenced by LeGuin's Earthsea novels. Humans dominate the world and there are secretive, noble, and powerful elves, but they're fading away and seldom seen these days. Dwarves exist also, but are even more hidden away in their mountains. Evil orc-type monsters are massing and rampaging over the isolated human villages. Etc. Why not throw in a fourth non-monster race? Or make the dwarves be wood elves or something, rather than cut and pasting in short, bearded, mine-digging guys? Why not makes the elves be flighty and silly, or scheming and evil? Anything, just to break out of the Tolkien blueprint.
Christopher Piolini can't write dramatic scenes or emotion very well (yet?) so every time something that should be awesome happens, it's just sort of book reported on. It's very "telling" rather than "showing," as the old writer's mantra goes. We see the hero teenager falling down and sobbing when someone he loves dies, but we feel no emotion. We read about him running from a monster, but we don't really sense his fear, or his triumph when he slays a foe. Etc. I can't really say what is missing from his telling of such scenes, and I would have hated to hear this when I was a young writer, but maybe he just needs some more life experience. At 16 or 17 (his age when he wrote this novel) I didn't have enough first hand knowledge of such emotions, or the maturity to convincingly work them into words. I'm not entirely sure I do now, for that matter.
The main problem stems from the unorginality and lack of emotional intensity in the writing, and it's that I don't feel involved in things. I'm interested in the plot and the characters, but it's purely a "What's going to happen next?" sort of interest. I don't have an emotional connection to anyone, and I don't really care what they do. I think this is largely because the characters don't really feel alive to me; they're just people I'm reading about. It's holding my interest, but not compelling me to read very quickly, and I could stop right now and read an outline of the novel from some online FAQ and feel I'd gotten almost as much out of it as if I'd continued reading it myself. I'd rather read the book itself, and I'm going to finish it, but I'm not feeling much urgency to do so.
Perhaps things will pick up, though. The adventures have hardly even begun, and the stage is being set for an interesting series of confrontations through the remainder of the trilogy.
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