April's Book Club

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Eragon

*Disclaimer: This is the actual discussion for Eragon our first book. If you have not read the book yet and desire to do so, please do not read further into this post for it will contain spoilers to the plot. The comments to this post will be the discussion area as well so you may want to avoid that part also... Happy reading!*
____________________
Eragon was written by Christopher Paolini who was born in 1983. He self published the book with his parents help in 2001. By summer 2002, he had caught the attention of a true publisher who chose to reprint and distribute the book. Therefore, as we have already discussed on other sites, the author was quite young when this was written.

I have to admit that some of the issues I had with the book were due to the skills of our young friend. The opening scenes with the Elf maiden and the shade were, to me, quite jarring. I know that the technique of a story before the story begins is common, but I had truthfully forgotten all about the shade by the time our main character met him in person.

I enjoyed most of the book, I have to admit that I don't understand why the old man didn't just tell Eragon who he was (a former rider). He claimed that it was because Eragon wouldn't have trusted him if he had known... I don't understand that. I mean, if I were a rider and had the possibility of learning from a former rider, I would jump at the chance!

I have to admit that I have one large issue with the novel. That being the lack of dramatic conflict within the dwarf city. I mean, we have this fantastic journey with the climax of the Urgals chasing them into the valley, but once they are safely within the walls of the city, what happens? They explore and basically do nothing interesting for the next 50 pages or so. It just seems to me that he completely lost his direction with that. I mean the final battles for the dwarven city were fantastic (for the most part), but the whole blessing of babies and being famous parts just seemed to lack some of the driving force behind the first two thirds of the book.

Alright, I think that I have written enough for now about the plot or lack thereof. I will leave it here and encourage all of you to jump in within the comments of this post and lets start the discussion!

Posted by April_Mommy :: 12:56 PM :: 5 Comments:

Post a Comment

---------------------------------------

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Discussion Begins

Many of you have asked when we will begin discussing Eragon, our first book club book. Lets start the discussion on Saturday November 18. That will give anyone else who is reading the book a chance to finish. I plan to write a post with my findings and thoughts about the book, then all of us can discuss it within the comments section. That way it won't get too confusing with posts by different people on the same topic. Feel free to make your comments as long or short as you like... We are here for discussion so we don't need to keep them short.

Oh, and I am looking for suggestions on our next book. Perhaps a classic, seeing as we have started off with a popular fiction book. I was thinking of Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (It has been years since I have read that one). Or if you guys have a better suggestion, please by all means tell us! This site is meant to be a discussion, it is not just my site, its all of our site. :-)

Posted by April_Mommy :: 11:09 AM :: 3 Comments:

Post a Comment

---------------------------------------