I'm a sucker for dragons

[bibliogramma]

And this is at least in part why i'm reading boy genius Christopher Paolini's saga about dragons and elves and dwarves and evil overlords and secret pasts and just about every other well-known and frequently-used trope in the fantasy business. (But no unicorns, at least not yet!)

I read Eragon when it first came out, thanks to my partner's mother, who does not really have a clear sense of what I enjoy reading but on very rare occasions does manage to give me something that I find readable.

I think the main things in the first book that kept me interested were Angela the herbalist, who is one of those fairly standard aburpt, gruff and cryptic pronouncement characters, but it's much more fun when they're women, and Saphira the dragon, becasue not a lot of people write female dragons, especially as main characters.

So I just finished the second book in the series, Eldest.

The loading on of overly-familiar tropes, from the "I am your father, Luke" moment to the "what do you mean, you're the heir to the throne?" moment, continues unabated. But one thing I will say about young master Paolini (I suppose I should let go of that - he's now of an age with many other writers just beginning their careers) is that he doesn't mind surrounding his boy-hero with powerful women and letting them actually do important stuff that sometimes even involves them telling him what to do becasue they know more, or are in positions of power. This is a book that passes the Bechdel Test.

And there's this scene where Saphira gets drunk that is just wonderful, because, how often does somebody write about a drunken dragon?

Comments

[evil-macaroni.livejournal.com]

I limped through _Eragon_ and by the end of it I was hating Paolini for his overly linear story filled with Stupid Hero Actions. I got rid of the book immediately thereafter - not a common thing for me to do, considering I normally hang onto my books until I have to buy new bookshelves. Was _Eldest_ any improvement? Certainly I might consider checking it out of the library for a drunk dragon scene :)
And what is the Bechdel Test?

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Alas, if you couldn't stomach Eragon, I fear that Eldestwon't last long on your shelf either.

It's not really any better, and the drunk dragon scene is very short, while the rest of the book is very long.

The Bechdel Test is so called becasue it appeared in Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip, and it originally was applied to movies.

The test, as outlined in the comic strip, was something that a movie had to pass before one of the characters would go see it. The particulars of the test are:

The movie must
1. Have at least two women in it, who
2. Talk to each other, about
3. Something besides a man.

Eldest has a number of women who talk to each other about many things, like their own cirsunstances, their relationships to each other, battle strategy, and such like - although everyone does spend a lot of time talking about Eragon because he is the Boy Hero with a Great Destiny.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Although the Rule originally appeared in a comic by Alison Bechdel, it was invented by her friend Liz Wallace.

You can see the original strip here:
http://alisonbechdel.blogspot.com/2005/08/rule.html

[indongcho.livejournal.com]

Is the boy genius part sarcasm?

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Kind of, yeah. ;-)

I mean, Eragon was pretty well-written for a 14-year old, or however old he was. Although none of us knows just how much editorial help he had in getting the manuscript to that level, either from his parents or from professionals.

[indongcho.livejournal.com]

Given that I'm the same age as Paolini was when he completed Eragon (seventeen) I'm not inclined to cut him much slack.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd read somewhere that he was 14. Maybe that's how old he was when he started writing it.

Certainly, once someone is submitting their work to the public, age becomes irrelevent and quality is what counts.

Which may be part of why the "boy genius" thing bothered me. It was how the book was marketed, the "hook," and I really don't want to care about how old the author is, just how good the work is.

Still, there's stuff I enjoyed in it. I've got a soft spot for dragons, you see.