I just finished reading Eldest, by Christopher Paolini, and can I say that he makes me angry? It is, to give him credit, much better than Eragon, but he doesn't know where he's going with character arcs, he's bad at writing realistic character interactions, and he brought only a thimbleful of resolution at the end of a 668 page book, contradicting himself several times (rather majorly) about the capabilities and personalities of his main characters. I mean, anybody could see some of the events coming, but the rest of his plot is held together with masking tape and elmer's glue. And he changed his mind partway through this book about things he said in the other book and is changing his plots. Which, to be honest, I could forgive if the rest of it were better. And partway through Eldest, we learn the secret of the total villain's power. And then at the end we find that oh wait, there's some other secret that we don't know that allows a mere mortal human (who's new to the villain game) to defeat Eragon, even after Eragon's been transformed by supernatural powers so that he himself is supernatural. And he included a pronunciation guide at the back of his book which was extremely patronizing. He thinks he's Tolkien, and he's not. And so he makes me angry. I predict that he will be one of those terrible writers who recycles plots, has an inflated opinion of himself, and is unreasonably popular with large segments of society.
I rant about him, but I know that I couldn't write 668 pages of one story, even if the 668 pages were slop. So maybe that invalidates my criticism. Maybe not. But here's the deal, right? If I ever write a book, don't let me try to publish it unless its actually freaking good, OK? That's the rule. If there are plot holes, no publish. If you don't believe a word of my interpersonal conflict, no publish.
Good. I'm glad we have the ground rules established. You can stop reading now.
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