Hey, to each her own. I love not only fantasy in general, but books about dragons in specific, and have read everything from Anne McCaffery to Bruce Coville. It was easy for me to spot which bits might’ve been garnered from which writer, from the telepathic dragons being inspired by McCaffery to the diverse magical races and expected epic formula being influenced heavily by Tolkien. Eragon was more “overly derivative” than “outright bad”.

Paolini may have the potential to be a great author, but he isn’t there yet. He could be a very dear man, but that doesn’t stop the fact that he released his first book when his writing still feels too immature. I’ve read first novels that other people wrote as teenagers (Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine And Private Place comes to mind) as well as short stories that have been sold or anthologized. There have been some that were equal in quality, some that were worse, some that were better, and even one that was translated from German. Beagle’s book was at the top of the quality “food chain” for me, while Paolini’s fell somewhere between the middle and the bottom.