Professional Brisingr Reviews
Two professional Brisingr reviews have now been released. One by the Washington Post and one by Salt Lake Tribune.
So, one review is way better than the other. The Washington Post review tries really hard to say nice things about the book.
As an adult, I read “Brisingr” with a mixture of admiration for Paolini’s accomplishments and an awareness of the book’s flaws, which prevented me from being fully won over. But that’s hardly a slight. Had I read this novel when I was 13, it would have kept me up straight through the night. For that matter, I might have even stolen a few bits from it for D&D. And that’s a compliment.
Through out the review he talks about irrelevant stuff like D&D instead of actually focusing on the book. He mentions flaws, but never details what they are. What was the point of the professional reviewer again? Thanks for educating us on this book. Instead of being an actual review, this ends up as a glorified advertisement and plot summary. The author desperately wants to say this book is bad, I get the feeling, but he doesn’t.
So I feel a certain kinship with Christopher Paolini, whose first novel, “Eragon,” about a 15-year-old boy who discovers a dragon egg, may have had a similar genesis. While young readers devoured the novel, some adult readers cried foul. The teenage author, they argued, had stolen from fantasy greats like J.R.R. Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey, and even borrowed from “Star Wars.” Worse, much of the book was awkwardly overwritten.
Adult Readers? Excuse me, lots of young readers called foul too. It’s sort of fishy how this review doesn’t come down harder. But them, the author of the review wrote a book entitled Acacia: The War With the Mein which was published by The Doubleday Publishing Group a division of Random House. Guess you wouldn’t want to ruin your relationship with your publishing house by saying rude things about one of their most lucrative and badly written franchises, now would you?
The Salt Lake Tribune review, on the other hand, is not only shorter but more relevant. She is right on the money here:
Throughout “Brisingr,” the third book in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance cycle, characters are bone-tired from meandering through Alagaesia, frustrated at inaction and resigned to a fate not within their control.
As a reader, unfortunately, it’s easy to feel the same way.
Brisingr was originally slated to be the final book in Paolini’s trilogy; instead the story was chopped into two novels because Paolini thought he needed to wrap up too many plot lines to do justice to the story in one book.
If Paolini’s editors had been paying attention, they would have ripped out two-thirds of the story and used this volume to finish the series.
And also:
In the decade since the young author first penned a draft of “Eragon,” he hasn’t learned how to create characters that readers can relate to, or improved his awkward diction.
Yikes. Props to you Sheena McFarland. I think the Washington Post would do well to learn from the Salt Lake Tribune here.
By Mlarg
on Oct 6, 11:18 PM