While I was writing the last two entries for The Bartimaeus Trilogy it sparked my memory that I hadn't posted a book I read earlier in the year, Eragon. There is a reason I had forgot... well more like put it out of my memory. Yeah it was written by a kid, Christopher Paolini, yeah it is fantasy-like and has dragons but it is simply an insult to the genre and to the intelligence of any reader. It is a hack, heavily plagiarized, over-hyped piece of trash. Yes, I feel that strongly about it. While The Bartimaeus Trilogy borrowed quite a lot it did so in a smart way and used a number of fantasy cliches and Potterisms to come out with a totally unique world and tale, this was just derivative and pretentious at best. The kid's parents both work in the publishing industry and they did their best to capitalize on every aspect they could. Having heavily read much of the required fantasy canon over the years, each page of Eragon was a pure bastardization of at least two or three classic/groundbreaking works. I never wanted to actually destroy a book before this one and if it hadn't been my wife's book I would have. I struggled to just finish it and I could NOT recommend a book less than this garbage.
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