Eragon

"Terribly Written Books" and "Books That Were Good When You Were Young /New to Fantasy: and "Overrated Books With Undeserved Hype" categories fit this series nicely.What do you get when you combine Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and a 15-year-old's writing skills? A heap of trash called Eragon and its sequels. In this novel, the art of Bad Writing is truely mastered and brought to a new level.I admire the kid for writing something, but Eragon was a work best left in the hands of a smiling Grade 7 teacher who would have patted the little Paolini on the head, taken the manuscript home, then quietly burned it. How the heck this unholy mess was picked up by publishers, sold to millions of readers, and made into a terrible movie, is surely one of the great questions of the universe (wait, what if his parents had powerful connections to a publishing company and worked in publishing. Wouldn't that be funny if it is true. Oh wait, IT IS TRUE.. I guess that goes to tell you the power of the marketing industry -- if they can sell Eragon to the masses, they can sell anything.)The level of commercial success this badly written series has received is nothing short of astounding. The series is a bad copy of copied clichés: Eragon is a mishmash of Lord of the Rings, Dragon Riders of Pern, Dragonlance, and Star Wars; and let me tell you, the force is certainly not with this one.The only thing exceptionally good about Paolini's stories are when they are over. I’m glad the demon birthed by Paolini has finally come to a sordid end. But I toss and turn at night with the knowledge that the former kid writer is cooking up some other sort of literary catastrophe to inflict on the masses.I had Eragon on some of the other lists (the Best Children's Fantasy List for one), but I realized just how confusing and senseless that choice really was. The bottom line is that Eragon is pure drivel and I don't care if it was written by a 15-year-old, it has no business being published or read. I've taken it off all lists. A bad book is a bad book, regardless of what age group it targets. A good book is timeless and appeals to all ages, something Eragon does not do.