What a shame to not ham up Irons but Malkovich will do.Nah, he plays the wise old goat that trains the hero and then promptly dies. He does the same in Beautiful Creatures too so I think he just went through a phase of trying to get into YA movies but they'd only give him the same role in each one.
Now Malkovich, he hams it up. He plays the big bad.
I forced myself to finish the last two books of the Inheritance Cycle as I already started Eragon and Eldest. I remember skimming them as they were extremely bloated and desperately needed a proper editor to trim it. Hard pass on this.
That description is aggressively bland. Paolini needs to show he's grown as a writer since he was a teenager rewriting Star Wars.
I mean, it's from the guy who wrote Eragon. What do you expect?
I could use more of that to be honest.
Might want to rename that one dude...
Might want to rename that one dude...
I don't want to dunk on this guy but I don't recall him being the world's best writer, though he was just a teenager when he started so that's kind of impressive. I kind of forgot about him entirely, no idea if he's improved his craft since then.
100% going for 1960s vibes.
I really liked the first two books, but I was also 15 and had never seen Star Wars or read LOTR.
Finished the series years later and the second half draaagged. Those dragon POV chapters were painful to read. And the resolution to the endfight is still the stupidest one I've ever read.
I loved those books but I really didn't need a 300 page explanation on dwarvish mourning customs and political strife over the sale of minerals and electing a new leader when a fucking war was going on in the background.
I became 1000x more interested in Roran than eragon
Gosh, I remember that. My man's pacing was horrific. I used to love those books, but I know it'd be bad if I ever went back to them.I loved those books but I really didn't need a 300 page explanation on dwarvish mourning customs and political strife over the sale of minerals and electing a new leader when a fucking war was going on in the background.
I became 1000x more interested in Roran than eragon
Gosh, I remember that. My man's pacing was horrific. I used to love those books, but I know it'd be bad if I ever went back to them.
Rather have Lord of the Rings with Dinosaurs...with lasers, lots and lots of lasers.Part of me kinda hopes his new thing turns out to be Lord of the Rings with Spaceships.
Might want to rename that one dude...
Thanks for the review. Not sure I'll read the book but I'm glad to see he's improved.Finished reading it. As an opening chapter, I think it's a marked improvement over his other work, especially since he doesn't have to fill it with needless fantasy terms. He is still over descriptive in many places, he still isn't terribly great at characterization, and the pacing is still an issue.
Basically, all that happens in this chapter is a woman wakes up from a crash she had, notices she's in an alien room, touches a basil-like structure in the middle of the room and then gets covered by some kind of scifi space dust. The only reason it's as long as it is is because he is desperately filling in mostly irrelevant information like that her dream is to make an alien discovery or that she wants daddy to be proud or what organization she works for.
That stuff is important character building stuff, but it interrupts the action flow here so much. This lady should (and we are told she is) shitting herself at having crashed, made an alien discovery which is the biggest fucking deal in the world, and then is then swarmed by dust. This is highly intense shit, so you want her mind to be on the here and now, not thinking about what her dad's gonna want to hear. In contrast, since the backstory basically comes as an info dump, we don't really get much of a sense of personality for her. All I really pick up from her is that she is career minded and seems to like to follow rules/morals, which is a bit bland.
Nevertheless, as I said, this is pretty leaps and bounds ahead of what his Eragon work was, especially the first book (which is the one I have read most recently). It actually starts with characters doing something important for one, and it atleast know to build some mystery and intrigue. Of course, this only the first couple pages and that's a very basic checklist of what opening chapters ought to do. We'll see how the rest of the story goes forward.
Cover's nice atleast. It's an upgrade from how all the bored all the dragons looked in his other books.
Wait, why's the sticker a BETTER looking version of the cover?
Eragon is also literally a fanfic, but not even the plot is original. Its the same story beats. Even the name of the characters are one letter away from their "inspirations" in some cases.
Ok, one more thread bump otherwise I'll just assume no one else is interested haha
Jennifer Hale is doing the audiobook
Part of me kinda hopes his new thing turns out to be Lord of the Rings with Spaceships.
The Eragon movie is much worse than the book, but that's something of a backhanded compliment. I read his latest work, and...not really, it's still bad, but I also wouldn't see it as representative of what he can do. We'll see how this book turns out.Did he ever get better? I saw the movie of Eragon and it was the worst.
I can't contribute too much, as I haven't read his books. But I take major issue with that blurb in OP. To describe the initial setting on Left Hand of Darkness as "a routine survey mission" is to betray that you didn't understand that book at all.
Also, announcing a "massive universe!!!" before anyone has read a page of the first book is a giant red flag.
Reminds me that one of these days I need to make a thread about good YA books.
Dragons of Perns OT? about timeReminds me that one of these days I need to make a thread about good YA books.
I don't know how to tell you this, but I've never read any of the Dragonriders of Pern books...