bricolage! pastiche! postmodern bollocks!
Saturday, 15 July 2006 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtJust for your weekend: a deeply uncomplimentary review of the last novel I read. Because I have to get this off my chest, the teeth-grinding is beginning to annoy me.
Christopher Paolini's Eragon is a young adult fantasy which has been fairly successful - it was aNew York Sunday Times bestseller, and they're about to make a movie version. While the movie is vaguely explicable in terms of its attempt to ride the LotR/HP wave, I am at a loss to account for the success of the novel itself. Eragon is about a boy and his dragon. The novel has elves, dwarves and orc-equivalents (more or less straight out of Tolkien, including the bigger, stronger elite orc-type), a tradition of dragon-riders (more or less straight out of Anne McCaffery) and a system of magic based on the true name for things in the original language (i.e. directly cribbed from Earthsea). The story is flat and fairly predictable, riddled with further cliché, including Evil Kings, Tortured Heirs and the self-sacrificing death of the Wise Older Mentor Figure. In short, it makes Raymond E. Feist look original. Also, while I cannot say that the writing style is particularly bad, I certainly can't say it's any good.
I am saddened, shocked and depressed to think that this particular little effort in plagiaristic postmodern meaninglessness should have been so successful. It's unbearable to think that there's a whole generation of readers who could grow up thinking that this is what fantasy is all about, or that the perpetrator of this wholesale snitch actually had an idea in his head. Woe.
Mother arrived safely yesterday, and I have actually caught up on sleep after Thursday's shockingly bad night (too much Thai food, too much wine, too much headache, 2 hours sleep). Since my mother is the courier of choice for my Amazon orders, I am pleased to report that I now possess the complete DVD collections of both Buffy and Angel and most of the Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli output. Get 'em while they're hot, people: Buffy and Angel currently under 18 pounds on Amazon, and cheaper at Amazon Jersey.
Christopher Paolini's Eragon is a young adult fantasy which has been fairly successful - it was a
I am saddened, shocked and depressed to think that this particular little effort in plagiaristic postmodern meaninglessness should have been so successful. It's unbearable to think that there's a whole generation of readers who could grow up thinking that this is what fantasy is all about, or that the perpetrator of this wholesale snitch actually had an idea in his head. Woe.
Mother arrived safely yesterday, and I have actually caught up on sleep after Thursday's shockingly bad night (too much Thai food, too much wine, too much headache, 2 hours sleep). Since my mother is the courier of choice for my Amazon orders, I am pleased to report that I now possess the complete DVD collections of both Buffy and Angel and most of the Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli output. Get 'em while they're hot, people: Buffy and Angel currently under 18 pounds on Amazon, and cheaper at Amazon Jersey.
