Eragon: Inheritance Cycle Book 1

"Yes! I’ve included Eragon , not because it’s necessarily the best written or the most unique plot, but because it set the scene for dragon-rider stories, and popularised them in the literary world. It’s a young adult ‘crossover’ book – that is, many adults have read it, many teens have read it. It’s not a complicated world where you need to learn off by heart many unpronounceable names and the history of many diverse places. It’s quite straightforward and easy to get on with. It’s considered a classic by many. I thought it well worth including for anyone who’s not read dragon-rider stories before, and is looking for something entry level – it’s probably the one I would recommend people start with. It was written by Christopher Paolini, who I believe was fifteen years old at the time! As I understand, he self-published it initially, then went on a big school tour with his parents where they would literally take him from school to school, hand-selling these books after those events. He would come out dressed in character and do a big spiel, and hand-sell the books that way. When traditional publishers noticed his success it was picked up, went to auction, and has now sold many millions of copies. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s about Eragon, a fifteen-year-old boy. It’s a bit of a cheesy name for someone who ends up bonding with a dragon, but I think it’s explained why he’s called that in the stories. He lives with his uncle and cousin. He discovers a dragon egg, which has been magicked away because many people are trying to acquire it, so it’s been teleported to the middle of nowhere in the mountains where it will be safe – he happens to stumble across it and bonds with it. He grows it from a hatchling to a larger dragon. I believe in the movie, they wanted to skip that whole thing, so they literally had the dragon just fly up into the clouds, where it was hit by lightning, and it comes back as a fully grown adult. Which was very disappointing, I think, for many of the people who love the books. The big evil emperor – his name’s Galbatorix – his henchmen are searching for them. Eragon suffers a personal tragedy, has to flee, and meets Brom who’s the mentor character. They need to rescue an elf named Aria. There are urgals, which are a bit like orcs in this world, and Nazgul-type characters that are hunting them, and the story culminates with a defensive battle for the rebellion where Eragon plays a very pivotal role with his dragon, Sephira. Yes! I wanted to be diverse in my mix of books – not only have a mix of men and women writers and protagonists, but also include self-published authors as well as traditionally published authors. You can often spot major incoming trends in the e-book market that are very interesting. I’m excited for the insights there, particularly into what gets teenage boys reading. And I’m excited for cultivation fantasy to cross over into the traditional space. Another self-published author who deserves a shout out is Ryan Cahill , who writes epic fantasy dragon-rider stories. I’ve read some of his books and I think they’re fantastic."

"Absolutely. With the Inheritance Cycle , I stuck very strongly with Eragon’s point of view. I do bounce around a bit in the later books with a couple of other characters, but I never used or showed Murtagh’s point of view. And that is a philosophy I have: I don’t like to show the antagonist’s point of view, because I feel like it spoils things. You can do it in a way that raises tension, because the reader knows something the main character doesn’t – but in general, I prefer not to do that. So I never showed Murtagh’s point of view, which was frustrating, because from a macro point of view, the Inheritance Cycle is the story of three brothers (or, essentially, brothers). There’s Eragon; there’s his cousin, Roran; and then there’s Eragon’s half-brother, Murtagh. And we never get to see what Murtagh is going through, which is just as epic as (and quite a bit more traumatic than) what Eragon is going through. Having a standalone book about that character allowed me to show readers some of what had been going on – and then, of course, push his character forward. In fact, the reason I wrote that book, ultimately, is because Eragon’s main story is done. I told that story. I don’t need to go back and rehash it, or try to come up with some false challenge that he needs to overcome. His story finished, but Murtagh’s story didn’t. His personal issues were as yet unresolved, and also his place in the world was unsettled. So there was still a story there. And as soon as I began thinking about it in depth, it seemed worth delving into and devoting a good chunk of my life to. There are good stories where the main character does not change: James Bond is an excellent example of this, or Poirot . The main character doesn’t really change, the world around them changes, and the character learns – the story is about the character learning more about the world, figuring out who murdered so and so, or what the evil plot is, and working to resolve the problem. And that can be an excellent and entertaining story. Outside of that type, though, I think a good story needs to reflect the issues that the main characters are dealing with. And yes, you can be explicit with that, or you can hint at it. Le Guin made it very explicit, and I think did a great job with it, and it’s not preachy in the slightest. And with Murtagh , it was very similar. It was about looking at the things that he was dealing with and saying, ‘I have these issues that he’s dealing with, along with his dragon Thorn, and then the world itself has certain things going on that also need to be addressed. Can I pair the two together? Do they mesh well, and is there a story there?’ And when I found that the answer to that was yes, I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to write this.’"