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Summary: What a great new fantasy novel
Review: I am not a big fantasy novel person, but this book really grabbed me. It is funny in parts and has a great line of characters that anyone can identify with. There is a tremendous background history for this stories plot which makes this book interesting for more mature readers. This novel is a cross between Lord of the Rings and Star Wars with a little Harry Potter thrown in. The combination makes for a great read. I cannot wait for the second installment in this trilogy. Good job on your first novel, Christopher Paolini.
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Summary: Outstanding!!!!!!
Review: I read this and I have to say it was by far the BEST BOOK I EVER READ!!!!!! How could anyone NOT love this!! Compared to this, Lord of the Rings S-T-I-N-K-S!!!I can't wait for Eldest! Keep it up chris!
Rating: 
Summary: Stay Away
Review: My recommendation for this book: stay away. My 12 year old son is a huge fantasy fan, so I bought this for him after hearing all the hype. He gave it back to me after reading about 100 pages and asked if it was too late to return it for our money back. I figured it couldn't be that bad, so I began reading iti myself. It is. This book is simply poorly written, horribly derivative of quite a few other fantasy titles (I used to read a lot of fantasy to my son when he was younger), and simply not a very good story. I'm glad so many other people seem to like it (although I'm stumped as to what they see in it). I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone however.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible book
Review: This book is horrible. Don't waste your money. I'd rather read a matchbook than this travesty. HOW did this get published? Is the vast majority of the fantasy fan reader-base REALLY that stupid that they'd give this steaming pile of offal 5 stars? I fear for our future as a nation.
Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: A friend recommended this to me, but I must confess, I wasn't really impressed. The storyline was nearly identical to "The Lord of the Rings" with a bit of J. K. Rowling mixed in. I found Saphira's character to be flat and lackluster to say the least. Her conversations with Eragon seemed forced and unbelievable. Overall, I felt Mr. Paolini took the classic Tolkien triology and simply changed the names a bit.
Rating: 
Summary: Eragon
Review: Paolini was fifteen years old when he began writing this book. This shows. The writing style is immature, and the tone is inconsistant. At one point, he will speak in almost medieval syntax, in the tone of a story of knights and dragons, and in the next, in the tone of a fifteen year old boy speaking with his friends. In addition, the main character bears a remarkable to the author, and the novel frequently refers to how close he is to 'manhood'. His references to women are frequently demeaning. This is a teenage boy's published daydreams of heroism and beautiful women indebted to him, because he will never achieve what he writes. It is not epic or grand or even uniqe. This novel would be a waste of your earnings.
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Summary: Completely unoriginal
Review: This book is completely unoriginal! I am sorry to say but there are just to many similarities between this and Lord of the Rings. He also takes ideas from a number of other books. I suggest to other readers to save their money and pass this one by. If your bored just reread Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.
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Summary: Review from a book lover
Review: (Calling everyone who gave this book a bad review) I cant believe you dont like this book. The plot line was terrific with a blend of action adventure and romance. As if the ancient language wasnt enough the guide at the end of the book was a touch of brilliance.
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Summary: This book is Auful
Review: This book was so over hyped it's crazy. Let me be honest with you, it was written by a 15 year old... and it READS like it was written by a 15 year old. There's nothing amazing here other than that he actually got published. The name of the book "Eragon" is a plagiarism by itself! Ever head the name "Aragorn" before? Sound similar by coincidence? The main theme of the book is the "Dragon Riders" So we know the kid read "The Lord of the Rings" and "Dragonlance" before he started. I'll not go on... there's no point. The book is bad. I'm sure when he's 40 he'll be a great writer, but that's 20 years away. Don't waste your money on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Mythic, but perhaps too much so.
Review: Everyone here seems to be extremely divided in their views of this book, and I'm afraid I fall in the dislike camp. Okay, let's start with the plot. I must admit it is quite enjoyable, if you are in such unlikely circumstances that you are both inclined to like fantasy, and have not read most of the modern classics in said genre; or, perhaps, you have to have read enough awfully-written stories to know cliches when you see them. Basically, Eragon embarks upon a quest for revenge against shadow forces he doesn't know much about, but which will undoubtedly have something to do with his 'mysterious past.' While most people mention fantasy books as inspiration, I find Eragon's plot more reminiscent of Star Wars than of anything else. There's the dead order of peace-keepers with amazing powers, the main character's mysterious past (Who's his father? He doesn't know!), the magical power, the old man with long-dead secrets of the past, which of course he teaches to this headstrong youth without really bothering about whether he's _good_ or not, and most tellingly, the destruction of the boy's farm and death of his uncle, which in both Star Wars and Eragon sets the main character off on a quest of revenge. Just thank heaven there's no C3P0... In terms of concepts, there are very few original ideas, either. Paolini draws from Tolkien's works, not just Lord of the Rings but background materials as well, and, I am told, Anne McCaffrey's (sorry if I misspelled that) Pern books. Personally, I can't stand McCaffrey's writing, which is why I can't speak for myself on that one. Anyway, all of the races are almost exactly the same, down to the origins of the elves across the sea (Tolkien came up with that one, folks!); while Urgals and the Ra'zac are original, as far as I know, they are shadily described. Indeed, the Urgals always remind me of the Knights who say Ni, a la Monty Python, which rather kills their potential as villans. Paolini attempts to make his world original and fresh by adding in what he seems to think is his own idea, judging by the care he takes in explaining it: an ancient language, a true language, with magical power. Unfortunately, his implementation of this idea has two flaws: 1) lacking a proper knowledge of the mechanics of language, he has created a set of _words_ with absolutely no grammar involved, so that to get across a complex idea you have to smoosh words together and hope that it works; and 2) the words seem to have been created by randomly pounding on the keyboard, and adding vowels where he thought them necessary. They're not unpronouncible, as this has created a tongue with a phonology similar to Russian, or perhaps closer to Czech; but I doubt that was intentional, as my high school is one in, I think, a little over fifty in the United States that actually teaches Russian. 'Brisingr' is a word that simply could not exist in any Romance or Germanic language, and, as I said, I doubt that Chris Paolini put much thought into making his language original (even Tolkien, a philologist, only used harsh Slavic sounds in his black speech, the tongue of evil) when all the rest of his work has little or no thought in that area. Originality, I mean. One more thing. Eragon is grammatically correct throughout, a fact for which I am thankful, but shows distinct signs of having been written by a ten-year-old - and yes, I know the author was fifteen at the time of publishing. So what? I'm sixteen, and I can still vary my sentence structure. Learning to do so was an integral part of my 7th grade English education! All of Eragon's sentences are short, less than a line long, and generally begin with either an article (a or the) or the subject of said sentence; occasionally you'll find another adjective there instead, if you're lucky. I have not noticed a single subordinate clause in the entire book, and have been appalled at the blatant lack of semicolons. Semicolons! What is the world coming to, if people can say a story without semicolons is worth reading? Still, Eragon did wonders as light, mindless reading material - besides, of course, the choppy writing style inherent in a book with uniform sentence structure and a dearth of semicolons - and so, rather than a one, I give it two stars out of five.
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