Eragon by: Christopher Paolini

Eragon
by Christopher Paolini
Date Released: August 26, 2003
Pages: 503

Summary:

When young Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his adopted family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself. Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of inescapable destiny, magical forces, and powerful people. With only an ancient sword and the instruction of an old,mysterious, hermit storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a Emperor whose evil and power knows no bounds. Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? The fate of the Empire may rest in his hands…

My Review:

So I just finished Eragon and I was reading some of the reviews people wrote on Goodreads and the majority of the ones written by people who gave the book 1 star, made me really mad. Let's just get one thing straight. ERAGON SHOULD NOT BE COMPARED TO LORD OF THE RINGS. So many people were pointing out the similarities between these two books. So I am going to address some of these right now that I find ridiculous, but before I do, I am going to go ahead and make a list of the similarities I found when reading the book.
1. Aragorn and Eragon (the names not the characters)
2. Arwen and Arya
and 3. they presence of elves, men, and dwarves all together in one story
That is it, I found nothing else. So onto the silly comparisons:

1: They are both trilogies. Okay seriously. That is the first thing you list, that are both trilogies. I can list so many other trilogies. The Hunger Games series, The Darkest Powers series, The Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy, The Modern Faerie Tales, His Dark Materials, I could go on. So having this as a basis for a comparison between Eragon and Lord of the Rings is just showing that you really have no argument.

2. Main character Aragorn/Eragon. This argument is a much stronger argument than the previous one, but if some one asked me: Who are the main characters in these two books my immediate answers would be; Eragon: Eragon and Saphira. LOTR: Frodo and Gandalf. My immediate response would not be 'Well the main characters are Eragon, and OMG Aragorn. Look at that, Paolini obviously copied Tolkein.

3. Bad flying things Ra'zac/Ringwraiths. Okay, so I'm not going to mention the wording of this one (bad flying things, seriously?) but if this is their comparison they obviously aren't as familiar with LOTR as they think because Ringwraiths isn't their actual name. So their comparison should say 'Bad flying things Ra'zac/Nazgul. And come on, we can all say that isn't a good comparison.

4. There is a big fight in the troll dungeons. I'm sorry, but there aren't even trolls in Eragon so how in the world would there be a big fight in the troll dungeons? And I will admit, there are trolls in Lord of the Rings, so *snaps* for getting that part right, but (and my friend, an avid fan of both of these books, agrees with me) I have no memory of any fight in a troll dungeons, I don't even think troll dungeons were mentioned in the book. I mean there was that kind of medium sized fight in the Mines of Moria, but that was where the dwarves lived.

Some people also complained about the way Paolini wrote and other things like that but one thing that someone said really made me mad. One reviewer was going on about why it was so horrible that he put the map in three different languages. They didn't understand why someone would do that because our maps in the real world are all in one language, not multiple (they used the example that ours don't say The United States and then in parenthesis Los Estados Unidos, they just say The United States). Well if you think about the only thing in consistently in one language on our maps are country names, but the city stay in their native language. For example, the capital of Bolivia is La Paz. For an American map, they aren't going to translate the city names so it says Peace instead of La Paz. That's just stupid.

So, if you haven't read Eragon, ignore the bad reviews because it is an amazing book.

My Rating:

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

The Replacement
by Brenna Yovanoff
Date Released: September 21, 2010
Pages: 343

Summary:

Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in the human world.

Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs

My Review:

So when I first saw this book I thought "Oh that book looks really cool!' because you the cover was just awesome and seeing a cool cover led me to picking the book up and reading the inside flap:
Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in the human world.

Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate's baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.

That just sounded really good to me, but when I started reading it, it fell short. It was confusing. In the summary they said Mackie was allergic to iron, blood, and consecrated ground and they showed this in the book how he would feel ill with blood and iron or whatever, which would have been so much better had they told in the book that he was allergic to those things. If you hadn't read the summary you wouldn't have had a clue what was going on with him, which some people (including me) think it would be weird not to read the summary before hand, some of my friends will just start reading a book if someone told them it was good or if a friend gave them a couple sentence summary.

This wasn't the only thing that made this book confusing. One second it was at a party with Mackie and his friends and they were watching the bands performing and then all of a sudden BAM Mackie was in this underground place talking to a shady guy and this creepy girl librarian person. After I had figured out what was happening they were saying something about Mackie joining the band or something. And it was at this point that I had to put the book down and give it back to my friend because I couldn't finish it.

Now I'm not trying to bash on the author, because let's face it, she's published and that is more than most aspiring writers can say. And just because I didn't like this book, does not mean that I won't give her next book a try because her next book (The Space Between) sounds really good.

So to sum up this review: Good idea, but poorly executed.

My Rating:

Blood Promise, Vampire Academy #4, by: Richelle Mead

Blood Promise
by Richelle Mead

Date Released: August 25, 2009
Pages: 503

Summary:

Rose Hathaway's life will never be the same.

The recent attack on St. Vladimir's Academy devastated the entire Moroi world. Many are dead. And, for the few victims carried off by Strigoi, their fates are even worse. A rare tattoo now adorns Rose's neck, a mark that says she's killed far too many Strigoi to count. But only one victim matters . . . Dimitri Belikov. Rose must now choose one of two very different paths: honoring her life's vow to protect Lissa—her best friend and the last surviving Dragomir princess—or, dropping out of the Academy to strike out on her own and hunt down the man she loves. She'll have to go to the ends of the earth to find Dimitri and keep the promise he begged her to make. But the question is, when the time comes, will he want to be saved?

Now, with everything at stake—and worlds away from St. Vladimir's and her unguarded, vulnerable, and newly rebellious best friend—can Rose find the strength to destroy Dimitri? Or, will she sacrifice herself for a chance at eternal love

My Review:


After finishing Shadow Kiss I was super pumped to read this one, but it fell short of my expectations. It did succeed in two things. 1. making me want to go to Russia, 2. making me like Adrian.

Spoilers!

After Rose found Dimitri, I was at first drawn into the book more, but after about a chapter, I wanted to jump into the book and stab a silver stake into him myself. The way he acted infuriated me to the point where I would have to set the book down for a minutes before continuing to read.

My favorite parts of the book (in other words the parts that didn't disappoint me) were when Rose was in Baia with the Belikovs, and when Rose was inside Lissa's head. And that is saying something, since in the previous three books I didn't really enjoy the inside Lissa's head parts.

All in all it wasn't horrible and I will be reading the rest of the series, mainly because my friend told the that last ones are really good, and I want to find out what happens to the other characters.

My Rating:

Welcome!

So welcome to my amazingly awesome blog. My reading goal for the year of 2011 is 100 books, and I will review each and everyone one of them here (along with some movie reviews for good measure)

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