posted
How does everyone feel about Eragon? I read it once before, when a friend recommended it, and I was kind of interested but bothered by something. Upon further reading, it just seems like the dialogue and characters in the story are incredibly off. It's like, in the dialogue, the author is just giving us examples of what we should be wondering. Some of it is just painful. I don't really want to spoil anything about it, but (being a fantasy) there is magic in the series, and one of the characters asks another about magic and says something like, "So I could heal an arm? Wait, if I could heal an arm, could I raise the dead?". It just seems like the dialogue is very forced and the characters are quasi-unrealistic. Anybody else have any comments? I don't want it to seem like I hate the book, it's a pretty cool adventure, and I'll definitely read the sequel, but I was just wondering what y'all thought...
Posts: 193 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
you describe my reaction to the dialogue really well. The story's pretty good, and I'll probably read the sequel when it comes out (if it hasn't already). My feeling was that, for a fantasy set in some ancient time, the dialogue seemed far too...modern, I guess. It kinda left me cold.
It shows promise, I think. The writer's like, nineteen or something. He just needs to work on it.
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Here's a question about fantasy -- why do authors feel the need to use pseudo-medieval language in fantasy? Yeah, some fantasy takes place in the past. But most doesn't. Most take place in completely fictional universes.
It's kinda like my annoyance with amature celtic music -- everybody expects you to sing with an Irish or Scottish accent when singing traditional celtic songs.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Yeah, I'm not trying to knock the project at all. I was just taken aback in some cases where the characters would unjustifiably freak out and get mad, and then just as easily accept some noncommital answer...
Posts: 193 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Never read Erogon myself (Description sounded corny). But Amazon suggested it to me based on my other purchases, and since i didnt know what to get my brother for christmas I sent it to him. He swares up and down to me it's the best piece of litterature he's ever read. Though seeing as he's Mormon I dont doubt it.
Posts: 63 | Registered: Aug 2005
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That's what I'm saying porteiro head. The story takes place in a fictionally....I guess it'd be like the 16-18 century time-frame. Much like LoTR. And sometimes it's believable, sometimes it isn't. The most vexing part is that the people will be upset, and then almost instantly sated for no apparant reason. It's a pretty cool story, the dialogue just drives knives into my head at a painful rate...
Posts: 193 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I thought it was an interesting story...but it wasn't written very well. You could tell that it was written by an amateur. Even so, it was good enough that I preordered the sequel from amazon (though only because it was in my gold box for 12 bucks).
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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I liked it when I read it, and am looking foward to the sequel. I don't remember dialogue and things though.
Posts: 879 | Registered: Apr 2005
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It read like much of my writing from that age -- that is to say, like a mish-mash of ideas borrowed from every other fantasy book I'd read, with a few original thoughts poorly blended in. It's impressive that he finished something of that length -- I certainly never came close -- and I think there's signs he could be a decent author when he's had more practice (if he gets past the egoism often brought on by premature fame), but I never managed to make it more than half way through the first book.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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My biggest beef wih non-antiquated dialogue came from a book by John Peel that was called Dragonheart or Dragonsong or some other Dragonword (I was, like, fifteen when I read it). Anyway, it had two ancient dragons saying something like "humans make me puke". It was a glass shard in an otherwise okay story.
Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by LordKaosnix: Annie, were you making a joke or actually critisizeing an Orson Scott Card book?
Well, I'm not Annie, but I'm pretty sure she was pointing out how stupid it was to generalize all Mormons as either not reading at all or having terrible taste in literature, especially given the nature of the forum.
Or at least, that's what I was going to point out if she hadn't beaten me to it.
As for Eragon, I agree with most people here. Good enough to read, and a pretty interesting story, but not life-changing or anything.
Posts: 134 | Registered: Mar 2004
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One of my grand ideas is to create either a book or movie making fun of genericism. Dragonsomething would be a great name for a generic fantasy book.
Posts: 193 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by sarcasticmuppet: My biggest beef wih non-antiquated dialogue came from a book by John Peel that was called Dragonheart or Dragonsong or some other Dragonword (I was, like, fifteen when I read it). Anyway, it had two ancient dragons saying something like "humans make me puke". It was a glass shard in an otherwise okay story.
Because everybody knows that historical Dragons never spoke that way. Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Yes. "Puke" is a rough translation of the dragon term, better suited than "vomit", "yak", "spill my cookies", or simply "make me ill". It gets the subtlety of the concept across....
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Eragon is something that would be better enjoyed as some Anime mini-series or something...wait, did I just put "Anime" and "enjoyed" in the same sentence? *Runs to the other room and pukes/vomits/yaks/spills cookies....*
Posts: 193 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Annie: He was like 14 when he wrote it.
I met him. Nice kid. Crappy book.
Did you even bother to read this one Annie? Or are you confident enough in your opinion that you don't need to read it? Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I spent the whole book cringing....some of it was so obviously ripped right out of "Wheel of Time", I simply couldn't enjoy it. The dialougue was horrible, too.
Posts: 2711 | Registered: Mar 2004
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I felt the exact same way. The dialogue was so bad it was like watching Revenge of the Sith again.
Posts: 243 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the sequel (aug 23). I agree the dialogue sounded like a teenager talking, but then again it was. It was still better than the dialogue in last star wars movie. Noooooo....!!!
Any way it was an entertaining story.
I guess if he is going to use modern English then he should set it in modern day England. Oh wait someone's already doing that.
Posts: 555 | Registered: Jun 2005
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I have never read Eragon, but concerning the manner of speech thing, I think that he does not have to use legitimate language from whatever period he's writing from, because it might end up unreadable- he should write in 'plain' or 'timeless' language. Sometimes deliberate 'ancient/medieval/fantasy' speech is horribly offputting (as mph pointed out). Any historicity should be added sparingly and not in "thou"s or word order (yech).
Speaking of not-so-great books, I'm reading 'Gunpowder Empire' by Harry Turtledove, who I would have fingered as a new writer, but apparantly he's been writing for a while. It reads alright, although it has a basic, straightforward plot that could have done with another major layer, but there's one thing that if I was editing it would have made me explode.
These two modern (140 years in the future) teens are in a parallel universe where Rome never fell. The problem is not in the language they use, or anything like that. However, everytime a specific thing, for instance doctors, comes up- I swear- everytime Roman doctors are mentioned, we get a variation on the same information:
1. Doctors in "Agrippan Rome" are bad/useless. 2. They only have opium and wine to deal with pain and injury. 3. Opium isn't nearly strong enough.
My own example, but it might as well be copied from the book:
quote:"Oh thank goodness, the cannonball hit the wine jug!" said Jeremy. It was lucky that nobody was injured because the doctors in this time period were useless- they could only remove bullets and sew up wounds but even then they only had opium and wine to dull the pain, and opium wasn't nearly good enough.
EVERY TIME! And this comes up five or six times.
The same goes for the busts of Roman Emperors. They are always "disconcerting". Furs are always mentioned as distasteful. Slavery is a terrible, bad thing that is illegal for the time-traveller people to indulge in. The bureaucracy of this society is huge and overpowering. Women are oppressed. These things, and more, are explained specifically to the reader in the same way every time they show up and they show up oddly frequently. The entire book seems to focus on these few things that Mr. Turtledove has chosen to put in again and again.
I found a review which says the same thing:
quote:Occasionally, he falls into the trap of repetition, reminding the reader of thoughts and actions which shouldn't be necessary in a book of this length.
For the writers out there: You need to say it once. You can mention it again, to remind the reader, but not in the same detail.
It seems strange that this seasoned writer would write something that almost feels like, with a bit of human intervention, a computer could have put it together.
EDIT: On further research I have discovered that the simplicity and repetative nature of the story is because it is aimed at young teen readers (12). I realised that it was a YA book but perhaps not quite so young. However, I do not think this excuses the weird spelling-out over and over nature of the story.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Same reaction as many people I guess - I read it but didn't think it was a very good book at all. Extremely forgettable, I couldn't tell you much of anything about the plot or characters, there wasn't anything memorable about them.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Okay, I don't think it's fair to say that because books share things with Tolkein's works, which are so long and contain so many universal themes that he borrowed from elsewhere, often the basis of western human conciousness, that they are less imaginative.
Fiction, for example, may often have a character involved in a life-changing car accident, but that doesn't make the book invalid. Life-changing car accidents are one of those things that's part of our world. The fantasy world often works the same way.
I admit that many books are wholly unimaginative, but I don't think that saying all fantasy borrows from Tolkein and is therefore worthless is really fair.
(Or is that the point you were trying to make, mph?)
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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All sword and sorcery, pointy eared elves fantasy does owe something to Tolkien and I personally don't think there's anything wrong with that.
There are some excellent examples of fantasy fiction that contain those elements. There's some excellent fantasy that doesn't contain Tolkien-esque elements as well. I disagree that ALL fantasy is in essence a derivative of Tolkien, but then again I recognize his importance to the genre.
The same story can be told over and over again and if the writer is skilled it will still be worth reading. OSC told the same story twice in Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow and both are still excellent books.
I don't care how many times a particular story has been "done" before, if the writing is good and the characters are engaging I'll happily play along with the author. The problem with Eragon isn't that the story borrowed from Tolkien, or borrowed from Jordan or anything else - the problem with Eragon is that the writing is bad.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:I disagree that ALL fantasy is in essence a derivative of Tolkien
Nobody said it is. I said that the "vast majority" is.
quote:I don't care how many times a particular story has been "done" before, if the writing is good and the characters are engaging I'll happily play along with the author.
This is one of the things that I respect Joss Whedon most for -- he's able to take a story that I've seen too many times, and make it great. He doesn't do it by adding some new twist to the old story, but by doing the old story better than I've ever seen it done before.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Ahh...a lot of Tolkien is "borrowed" from old myths and legends, and even if an author isn't "borrowing" from Tolkien he probably IS using a lot fo teh same sources...
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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