I'll second Brandon Sanderson, the man is pretty much my God. He isn't the best fantasy writer currently working (that honour should go to George R R Martin in my opinion) but he's definitely one of the better ones, especially when you consider the rate at which he writes books. Big beefy doorstopper books that is, though of course with fantasy is there any other kind? And yeah, his magic systems are astonishing. I think part of what makes them so great (aside from how original they are) is that he treats them kind of like sciences, in that each one has clear (mostly) unbreakable rules about how they function. The result severely limits the likelihood of any magic use feeling like an ass-pull. Oh, and the way he sets up plot twists is just wonderful. I've been reading fantasy since I was little, and I'm currently studying Creative Writing, so I can usually spot a plot twist a mile away, and yet Sanderson can still manage to slip some of them past me. And they never feel like last minute switcheroo type twists. They're always clearly foreshadowed, the kind that leave you thinking "Holy Crap! How didn't I see that coming!", or you know that something big is about to happen, but you can't quite figure out what. Theres a twist at roughly the mid point of Warbreaker that pretty much floored me. Also all of his books are linked (excluding the Wheel of Time novels he's done of course) and most of these links seem to be important in his new series, The Stormlight Archive, which has got me very excited. If anyone here hasn't seen his work yet, you can download Warbreaker for free from his site at this link - http://www.brandonsanderson.com/portal/Warbreaker . It's not his best, but it's still great and who can argue with free?Fai57 said:
Er, yeah sorry about the great big block of Brandon Sanderson love, but like I said, the man is my God. What's this thread about again? Oh right, the Inheritance Cycle! It's crap. Total crap. Honestly Panini only got published because his parents owned a small publishing company, and then some executive type realised they could market him as a child prodigy for epic dollars. Like others have said, the writing is bad, the characters are bad, the plot is bad, and it's basically plagiarism in a shiny wrapper. There is almost no originiality on display in his books. They're like an originality black hole, or perhaps a paper bag filled with sugary treats from the Overused Fantasy Cliche Pic'n'Mix.
And yeah, I know that very, very few (like multiple decimal percentage few) ideas are original these days, but today it's become more about how you put all the tropes and cliches together, and how you play with them. To go back to Brandon Sanderson, take his Mistborn series. How many stories have Evil Overlords and Chosen Ones, but in Mistborn the Chosen One IS the Evil Overlord. In the end it's more complicated than that, but that's the basics of what I mean. But with the Inheritance Cycle you see very little of this kind of trope-play. Every element in the novels feels like its been cut out of another prominent story and dumped into Alagaesia (seriously, what an awful name for a setting).
Then we get into the writing itself. At least in Eragon, it lacks precision. Some sentences feel weird, like Panini doesn't quite know how to describe something, or he doesn't know what some of the words he's using mean (heres a very important tip for aspiring writers that I've been finding useful: if you use a word that you aren't quite sure of the meaning of, or a word you got from a thesaurus, always check in the dictionary. Relatedly, some people advise avoiding using a thesaurus. Load of rubbish in my opinion. A thesaurus, or the synonym function in Word, is great in moderation. Don't overdo it and you should be fine, and again, check the bloody defintion). Heres an example of what I mean right at the top of page 2 in Eragon.
"The Shade hissed in anger, and the Urgals shrank back, motionless."
How can you shrink back, an action which would require motion, while remaining motionless? It's clear what Panini means but what he's described is impossible. This is one of those lines that can leave you confused for a moment, interupting the flow of the prose. Good writing is all about being precise, making sure the reader clearly understands the actions taking place. If I'm seeing such an obvious problem as early as the second page, something is definitely wrong.
There are plenty of faults in this series, from how most of each book is unimportant filler, to the probability that Eragon, a hero of the epic variety who is presented as whiter than white and purer than pure, is a sociopath (example on page 2 of Eldest, Eragon is described as being horrified by the viciousness of war, and then immediatly plucks a tooth from the ground AND STARTS BOUNCING IT IN HIS HAND! How is that not disturbing behaviour?). I don't want to make you read an essay on the subject though so I'll conclude here-ish. Part of the problem is that Panini was so young when he started on the series, 15 I think it was. Good on him for writing such a big book at such an age. Hell, most probably couldn't have written something of that quality so young, and even now that I'm 20, and have been studying the art of writing, I'd still be challenged to write something of that length. That doesn't mean the quality of his writing was very good though. It definitely didn't deserve publishing. But it was published, and his success has gone to his head, meaning that his next books were just as bad, if not worse. He thinks he's a good writer, and when you don't feel you need to improve, you usually won't. I feel that Panini could have been a great writer with time, but now it's looking quite unlikely.
P.S I know his name is Paolini but for some reason I'm endlessly amused by making fun of the names of authors and similar who I dislike. For example, M Night Shyalemonbrains, M Night Shambles etcetera. Juvenile as heck, but whatever, I find it fun.
P.P.S I don't think I've seen anyone recomending Joe Abercrombie's The First Law series. It's a great trilogy, great prose, really clever, pretty darned original, although with an absurdly depressing conclusion. The books ought to have a health sticker on the front cover. "Warning: May cause clinical depression". I think the last book in that series hit me harder than most of A Song of Ice and Fire.
P.P.P.S In before the TL;DR.
