If I didn’t know before I picked up the book that it was written by a teenager, I might have been less impressed. This has all been done before, and if written by an adult, I would have found this book to be simply copying ideas that have been popular in many other fantasy books. However, I found the story line to be compelling, and the characters developed enough to get me to look past my initial bias. I did not expect something written by a teenager to be this good a read.

This book includes a big blue dragon, elves, dwarfs, and a battle between good and evil. It includes an army of Urgs and an evil almost immortal tyrant of a king. It reminded me very much of Tolkien’s epic series The Lord of The Rings in many ways, especially since the front of the book includes a map of this world that Paolini created, and the book itself has characters speaking in ancient dwarven or elven languages, and using powerful words of magic. The back of the book includes a glossary to help the reader remember just what all these made up words and phrases are supposed to mean.

You can find this book in the teen or young adult section of bookstores, and sometimes in the children’s section of libraries. I would not call this a kids book, however. Parts of it are extremely dark and evil. Main characters are beaten up, tortured, even killed. There is a scene where the Urgs massacre an entire town, and Eragon comes upon a pile of dead bodies of the murdered townspeople. On the top is a pike with a dead baby sticking on it. I still can’t get that scene out of my head. I wouldn’t recommend that young children read this book.

The story starts out with Eragon, who is about fourteen or fifteen, out hunting for food for his family. He finds a large blue rock, and takes it home, thinking it might be valuable to trade for food. Instead, the rock turns out to be a dragon egg. Eragon bonds with the baby dragon, and becomes a dragon rider. This event also drags Eragon into a whole world of politics and danger that he never knew existed. Other characters tell him bits and pieces of what it means to be a dragon rider now, and why he is in danger. His fate has been set, and he cannot simply refuse or avoid it. Eragon grows as the story goes on, and faces some really tough choices and bloody battles. To say anything more would be giving away too much of the story.

This book ends, but the story does not. This is the first part of the Inheritance Trilogy. The second book is called Eldest, and I was interested enough in Eragon to want to see what happens next for him and his friends. The third book, as far as I have been able to find out, might be called Inheritance, and there is no specific release date set. I do know there are many, many readers wanting to see how it all will end.

The copy of Eragon I read was a paperback with a picture from the movie on the cover, and some pictures from the movie included inside. For each review I heard praising how great Eragon the book was, I heard two saying that the movie was terrible. For that reason, I have not watched the movie. One thing I found strange though, was that in the book, there is a elven character named Arya, who is constantly being described as having long dark hair, and wearing dark leather pants and armor. The pictures of the actress playing Arya in the movie shows a red-haired girl, wearing an almost white dress. So, clearly, something is amiss with the movie version of Eragon.

In short, adult fans of Tolkien will enjoy reading Eragon. Most people are finding it very frustrating to have to wait indefinitely for the third and final book in the trilogy to appear.