Liz Rosenberg had it right when she wrote, in her 2003 review of Christopher Paolini's novel Eragon, that it's difficult to approach the book without certain preconceptions: the author's age is almost impossible to ignore.  The story is old hat to any modern fantasy fan: Paolini began writing Eragon, book one of the Inheritance cycle (of which Eldest is the most recent volume, with Brisingr set for a September 2008 release), when he was 15 years old.  Four years later, in 2003, the novel had been acquired by Knopf and Paolini became a New York Times bestselling author.   Needless to say, I was impressed before I cracked the spine -- thus the problem of preconceptions.

Eragon was published as a work of young adult fiction; as such, it's tempting to judge it by young adult standards.  Add to that the temptation to judge Paolini's abilities according to his age at the series' inception and one finds that the deck is heavily stacked in the author's favor before the reader even turns a page.  Trust me, I was tempted.  I was tempted to lead a proverbial parade in Paolini's favor, praising to the skies his nascent creativity and holding his story up as an example to America's troubled youth: Write!  Create!  Wallow no more in the television's equivocal glow!  But though the reading world may still view Mr. Paolini as a precocious teen, he is now 24 years old, an adult writing a teenager's story.  He still sees himself as a writer of young adult fiction, but his intelligence and the insightful manner in which he has been known to talk about his work demand a more mature critique.  With that in mind, I have chosen to give him no quarter.  I will review his work as an adult reader and as an artistic endeavor now continued by an adult writer, whatever his age may have been at the start.  Though I find Eragon itself to be above all a derivative work, so to speak, it is clear that Paolini's heart is in the right place.

In the spirit of the Bard's ongoing reviews of older works, let's take a look back at the book that gave Potter a run for its middle school money.