In high school English class I had to read a small short story in a textbook. In this story a little boy got into a fight for a dragon. A little later the dragon the born and the dragon chose this boy to be his rider/trainer. I believe from this story that Christopher took the dragon rider idea from it sort of commiting plagerism. What do u all think? Also Eragon has strong similarties to Lord of The Rings. Like the whole elf magic words thing. Which is also in Lord of The Rings. Then theres the monsters in both books which are very similar.
2007-01-16 03:41:13 · 7 answers · asked by missgigglebunny 7 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
I've noticed all this and concluded myself that Eragon is just another copy cat book and not a huge orginal idea. It doesn't encourage me to read another Eragon book.
2007-01-16 03:42:20 · update #1
Predictable. I figured Eragon was the son of a dragon rider and him and his brother had the same Mom. I would have liked some more training sceans in the movie that show Eragon learning how to sword fight otherwise the movie makes very little sense. In the movie u would think Eragon gets killed for it never shows any sword trainng sceans.
2007-01-16 04:09:48 · update #2
I've read a lot of fantasy book and i thought Eragon was good (the book that is, the movie was crap).
Eragon does have a few similarities to Lord of the Rings, but then again most fantasy books do. The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks is so similar to Lord of the Rings i am surprised no one has sued him.
2007-01-17 05:45:03 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
That sounds like The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey.
I remember reading excerpts from her Dragonriders of Pern books when I was in middle school. The Dragonrider series and the Harper Hall series by McCaffrey are really good in their own right. But the focus is different from Eragon and Eldest. Instead of being an epic about a kingdom, and good and evil, they are about a human society settling a new planet where they are threatened by a plague that can only be killed by fire. So the humans tame and breed flying lizards (with telepathic abilities, too), native to the planet to combat the plague.
Eragon is a combination of several common plot threads:
Star Wars: Dragon riders as Jedi Knights
Pern Series: Dragons as telepathic
Lord of the Rings: nearly immortal evil overlord, with humans and trolls/orcs/wolves as servants, elves as immortals, magic being wielded, jewels possessing power (remember the rings of power?)
King Arthur: The promise of an unknown boy growing up to be the Best and Only Hope.
Again, here we have another Star Wars gig. Luke is the son of Darth Vader, and Eragon is the son of Morzan. Yep, I spoiled Eldest for you. Now go and read it!
Plagiarism is a strong word to use. Most everyone takes someone else's idea as a base on which to build. If not it would be like every car manufacturer having to redesign the internal combustion engine every time they go to build a new car.
2007-01-16 04:02:27 · answer #2 · answered by anon 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
It's very hard nowadays to write an original Fantasy book without it being said to have strong similarities to the Lord of the Rings. Even the story of Drizzt Do'Urden and the Forgotten Realms has similarities, but R.A. Salvatore is never looked at in this light that so many people are throwing Christopher Paolini under. Eragon and Eldest are actually very original stories.
Long story short: Any Fantasy book will be looked at next to LOTR and most will be seen to have similarities. It's similar to how every single Sci-Fi story will be compared to Star Wars or Star Trek and have similarities.
2007-01-16 04:00:11 · answer #3 · answered by Maverick 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Just like everyone else said, all fantasy books are similar. Actually I've been writing a fantasy novel for the past 6 months and after seeing Eragon, had to delete 2 whole chapters because they happened to be just like certain parts of that movie. Bah!
Guess there's only so many things you can do with the whole fantasy world theme after a while :-)
2007-01-17 15:58:39 · answer #4 · answered by Rapunzel XVIII 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Do I think that it is easy to see what Paolini's influences are? Yes, of course. Do I think his work should be called plagiarism? Absolutely not.
The idea of elves and magic came about long before Tolkien and will be used well into the future, and dragons have been fascinating people for millennia.
If you don't enjoy the storyline, that's fine. Fantasy or just that particular story might not be your thing. But accusations of plagiarism are very serious, and should not be made lightly.
2007-01-16 07:30:54 · answer #5 · answered by Kate 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i like the book
2007-01-17 12:16:24 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
the other book wouldnt be jeremy thatcher dragon hatcher would it?
2007-01-16 03:48:45 · answer #7 · answered by Dara K 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋