This book spells 'trite' excellently. Unfortunately, that's the best quality it possesses.

This idea has been overworked many times before, and, if I may borrow a baking metaphor, overworked dough makes for flat product. Not only does he steal from successful greats, but ignores completely that the reason why they were great would be because of their ingenuity with GOING TO THE SOURCE and making it their own from there. The book takes information from mouths others, throws it together into a conglomerate mess, tries to serve it with a different label on an old beverage and expects the reader to eat this previously chewed, bland, ill-matched blob of scraps.

On top of the clearly traceable sources for ideas (almost all of which come from this century), his characterization is static and mary-sue. Eragon, a name in itself that is clearly not an ingenious solution, trots through the story with no growth or believability. Sure, he may outwardly follow a hero's journey, but there is no internalization of the theme. The physical journey is the hero's journey in this tale, despite the fact that the hero's journey is a representation of spiritual changes.

It was a stale story even before it had a sequel.

I could probably write a doctorate thesis on why this is not a prime example of a truly successful novel, but this is neither the time nor place for such a rant.

In conclusion, I will admit that I did learn something from Paolini: it helps to have parents who own a printing press.