Eragon

Students, and really so many, like the sci-fi journey stories.  Mix dwarves, elves, dragons, the secret treasure, and the old wise elder helping the young “upstart” and you have Eragon by Christopher Paolini.  The neat thing of this book is that it was originally written when the author was 15 years old!  The problem with this book is that it reads a GREAT deal like all of the books of this genre that we all have read before… Lord of the Rings, Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Left Hand of Darkness, and Dune.  In this book, it is a story of the journey of a young orphan boy (Eragon) who discovers a stone (or so he thinks) that later hatches! And out comes a dragon named Sapharia!  Once the evil ruler King Galbatroix finds out that Eragon has his dragon, he sends his servants to capture Eragon.  And now the battle begins!  Eragon and Saphira are befriended by the village elder, a dwarf named Brom.  The two have multiple battles and near captures (until they are), and even an escape or two.  A lot of action packed in this thriller where Eragon comes of “age” to become the young man able to stand up to the evil King and his cast of characters desiring the capture of what he believes is due to him.  Of course in a story like this the elder gets killed at the worst possible time and Eragon is on his own to take what he learned from his mentor and defend himself against the monarch.  Does Eragon win?  Hey, this is a trilogy, how would I know?  Not my favorite of the various fantasy/adventure type stories.  I received a number of tweets from RAs saying it was a favorite childhood read, so maybe this book has passed my time and I should have read it many decades ago….