Christopher Paolini

Christopher Paolini: The Dragonriding Lord of the Star Wars

If you enjoy fantasy without a single original component, purple prose and hilariously homoerotic moments with hairless groins, this is the author for you. God help you, you crazy bastard.

This is one of the more prominent fantasy series of recent years, mainly because it's... well, it's one of those fantasy stories that has maybe one or two characters or elements who aren't somehow ripped off or copied or "very strongly inspired." It's the tale of a simple farm boy (drink) who is introduced to his great destiny (drink) by a strange old man (drink) and must romance a beautiful elf lady (drink) and join the noble resistance (drink) against an evil overlord (drink). I'd describe more, but I'm very drunk now.

This is a wild composite of all sorts of beloved sci-fi/fantasy stories like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Dragonriders of Pern, etc. Which doesn't automatically doom a story... but when the hero is a sociopath, the moral lessons are either dumb or offensive, and the author has a tendency to throw anything cool they can think of into the mix...

Eragon - A humble farm boy whose family is killed off sets off on a great quest to discover that he alone can save the galaxy far far away... I mean, GenericMedievalLand. Damn, this sounds familiar. Eldest - Eragon spends the entire book doing yoga, staring at ants, and whining because he has a backache. Meanwhile, his cousin Roran is crazy but people still listen to him. Brisingr - Nothing much happens, really. Except more Star Wars moments, making bread, "heroic" genocide and the silliest Disney wedding on record. Inheritance - The story finally ends with a clash between evil and slightly more evil. A new secondary villain is introduced, Eragon continues doing random shit around the Varden camp, and Paolini actually surprises us with a few plot twists.

 The Movie 

Eragon - The Movie - An adaptation of the first movie, which is comically bad. "I suffer without my stone!"