I should really stop reading reviews of movies/books. I just watched Eragon and to be very honest with you, I enjoyed it. I've always been a sucker for fantasy kind of stuff and this was pretty good for my tastes.
The end of the movie hinted to a sequel, so I went searching for information on it. I discovered that Eragon was the first book in a planned trilogy called Inheritance, and was written by a 17 year old. In turn, I searched for info on the actual books, however, what I also found was that many of the reviews of the book and it's sequel, Eldest, were very poor.
A lot of it sounds like sour grapes because a kid got a book (or two) published and has a movie to his name and they didn't, but they make some points. Basically the main gist of the poor reviews were that the author 'steals' the concepts from many different fantasy authors and uses them in his own books with very little originality.
Ok, so I might not be a fantasy guru or whatever, but none of that occurred to me at all while watching the movie. Sure, watching the movie is one thing, reading the book is another, but I'm highly cautious about reading the book now from reading all the reviews. There is also doubt that the sequel movie will be made (ala Alien vs Predator). I should just borrow it from the library and make my own mind up.
- Reviewers should be shot
bovinator- March 19th, 2007
annoyed
I've been trying to get my hands on both Eragon and Eldest for quite some time now. There's a dual-hardcover box-set that I'd dearly love, but it's quite expensive. Now that the soft-covers are out, I'm trying to buy those, since they're much cheaper and I can only assume I will enjoy the books, I don't know I will.
It's true he was 17 when he started, but from reading his website he's done quite a lot of planning to get to this stage. Obviously he's older now, so I can only assume his writing will improve, especially with the third book. And put it this way - your book doesn't become a major motion picture if a substantial number of people don't like it. So there's got to be SOMETHING decent about it.
Either way, reviews are not going to stop my buying the books, nor seeing the film eventually. In fact, I don't think I've read one review on either product I intend to buy. Money is never wasted on books, and it's not like films are expensive to see... who cares, in the end? :)
.:Dominitus:.
I found the storyline to be simple, aimed more at children than adults, no dual levels of understanding as are in many good children/adult books.
If you have read the Pern series, or any Tolkien then you can see similarities, or at least I did.
Not to say it was a bad book, but more in the age bracket of the Narnia series rather than your adult fantasy.
Of course, that is just my opinion ;)