So, what class is Eragon?Follow

He's a dragoon. That's my opinion and I'm standing by it. Dragoons need a star character.

Shammadin, but better known as a Gary Stu.

Eragon is just another generic fantasy novel, I don't understand why it gets any more attention than any other generic fantasy novel.

I personally don't liek Tolkien, but I can see why others do.

Tolkien isn't just generic fantasy, he put a large amount of effort into his works and they have an incredible amount of detail.

Eragon I don't udnerstand. I could go to the fantasy section of the library and any book I would pick out would be as well written and with a story along the same lines as it. My only guess is that it gets more attention because the author wrote it starting at 15 (and I believe ending at 19?)

I don't think that is a bad guess either. Have you heard of the child who's crayon art sells for thousands of dollars? It's good stuff for the kid's age, but really now).

not to hijack the thread, but have any of you read George R.R. Martin? i think most fantasy is crap, aside from The Lord of the Rings, but Martin's books are by far the best written fantasy ive ever read outside of Tolkien...and they come close to good old J.R.R. Even the major critics are noticing, as it got a full spread in Time a couple months back.

I forget the particular name of the series, only that 4 books have been published so far...A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and one other.

Check it out, you won't be disappointed. The depth and immersion and sheer inventiveness and plot twists are incredible.

DRG/RDM. Low level.

Actually, I couldn't finish Tolkein's books, either. They were too wordy and trite to me - the characters weren't defined very well and I usually found myself wondering who was speaking and what exactly they were trying to convey with their abundant purple prose. Then again, he is the creator of the genre and worked very hard, so you have to give him the respect he deserves. I think I liked The Hobbit when I was a kid, too.

Tolkein also had other motives as Delily somewhat eluded to - he wanted to give the english a sense of lore and mythology similar to that that his mother country had i.e. the Norse/Germanic mythology. Hence the detail and the research. IMO he is a little overblown in his prose but you have to consider the time he was writing in and the fact he was a professor of anglo-saxon english at Oxford.

edit: before someone corrects me I added germanic. He was of course born in the UK but of germanic heritage

Edited, Nov 30th 2006 10:46am by dashwoe

Saying that Tolkein's novels were generic is like saying that Sherlock Holmes is generic. (Hint: Both of these established an entire literary archetype). The fact that everything _after_ that work in large part copies and borrows from the originater doesn't make it generic.

As to Eragon, he is very clearly a Mary Sue. Don't get me wrong - 90% of what makes Fantasy novels fun is some form of wish fulfillment/escapism, but there has to be some kind of a limit beyond which the fantasy novel is a little too... Mary Sue-ish.

Thanks for the Mary Sue reference. I've noticed that trend but never realized that there was a term for those types of characters or characterizations.

Reminds me of the guy from 'Transporter 2' and all the eye-rolling i did while watching it. Flipping an Audi into the air to knock a 12x12" bomb off its bottom with a crane's hook? yeah right. i guess the same could apply for a lot of the anime stuff I've seen, with too-perfect heroes like kenshin.