Secrets of the Dragon Riders: Your Favorite Authors on Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle: Completely Unauthorized Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Ten Things About Christopher Paolini

  Ten Reasons Why People Hate Christopher Paolini

  Riding the Dragon - The Child as Author

  Eragon and Its Critics

  Reviewers’ Criticisms

  Are Children Subalterns?

  The Good Reviews

  Children and Taste

  Eragon and Me

  Learning from Eragon as a Child Author

  Roran: The Reluctant Hero

  The Magic of Anthropomorphic Animals - In the Inheritance Cycle and Beyond

  Originality

  Entertainment

  Learning

  Continuity

  My Dragon, Myself

  Eldest ≠ Wisest

  Q: How Does a Fifteen-Year-Old Do This? - A: The Same Way a Fifty-Year-Old Does.

  The Modern-Day Perceval

  Ignorance, Innocence, and Purity of Heart

  Family Issues

  The Hero Within

  It’s in His Character

  The Thing About Elves Is ...

  How the Inheritance Cycle Differs From Fantasy Epics of the Past

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Drawing Out the Dragons

  JAMES A. OWEN

  When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

  —ERASMUS

  That quote by Desiderus Erasmus is usually mentioned, wryly, by someone who doesn’t share Erasmus’ point of view about someone who does. I’m so far in the latter category I can’t even see the other side. I am utterly addicted to print, and am physically incapable of passing a newsstand, bookstore, or secondhand shop without giving the books on display at least a cursory glance. More often than not (which means practically every single time) I make some kind of a purchase, and for a moment that new book might as well have been under a Christmas tree for all the love I foster on it.

  To a lot of people, it might seem as if my priorities are a bit skewed—but I’m really just engaging in something as old as humanity itself: I’m searching for connections to everything and everyone around me. And buying books is the best way I know to do that because books, and more precisely stories, are as important and vital and essential as food and clothes—and I’m not entirely convinced about the clothes.

  Stories are what bind us together as families, and communities, and cultures. Stories are what connect us to our past, anchor us in our present, and lay the groundwork for the future. Stories are how we communicate understanding to one another both literally and through metaphor. And as one essayist in this collection noted, stories are important because none of them are new. All stories have already been told—only our point of view changes. And it is that unique point of view that makes every story at once individual and collective. Our differences make us interesting—but our similarities make us family. And that brings me to the story—and stories—of Christopher Paolini.

  It was the stunning blue-visaged dragon painted by John Jude Palencar that first caught my attention. I’ve always considered myself an artist who writes rather than the other way around, so it was the design of the book jacket for Eragon that drew my eye before I cared one iota about reading the book itself. It wasn’t until the next book Eldest, with its matching red dragon, appeared that I really paid attention—and still, it wasn’t to read the books, but to take note of an interesting cultural trend: dragons were cool.

  Not that dragons hadn’t always been cool—but usually they were cool to a subset of fans of a genre (fantasy) that most people considered, well, juvenile. So when a book set firmly within that genre was marketed to that exact audience (juvenile readers) to amazing and continuing success, dragons suddenly became cool to people who had never liked them before, or who had but didn’t realize it until Eragon came along. It was icing on the cake that the author of this literary fireball was himself barely old enough to drive. And suddenly, everyone in the world seemed to be reading books with dragons on the covers.

  Having been one of that previous subset of readers, I already knew dragons were cool, which was one of the reasons I had written and drawn a book called Here, There Be Dragons. But it can only be chalked up to happy convergence (rather than astute planning) that my book (featuring a dragon on the cover, colored blue at the request of my publisher’s sales and marketing department) happened to be published just as the Eragon movie promotions were getting underway and every bookstore worthy of the name was assembling displays of books featuring dragons—including mine.

  (The fact that Owen and Paolini sit next to each other alphabetically has resulted in a running joke among booksellers that I owe Chris dinner any time he asks, since he helped sell so many of my books. This became less of a joke and more of a potential accounting concern when my second book, The Search For The Red Dragon, appeared with a [naturally] red dragon on the cover. I would like to state for the record that there was espionage, research, and prayer involved in planning to make my next book, The Indigo King, purple so it would not match up with the gold cover of Brisingr, Chris’s third book. At the rate we’re already selling, though, I’m going to be picking up his dinner tab until he’s forty.)

  My love for the cover art aside, it became a matter of professional courtesy to read the books and discover for myself just what all the hubbub was about. So I did. And amidst the thrilling tales of dragons and elves and hero’s journeys I found something else in Christopher Paolini’s books—I found myself.

  A lot has been made about Paolini’s relative youth, to which I can relate. I was writing, drawing, and publishing my own comic books at the age of sixteen—and while I did not enjoy the same early and vast success nor endure the same harsh scrutiny that he has had to grapple with at such a tender age, I can empathize to a degree that many others cannot. I was the youngest publisher to ever exhibit at the San Diego Comic-Con—and I was constantly questioned, not because of my professionalism or the quality of my work, but because of my age. Had he been less persistent and not gotten the publishing deal he did, or had his books not been so commercially successful, Paolini might well have had an easier time of it. Under the glare of so much scrutiny, even praise has a certain kind of weight, because with success comes expectations, and life is difficult enough at fifteen without being world-famous to boot.

  But whatever else critics might question, the achievement itself, to have written (and published) so young, is worthy of note. It requires an innate maturity to be able to convey so much in a work of fiction when one has had relatively less life experience. (It should also be noted—and is utterly appropriate—that two of the finer essays in this collection are written by authors who are as young [or even younger] now as Paolini was when he first conceived Eragon.)

  The story itself is one that has been both lauded and criticized as “not new.” More than one essayist touches on this concept, that Paolini has drawn upon well-known and well-used archetypes for both character and plot. Paolini’s detractors claim that the work is therefore merely derivative, and brings nothing new to the world of fiction. But his advocates (of which I am one) maintain that he has simply done what all the great authors have done before him: retold the stories common to us all from a unique point of view. And it is a point of view that has been embraced by millions upon millions of readers around the world.

  The question has been posed whethe
r the story of Eragon is also the story of Christopher Paolini. I maintain that it might be—but the same can be said of us all, writers and readers alike. We write to express how we see things to the rest of the world, and we read to try to make sense of the world around us. Both are efforts to communicate, to make connections with the larger Story. Our dragons are metaphors, used to tie together the things we know and the things we hope to understand. Readers may find themselves drawing close to Eragon or Saphira, or perhaps Roran, and in the process discovering something about themselves. It’s been no different for any other story that’s gone before, whether it’s a tale of Perceval or Gilgamesh or even Luke Skywalker. They are all the same story. They are all our story. And the tales told in the Inheritance Cycle are our stories, too, told as they are by a storyteller who understands this, and put them into words in the way he believes they should be told.

  That’s how the best stories work: They are new and familiar all at once. The book you now hold in your hands is an excellent example of this: a group of essays by writers who are doing the same thing as Christopher Paolini, and myself, and every other writer throughout history—telling stories, making connections, and trying to communicate their own unique points of view.

  Ten Things About Christopher Paolini

  JEREMY OWEN

  When discussing Christopher Paolini and his work with, well, anyone, you quickly discover that there is no such thing as a lukewarm opinion. People run hot and cold with equal fervor, and Jeremy Owen gets right to the heart of the matter with an essay that is at once both praiseful and pointedly blunt.

  Go to a library, bookstore, or better yet, any gathering of people who consider themselves writers and say two words: Christopher Paolini. Try it. It gives amazing results with very little effort on your part. The polarizing effect is instantaneous; a group of mild-mannered bookish types will transform into two ravening gangs right before your eyes. The pro-Paolini element will square off against the anti-Paolini in seconds. Make sure you’re outside the danger zone before the insults and occasional breakable objects start flying around.

  You’ve probably already heard some of the pro arguments, possibly even read some in the volume you’re holding, but those aren’t the arguments I want to single out. I want to look at the opposition. You’ve heard what they have to say before, only in reference to other authors. But with the addition of Paolini to the mix the contentions take on a new, frenzied tone. I don’t know if it’s Paolini’s youth or quick ascension to lofty status that makes people dislike him, but everybody seems to have at least one point against him. I’ve listed the strongest ones below.

  Ten Reasons Why People Hate Christopher Paolini

  1) Youth

  Christopher Paolini is young. He’s older now than when he started Eragon, but he’s still young. Most people expect sixteen-year-old boys to be babbling, hormone-riddled morons who think a pronoun is a noun that’s lost its amateur status. For the most part these derogatory thoughts about adolescent males are right. A teenage boy being able to string a coherent list of words into a recognizable sentence is noteworthy, and Christopher Paolini did that ten thousand times . . . in a row! Brilliant! Most people, especially other writers, tend to see that as an over-achievement for someone his age. I don’t think this is Christopher’s fault, but that of the observer judging him. If you think Christopher Paolini is too young, then you must be too old. Wait a while. Christopher will age with time, and you might find it easier to deal with him when he’s thirty.

  2) Completion

  Christopher Paolini finished a novel. Here’s a revelation that stuck in the craw of many a writer. People love saying they write for a living. It sounds distinguished, professional, praiseworthy. After the fact that they are a writer is established, it is often followed by the question, “So what did you write?” If you’re the person asking the question I hope you have quick reflexes. Like the actors that serve you dinner, many writers are biding time at their day job whilst waiting for their big break. Said break will probably never happen if they keep writing online fanfiction about Kirk and Spock in romantic situations. If you hate Christopher Paolini because he wrote a novel, it’s probably time to stop doing Internet “research” on the computer in your mom’s basement and start taking a serious stab at that outline you’ve toyed with for a decade.

  3) Continuation

  Christopher Paolini wrote a second novel. A person in the same situation as Christopher has thoughts like this: “I made it. My first book is published and doing well and the publisher wants my second manuscript.” If this is you, brace yourself, because here it comes. You’ll be walking around the grocery store, casually comparing prices on cans of beets, when you get it for the first time. The tap on the shoulder. “Hey buddy,” they’ll say, “remember me? From high school?” Often you do in fact remember them and the memories are not fond ones. “Saw your book,” they continue, “it’s doing real good.” I like to call the previous statement the butter-up; it’s the precursor to the real reason you hold a now-forgotten can of $1.79 whole baby beets in your hand. “Say, I had a great idea....” Flee in terror! Quick! Before the idea leaves their lips! It’s your only hope! There is no reasoning with the person before you. Stating the fact that you already have too many of your own ideas to pursue does not deter them. They mention that the hard part is already done, you just have to write the book, and they’ll share the profits with you! With as much decorum as possible, extricate yourself from the situation, saying you’ll have to go over it with your agent and get back to them. From this point on you will spend the rest of your life checking to make sure their car isn’t in the parking lot when you go shopping. If you hate Christopher Paolini because he managed to write a second book, a book that is not about the idea you flung at him as he rushed from the Piggly-Wiggly, stop. Take a minute to evaluate how good your idea really is. If you’re still satisfied that it’s a good story, do us all a favor and take the night course offered at your local community college on how to write a novel. It’s the only surefire way for everyone to win.

  4) Success

  Christopher Paolini wrote a bestselling novel. People that aspire to be writers will sing praises to such a person, all the while shooting little daggers with their eyes at them for accomplishing such a feat. Christopher was in the right place at the right time with the right publisher doing the right promotions with the right spin and it paid off. He has a bestselling novel. You probably don’t. If you hate Christopher Paolini because he wrote a bestseller, well, you’re pretty much stuck with the taste of bile in the back of your throat every time you think of him. I know lots of great authors who are not bestsellers. Hitting the top of the lists is a convergence of skill, publicity, and timing. Sometimes series don’t hit their stride until the fourth or fifth book. Sometimes being a bestseller is more of a pain than a blessing. If it still bothers you that he hit the right combination so young, content yourself with the knowledge that young geniuses burn out fast. (Not really, but it made you feel better for a bit, didn’t it?)

  5) Hollywood

  Christopher Paolini’s novel got made into a movie. This is the true lottery win of the writer, but not without its drawbacks. The novel the writer worked on with love and devotion for so long is being rewritten by someone trying to hack enough out of it so it fits within two hours of screen time. Sure, Christopher got a great paycheck and is probably getting residuals from the deal, but the movie is almost never as good as the book. It’s hard to see something you spent so much time working on reduced and reworked in such a manner when you have only extreme financial stability to show for it. If you hate Christopher Paolini because of the money he made from selling out to Hollywood, then I’m right there with you. If you happen to be Christopher Paolini’s agent and are reading this, then you can contact me through the publisher of this article. I’ve got some great ideas I think you’d be interested in.

  6) Tempo

  One of the things people picked out to criticize ab
out Paolini’s writing was the pacing. The story seemed to drag, they’d say; stories should be told quickly, to give more immediate satisfaction to the reader. I think the proper formula (which I am right now extrapolating from the suggestions given to me) demands that there be blood, battle, or sex on every third page. Christopher Paolini doesn’t deliver on this. Sure, there is blood and battle, but not on every third page, and the sex is almost nonexistent! Then again, Eragon and Eldest and Brisingr are novels for young adults, so it should be blood, battle, and pining for sex on every third page. In Eldest the character of Eragon does pretty good about the pining part every time he thinks of Arya, and it started out with the blood and battle sprinkled liberally over the first chapter or so, but training? Soul searching? Roran’s responsibilities to the people of his hometown? I’ll concede that Roran does a fair amount of killing with his hammer every time he shows up, but I’ve been told Christopher needs to pick up the pace a bit with the rest. If you hate Christopher Paolini because you think his novels aren’t exciting enough, well, I can’t help you. I thought the novels were great. Try listening to classical music for a while, study a foreign language, or maybe attend a political debate to help pump up the old IQ a bit. If those things don’t help you appreciate a well-structured story that doesn’t rely on the every-third-page formula then I suggest watching old episodes of Sesame Street. It’s where I started, and I can appreciate the pacing of Paolini’s books just fine.