Christopher Paolini
1983-

American author of young adult novels.

The following entry presents an overview of Paolini's career through 2003.

INTRODUCTION

At the age of eighteen, Paolini achieved publishing success when Eragon (2002), his first novel of a projected trilogy, became an international best-seller. Though Paolini originally self-published the novel, Eragon was eventually re-released by Alfred A. Knopf, who marketed the book to young adult and adolescent audiences. Reminiscent of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Phillip Pullman, Eragon is a sweeping fantasy epic involving a young teenager who bonds with an exotic and rare dragon as he matures and develops into a hero.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Born on November 17, 1983, in Paradise Valley, Montana, Paolini was homeschooled by his mother, a former Montessori teacher and children's author, and received his GED at the age of fifteen. An enduring love of fantasy and science fiction inspired Paolini to complete his first draft of Eragon at age sixteen, and his second draft at age seventeen, along with creating an original drawing for the cover and an illustrated map of the book's fictional kingdoms. At age eighteen, Paolini decided to self-publish the novel, working with his parents who owned a small publishing firm. Paolini's parents edited Eragon and then engaged Lightning Source, a print-on-demand subsidiary of Ingram, to print ten-thousand paperback copies. At the time the book was published, Paolini had received a full scholarship to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but he made the decision to delay his education in lieu of starting a promotional tour for Eragon. He began a year-long publicity circuit to bookstores, fairs, schools, and libraries to promote the novel, often performing public readings wearing a full medieval costume. Best-selling mystery writer Carl Hiaasen was given a copy of Eragon by his stepson and, after reading it himself, Hiaasen contacted

his editor at Alfred A. Knopf, who subsequently contracted with Paolini in 2003 for the publishing rights to Eragon and two expected sequels—which Paolini has dubbed the "Inheritance Trilogy." The Knopf publication of Eragon quickly became a national best-seller, and Paolini appeared on several national television programs to promote the book. Twentieth-Century Fox also optioned the film rights to Eragon, hiring Paolini to write the screenplay adaptation. The entire Paolini family—his parents and his younger sister Angela—are now all working on their own children's books, while Paolini devotes his time to the completion of the second book in his trilogy, tentatively titled Eldest, due to be published in 2005.

MAJOR WORKS

Eragon opens with a map of Alagaësia, a fantastic world where the title character, a fifteen-year-old boy, ekes out a meager living with his uncle and cousin on their farm. Eragon discovers a blue gemstone covered with white veins, that is, in fact, a dragon egg. When a beautiful blue female dragon emerges from the egg, Eragon names the creature Saphira. Quickly bonding with the mythical beast, Eragon becomes the last of the Dragon Riders, a legendary group that Alagaësia's evil king destroyed a hundred years earlier. The current king, Galbatorix, feels threatened by the return of the Dragon Riders and subsequently kills Eragon's family and charges his dark servants with capturing Eragon and Saphira. The boy and his dragon, along with an aged storyteller named Brom, set out across the kingdom to find their fortunes and escape the king's minions. During his year on the run from Galbatorix, Eragon develops into maturity, gaining an understanding of love, loss, and evil, as he is pulled deeper into the struggle between the king and the resistance force known as the Varden. Together, Eragon, Saphira, and Brom draw on a combination of magic and traditional methods to protect and defend themselves from humanoid warriors.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Attracting overwhelming attention for a debut novel, Eragon has received enthusiastic responses from both audiences and critics alike. Most reviewers have agreed that Eragon marks a propitious beginning to Paolini's writing career. Sally Estes has commented that, "[i]t's obvious that Paolini knows the genre well—his lush tale is full of recognizable fantasy elements and conventions," and Amy Alessio has noted that "[Paolini's] world is intricate, his characters believable, and his writing engaging." However, some have criticized Eragon for being too derivative of earlier fantasy works and lacking a distinctive narrative voice. Susan Rogers has argued that, "Eragon does not approach the depth, uniqueness, or mastery of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, and sometimes the magic solutions are just too convenient for getting out of difficult situations. However, the empathetic characters and interesting plot twists will appeal to the legions of readers who have been captivated by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and are looking for more books like it." Other commentators have suggested that the widespread success of Eragon may be due, in part, to the prior success of other recent fantasy series, including Harry Potter and the Lemony Snicket books. Despite such comments, Paolini's accomplishment with Eragon, particularly as such a young author, is a testament to both his skill and his passion for the fantasy genre.

AWARDS

In 2003 Eragon appeared on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly children's fiction best-seller lists. It was also nominated as an American Library Association 2003 Best Book for Young Adults.

PRINCIPAL WORKS

Eragon (young adult novel) 2002

AUTHOR COMMENTARY

Christopher Paolini, Philip Pullman, Tamora Pierce, and Dave Weich (interview date 31 July 2003)

SOURCE: Paolini, Christopher, Philip Pullman, Tamora Pierce, and Dave Weich. "Philip Pullman, Tamora Pierce, and Christopher Paolini Talk Fantasy Fiction." Powell's City of Books (online magazine), http://www.powells.com/authors/paolini.html (October 2003).

[In the following interview, originally conducted on July 31, 2003, Paolini, Pullman, and Pierce compare the methodologies and techniques they employ in writing fantasy fiction.]

Of course we jumped at the opportunity to host a panel between these three. Of course we did. But not without some reservations. The authors had not previously met, nor would they for this conversation. Instead, we'd conduct the discussion by phone. Philip Pullman is the author of more than twenty books, including The Amber Spyglass, winner of the prestigious Whitbread Award for Best Book of the Year (2001). Tamora Pierce, whose work has been translated into German, Danish, Swedish, Hungarian and Japanese, has published five full quarters of acclaimed fiction for children and young adults. Christopher Paolini, meanwhile, is a nineteen-year-old fantasy writer whose debut, [Eragon, ] at the time of our talk, had not yet reached store shelves.

Would it work? One morning in late July, the three authors spoke from their homes—Pullman in Oxford, England ("If you can hear some hissing and spitting going on in the background," he warned us, "it's not because I'm fighting with our cat; it's because I'm cooking"); Pierce in New York City (one didn't have to ask which caller brought the sound of wailing police sirens to the mix); and Paolini in his family's house in Paradise Valley, Montana.

We needn't have worried. The breathless back-and-forth between the authors lasted more than an hour. For all the fun they were having, the conversation might have continued well into the afternoon had time constraints not finally forced its end.

[Weich]: Each of your new books is set in some kind of alternative universe. Does that fictional universe develop as a course of the story finding its direction? How much is established from the start?

[Pierce]: For me, it's a little of both. With each book, in each place, I have to keep an ongoing map as I write because I otherwise don't know where I am.

[Paolini]: I'd have to say it's the same for me. I mean, I've only done this one and a half times, but the way I've worked so far I have a fairly detailed work-up of the land and the rules of the universe, where Eragon will be going and what he'll be encountering. Then, as I actually work, ideas and details and refinements usually suggest themselves to me during the process.

[Pullman]: With my work, especially with Lyra's Oxford, the starting point was the real city of Oxford, where I happen to live anyway. I'm writing about an alternative Oxford in an alternative universe, so I couldn't make it too different or too much the same. I had to stick with the basic framework of the old city and add things to it as I thought of them.

It was a mixture of making things up to fit the story I'm telling and fitting in bits of the real city that I wanted to use. But I don't like starting with a completely clear idea of where I want to get to because then it's no fun going.

[Pierce]: If I'm stuck for a city and need one in a hurry, I've also been known to borrow from our real world landscape. I swiped the layout for St. Petersburg for Cold Fire and I—ahem—liberated a map of Jerusalem because, see, I have this problem with scale. Scale involves … m … m … m … math. So it helps if I know a real place that I know people can walk across in a day.

[Pullman]: Scale is important. You're quite right. It helps me a great deal to know roughly how long it would take to walk from here to there, or whether it's uphill, and what you could see if you turned this corner or that corner. In the Victorian thrillers I wrote, I used old maps of London, which helped a great deal because it gave me a sense of the solidity, the reality of the thing I was describing.

What you want to do basically is make your scenery solid enough so that it doesn't sway and rock when people walk into it. Having a sense of where things are in the scale is a great help.

[Paolini]: I think I'm very lucky in that I live in a valley just north of Yellowstone Park here in Montana …

[Pierce]: Excuse me while I whimper for a moment.

[Paolini]: Yes, it's called Paradise Valley, and it's wonderful. The scenery here cannot be beat, and it's one of the main sources of inspiration for me. I go hiking a lot, and oftentimes when I'm in the forest or in the mountains, sitting down and seeing some of those little details makes the difference between having an okay description and having a unique description. For instance, maybe there's moss there, but maybe I know from personal experience that the moss feels like mouse fur when it's being petted. Stuff like that. It really does help.

Often when readers or critics are talking about these kinds of novels, they'll talk about the fantastical elements of them—dragon and daemons and shape-shifters—but your books are defined as much by what's real and recognizable from the real world.

[Pierce]: I think you have to do that, particularly if you're working in speculative fiction. You have an audience that is fairly well grounded in the real world. You serve them and yourself best by making everything as real as possible. That way, when you ask them to make that big suspension of disbelief, when you ask them to believe, at least for the space of the book, that this sort of magic works, they've saved all their imaginative energy for that particular leap.

It also makes readers feel that even the most mundane of settings includes possibility. I think we probably all tinkered with that as we were growing up: We were all imagining what was happening around the corner.

The fantasy that appeals most to people is the kind that's rooted thoroughly in somebody looking around a corner and thinking, What if I wandered into this writer's people here? If you've done your job and made your people and your settings well enough, that adds an extra dimension that you can't buy.

[Pullman]: That's a good way of putting it. I completely agree with you.

The extra point, for me, is that it isn't interesting to write about if it isn't real, if there isn't a dimension of reality there, particularly a psychological reality. If I can believe in the characters I'm writing about, or if I can find something interesting to say through the medium of their story about what it feels like to be a real live human being, then it's interesting for me. If I can't do that, if it's so far away from what we know of as real life, my interest is correspondingly diminished and I can't bring myself to feel any great passionate desire to find out more.

Fantasy for me is just one of many ways to say something truthful about what it's like to be alive. That's the subject of all fiction, really.

[Paolini]: I know when I'm writing if I happen to get sidetracked into long pastoral descriptions or too many fantastical elements, I find that my interest, even as the writer, diminishes. It doesn't return until somehow I find a way to get back to the characters' inner lives and how they're dealing with the questions of everyday life.

[Pierce]: One of the things that really struck me about both Eragon and the Dark Materials books … I'm touchy on the subject of animals; I like them to be as real as possible. But here in one case you have armored bears, and in the other case, in Eragon, the dragon herself.

The dragon acted in an alien way, in a way that was not human, and became more believable thereby. She had her own agenda that had to do with her race and species—and not humans. The armored bears: They talk, they make their own armor, and they fight, but for the rest of it, they live just like bears. That just blew me away.

[Pullman]: I'm glad it had that effect. That's what I was hoping for.

[Pierce]: It was beautiful.

[Pullman]: But again, it's this reality thing, isn't it? What would a bear do? What would a bear be like? What would be real for a bear? Just have a character who's really a person but looks like a bear, well, that's not good enough. A bear's got to be a bear, as well.

The trouble with some works of fantasy is that they're called animals, but they're really just people. That's not so interesting for me. As you were saying, it's got to be an animal as well as whatever else it is.

[Paolini]: I decided to go in a more human direction with Saphira, my dragon, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she is raised away from her species, away from her race, in close mental contact with a human. I considered making the dragon more dragon-like, if you will, in its own society, but I haven't had a chance to explore that. I went with a more human element with Saphira while still trying to get a bit of the magic, the alien, of her race.

Christopher, you say you're halfway through the second volume of your trilogy. How does it feel to be heading out into however many hundreds more pages with these characters?

[Paolini]: Well, both of you have more experience with this than I do, but as far as I can tell, my first novel was a way to explore the standard fantasy traditions that I enjoyed reading so much. It was a chance for me to play in this type of world. My second book and third book, as I see it, are opportunities to expand upon the original archetypes and try to bring a depth to the world that I haven't seen done or in ways that I want to explore personally.

For instance, Eragon is traveling with dwarves for a while. I've never seen their culture explored too deeply in fantasy, and I wanted to make them very real. So he's learning about their religion and their customs and their world—I did a large amount of research.

It's daunting to still have a book and a half to go, but it's also a wonderful experience to have the characters mature with me as I'm writing them, especially as I'm pretty much the same age as most of the characters, anyway.

[Pullman]: There's nothing like setting out on a long voyage, and beginning a long story is like that. There's a sense of spaciousness, amplitude. There's a large world in front of you, and you don't know what's in it. You're going to go exploring and you're going to be disconcerted and maybe you're going to be frightened, but you're going to be excited and made happy, too, by what's there. Just this sense of space and size and lots of room.

[Paolini]: One of the things I love about working on a large story is being able to fill it with interesting little tidbits from the world. For instance, puzzle rings. I came across them last year, and I'm putting them in the book. I gave one to my hero to stymie him. Then I found out that the American Indians used to make bows from the horns of mountain sheep. I have monsters with large horns, so I thought, Maybe some of my characters are making bows from their horns.

[Pierce]: Oh!

[Pullman]: Well, you would, wouldn't you?

[Paolini]: You would, and they would be highly prized. It meant you slew a great monster, and now you had the skill to make the bow.

[Pullman]: And the spirit of the animal lives on in the bow and all that. Yes.

[Paolini]: Right.

[Pierce]: And I'll bet they must have a lot of tensile strength, since normal horn in any case is more flexible.

[Paolini]: Actually, these are the most powerful bows you can make without modern material. The all-time record held for a distance shot is held by a Turkish compound bow made out of wood and horn.

I love doing that stuff. I make my own knives and chain mail and stuff like that.

[Pullman]: Have you made a bow?

[Paolini]: I'm in the process of making a bow. It takes so much skill, it's probably not going to be any good, but it's good for writing fantasy.

[Pullman]: Absolutely. Because the sense of having something in your hands, and twisting it and turning it and feeling the texture of it … there's nothing to match that actual concrete experience when it comes to writing about it.

[Pierce]: I learned to spin on a drop-spindle for Magic Steps, the first Circle of Magic book.

[Paolini]: Wow!

[Pierce]: Not well, though. It varies from floss to rope. But not only did I fully know all the problems my character would have had, learning to spin, I also found that it had become a metaphor. The whole physical presentation of the spindle and the whole thought of spinning had become a metaphor for the book, and in fact for the whole quartet.

[Pullman]: That's very interesting. Has that happened in other books for you? In the book I'm doing at the moment, I didn't discover the governing metaphor until … well, I'm about two-thirds of the way through, and suddenly I can see what it is.

This means of course you can go back and make it richer and all that sort of stuff, but I very often don't discover this stuff till I'm quite a ways through. Is it the same for you?

[Pierce]: Actually, most of the time it is. It's the old archeological or paleontological method for writing: You sit there with a little brush and maybe a little pick, and you keep excavating until suddenly you discover you've dug up a T Rex—and you're at the end of the first draft. That's what rewrites are for. Thank God. Then you can go back and saturate the metaphor. This is what I was really writing about all along.

That happens to me more often then not. Sandry's Book was actually the first time I deliberately set out to learn something that transferred over as I wrote the first time around.

[Paolini]: I don't think anyone would read authors' books if we weren't able to rewrite.

[Pierce]: Anyone who tells you they don't need to rewrite, they're usually the ones who need it worst.

[Paolini]: I've found that the story ideas I get tend to come to me as a single image or feeling. It's very hard to convey through just words, but it's usually like the end of a symphony or the end of a great movie when you're just left with a sense of awe and wonder. These images will come to me, and then usually what I end up doing is constructing a whole story around it just to support that one image.

[Pullman]: That's exactly my experience, but the analogy I would use not so much the end of a symphony as waking from a dream. You know what it's like when you try and tell someone what your dream is like? It's so boring because it evaporates in the telling somehow. A novel for me is an attempt to build a kind of hermetic vessel that can contain this essence you've been dreaming about, this feeling that you don't want to evaporate. You keep it enclosed and you don't tell anyone about it until you build a vessel that can contain it and keep it at its maximum intensity and purity—that's the novel.

I completely agree, though. That's the way it starts for me, too.

[Paolini]: I have to admit, I just got the audio book version of Eragon yesterday. I've never heard my work read like this. I was listening to the end of the book and I was on the floor with my jaw open, thinking, I can't believe how many details I put in the book. And I can't believe how overwrought it is! But it was an attempt, like you said, to bring the story to a full boil and capture the magic and the feeling at the very end. You do want to go over the top when it really counts. You want to take the reader over the cliff and leave them with something they'll never forget.

[Pierce]: But at the same time, what you were saying about going, oh my God, I did this … My fans always look at me like I just shot their pony when I tell them I cannot bear to look at my first four books. Of course, they're in print and I can't make them better now. But there always comes that moment when you think, This is as good as I'm going to get with this. I have to let it go.

[Pullman]: This is where editors come in. Their function is to snatch the book from you and run away quickly!

[Pierce]: Yes, and then to come back and say, "Okay, here's what you were doing." And you're sitting there: Wow. I'm smarter than I thought.

Tamora, you're coming back now to a storyline that you left years and years ago, with the Lioness books. I assume you went back and reread the original books, right? Or how much were you able to work from memory?

[Pierce]: Memory only gets me so far—unless it's my husband's because he remembers far more about my books than I do. But what we did, in the intervening years between my second quartet, The Immortals [including Wild Magic, Wolf-Speaker, The Emperor Mage, and The Realms of the Gods] and The Protector of the Small quartet [First Test, Page, Squire, and Lady Knight] at night we'd be sitting around, and we'd end up talking about the different characters, what they'd be doing now and what their kids were doing. So when I came back, in some ways, it was as if I hadn't left at all.

I have directories and subdirectories and subsubdirectories of national customs. I have cast lists so I don't use the same name twice. I have all these copious notes and maps and everything that I go back and check, because the minutia will escape me. But I'll remember what people have been doing in the intervening time because I've been telling my husband what they're up to.

[Paolini]: I've found the same thing. Even though I finished Eragon fairly recently, I'm having to do the same thing you mentioned, which is keep copious notes and lists of all the names and places. Especially with a trilogy, it builds up with each book. Before you know it, you have half a thousand names.

[Pierce]: Large tapestry means many details.

Philip, you've explained before that you use sticky notes to organize your storylines.

[Pullman]: That comes with the rewriting stage, my little Post-It Notes habit. To keep track of what's happening in a long book, what I do, after I've finished the first draft, is I get a very, very large piece of paper, the largest I can find, and a whole stack of very small, yellow Post-It Notes. I go through the whole thing and write down on a Post-It Note each scene I have. Will meets the bear—that's a scene. I stick each one on the paper in the order in which they come, so I have a great big piece of paper covered with hundreds and hundreds of the little yellow stickies. Then I can move them around, you see, and they don't blow away when you open a window. It's easy to pick this one up and move it down there where it really ought to be and to group these two together because the same thing happens, sort of. Then get rid of that one because something similar has already happened.

I find them very useful. They're the best writing technology I've come across.

[Pierce]: Before you said you do this for rewrites, I was thinking, now there is a man who has faith in the 3M company. I can't get my sticky notes to stay. I can just imagine losing a whole chapter because the note ended up stuck to a cat.

[Pullman]: I wouldn't start from them, but once the book is there already it's a good way of seeing a great big map of it from above.

[Paolini]: I have a question for both of you. I was wondering if either of you listen to anything while you work. I'm a devotee of classical music and such things, and I find that they often help capture the mood of a certain scene.

[Pierce]: It kind of varies for me. For a long time, I did need music, but when I'm working I can't listen to music with words in a language I understand. Since I understand words from a bunch of European languages, if I'm not listening to classical, if I'm not listening to symphonic movie soundtracks, I'd better be getting some really esoteric music. Bagpipes are a big favorite. And for the Circle of Magic books, since I was working in a universe rather like the Medieval Middle East and Central Asia, I was listening to Arabic and Hindi and Tuvan throat singing and Balinese and Gamelan and any Japanese or Chinese, you name it. Then I hit a stage recently, I think with my last two books, where I couldn't be listening to anything at all. I needed silence. But now I'm getting back. Respighi's Pines of Rome has been beating me over the head. I've been listening, working on the book I'm doing now.

[Pullman]: I love music, classical music in particular, but jazz and all kinds of stuff as well—but not when I'm working. The rhythm, whatever the rhythm is, interferes with the rhythm of what I'm writing. When I'm doing prose, which is what I'm doing almost all the time—occasionally I've been known to write verse—I need to hear what I'm doing in my head, and I can't if there's music playing.

Many years ago, when my oldest son, who's now a professional musician—he plays the viola—when he was practicing his violin, this was generally the time I'd be writing, and I'd be listening to that instead of listening to what I was doing, so I had a shed built at the bottom of the garden and I went to work there just for the sake of the silence. It's not so much words that I might understand, as it is with Tamora; it's simply the rhythm. I can hear, very often, the rhythm of the next sentence before I know what the words are that go in it, and I will find words to fit the rhythm. Dum-dum-dum-da-DUM-da-dum something like that, you see. I can hear the sound I want before I hear the words. If there's music playing, music of any sort, it's very distracting and I can't do it.

I found though that when I was doing the illustrations for the first two volumes of His Dark Materials—they were published at first in the United States without the illustrations, but every chapter heading has a little vignette, which I did—I found that I could listen to music while I was doing it, and I loved it. I loved doing the illustrations. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good illustrator, so I didn't get the chance to do much more than that.

[Paolini]: I envy you, Mr. Pullman, the ability to hear the beats in the sentences, the rhythm, because I happen to be rather tone deaf and find it incredibly difficult to manipulate those types of rhythms. Alliteration and repetition are no problem, but beyond that I'm at a loss.

[Pullman]: I'm not sure it's a good thing to be able to do. It's just the way I do it. Maybe it's a limitation. But it does mean that I can't listen to music while I'm actually working, much as I love music otherwise.

[Paolini]: Well, I listen to music while I draw, as well. I did the maps for Eragon, and I find that listening to music always helps me draw better.

[Pullman]: I wish I were an illustrator sometimes. Then I could listen to music all the time.

[Pierce]: And I can't draw for beans. When I do my maps, I have to hand them over to art departments in order that real people can follow them. I have a friend that I ask because he's a bit of a geography wonk. I sent him the map for Cold Fire, and I told him, "Okay, from Point A to Point B takes five minutes skating. From Point C to Point F takes twenty minutes walking. And from Point D to Point A it takes ten minutes by sleigh." And I swear, he's three thousand miles away, but I swear I could hear him screaming.

A point of contrast between the protagonists of your books: In His Dark Materials, Lyra must retain her innocence for the bulk of the trilogy; she must act without realizing exactly what she's doing. Aly on the other hand, in Trickster's Choice, is very much ahead of the people around her; she in fact becomes their guide. And Eragon is learning as he goes, basically.

[Pullman]: Until a particular point in the story, Lyra has to remain, as it were, innocent—innocent of motives, innocent of understanding things. It's not that she must act without knowing what she's doing because that makes her sound like an automaton, as if she's obeying instructions from outside. It isn't so much that. Her understanding comes at a particular point in the story and in a particular way, which is important for her and for the rest of us. Until that point, she has to preserve, or I have to preserve for her … well, the only word for it is innocence, really. But it's not easy to arrange, and sometimes you find yourself wishing she were able to know a bit more.

[Pierce]: Aly, unlike most of my characters, was raised to this from the cradle. She inhaled code and search techniques and picking pockets and sign language at her nursemaid's knee. She is raised to the game. So at least in the confines of Tanair, where she's working throughout Trickster's Choice, she is savvier than the people around her. She is more fly to the time of day. This gets her into trouble because other people don't act as she was taught sensible spies should. It will really become a problem for her in Trickster's Queen, where she knows how the game is played, and she's really relieved to find others who play too. The problem is all those people who aren't raised to know how it should be done because they keep going off and doing things on their own.

[Paolini]: I chose to have Eragon mature and learn throughout the course of my story because, for one thing, it's one of the archetypal fantasy elements.

[Pierce]: The hero's journey.

[Paolini]: Right, the hero's journey. I wanted to play with that. And also, I started writing this at fifteen. I'd just graduated from high school. Fantasy was the easiest type of story for me to write at the time because I was so close to it, myself.

Eragon's growth and maturation throughout the book sort of mirror my own growing abilities as a writer and as a person, too. So it was a very personal choice for that book. In Book Two, I switch viewpoint to Eragon's cousin, Roran. For a large part of the book, I'm flipping back and forth. That gave me the ability to move to a more mature character and explore some stuff I really can't deal with with Eragon at this point.

[Pullman]: It's an advantage for the reader, too, because it provides the reader with a number of different viewpoints and a number of different friends.

I often think that we misuse the term "identify with" when we talk about readers identifying with a particular character. I don't think it happens so much like that. I don't think they say, "I want to be so and so." I think what a reader says is, "I want to be their friend. I want be in the story, but I want to remain me." That's often the way we read. And when you have characters like yours, that's what the reader is doing, I think.

[Pierce]: My studied aim as a writer … From the very beginning, I mean I bowed to Tolkien; he was the master. He's where I started with fantasy—him and Robert Howard and Michael Moorcock—but the thing that really bothered me about so much of what I was reading in middle school and high school was that these were not people I knew. I knew no pale, elegant, noble suffering persons. I knew no black, gnarly, evil, icky persons. So I started writing as an adult with the deliberate attention of wanting people to feel they could turn a corner, find my characters there, and hang with them awhile. I wanted people to find friends in my books. These were people it was fun to be with.

[Paolini]: It's interesting that both of you say this in a similar manner because, for me, Eragon and Eldest and other stories I've envisioned one day getting to have all been a direct outgrowth of wanting to be in a story or to be doing something, myself. I guess I project myself into the books or the movies I happen to be watching.

[Pullman]: And that's why readers can do it: because you've done it successfully for them.

[Paolini]: That's the hope.

[Pierce]: You give them the road to follow. Also, you're doing something a bit more archetypal than I do these days. I started out doing the hero's journey, too. I still like it. It still appeals to me. You have a bit more leeway where people can imagine themselves as the hero from the beginning because the hero is fumbling just as much as they would. That works beautifully. Anything that will bring the reader into your universe, your imagination, is always good.

[Paolini]: And I think one of the great advantages of fantasy and fiction is that it can show people how we can respond to the great questions and quandaries of life. What is the meaning of life and death? How do we deal with sorrow and joy?

[Pierce]: If you think about it, and you probably have, fantasy is probably the only literature around for adults—kids' books, not so much so—fantasy is the only literature silly enough, as my relatives would say, to talk about issues like honor and courage and making the best decisions.

[Pullman]: That's very true. We don't take those things seriously in the world anymore. It's not so easy now—not that it ever was easy to write War and Peace, but somehow we've grown cynical or tired or jaded about those things in the real world. We just don't believe it if a character takes seriously honor or courage in a real setting anymore. In fantasy you can believe it.

[Pierce]: The best we can come up with in the modern age is "try to do the right thing," which doesn't have anywhere near the resonance of honor. And I think people turn to fantasy gladly because we'll still talk about those truths, and they still have a powerful effect on the heart. And they're not hearing about them anywhere else.

[Pullman]: That's very true.

[Paolini]: I think you nailed it with that.

[Pierce]: Well, I've been thinking about this for a while.

[Paolini]: But I think you're right. Honor or dignity … dignity is another point. It's very hard to live in this world. Life is a give and take between pain and pleasure, suffering and joy. Finding a way to live with dignity is one of the eternal themes of human existence, and you're right: Writing fantasy is a way to explore that. To try and share with the readers the solutions that you or I have happened to think of to some of those quandaries. It makes reading worthwhile, too.

[Pullman]: It's always seemed to me that one of the great things literature of any sort can do … Well, it's an old phrase I saw on my favorite tombstone, which is in my birth city, Norwich, in England. It's a tombstone of an actress who died in 1801. The stone is dedicated to "the talents and virtues of Miss Sophia Anne Godard." Imagine your stone being dedicated to your talents and virtues! It goes on to say, "The former"—that is, her talents—"shone with superior luster an effect in the great school of morals, the theater."

It's always seemed to me that this is what literature does: it is a kind of school of morals. Just as you were saying about readers learning about what it's like to be honorable, they can also learn through literature what it's like to be cowardly and see the consequences of that. And see what it is like to be a murderer, and to feel what that is like. It is a kind of place where moral conundrums, moral dilemmas, moral puzzles are acted out. Where moral solutions are found. It's a safe place where this can happen, but it's also a very truthful place. And it's a place where we can suffer in absentia, as it were, by proxy—we can suffer, we can learn, we can grow by proxy, whether it is a great issue of life and death or whether it is, in the case of one of my favorite books, Jane Austen's Emma, what it feels like to be unthinkingly rude to an old person who's kind and rather poor.

Emma is unthinkingly rude, and is mortified when this is pointed out by the man she doesn't yet know that she loves. This is an unforgettable moment for anybody who has ever done it themselves. You think, oh my God, what have I done? I must never ever do this again. There are no great issues of life and death or blood and thunder. It's a quiet little moment, but it strikes right to the heart of what it is like to be unkind. This is what literature of every sort does. Perhaps in fantasy we're doing it in a different way, but we're fundamentally doing the same thing. It is, in a way, a school of morals. It's learning what life is like when you live it and when you suffer from it.

[Pierce]: One of the points I like to make with my heroes, especially with Kel, is that it's possible to be scared out of your pants and still do a heroic thing. Maybe not because you are setting out to do a wonderful heroic thing, but because there's a job that has to be done and you're the one who can get her courage to the point where you can take a stab at it.

I want my readers to take away the idea that heroes are not marble models. Fear, love, terror, and shame do not slip off their surface. Heroic things are done by real human beings who feel every bit as inept as you do. And the nature of courage is not defined by your fear; it's defined by what you do with it. That's something I've learned over and over and over again as I grow older.

We all do things from mixed motives. We all do things imperfectly because we're all people. Those who read our books can come away with that reassurance that, hey, even in fantasy, even in science fiction, there are just regular people there doing their best. And if it gets you all jacked-up and happy and enthusiastic for these people, maybe you can do that here in your own life. You can achieve those heights of emotion by your own human self.

[Paolini]: Actually, I think that's one of my biggest complaints with the majority of fantasy I've read, where you do have a hero or sometimes heroine who does not seem to experience the majority of human emotions and runs around hacking monsters and all this stuff. There's no reaction to it. There's no emotion about it.

[Pullman]: This is what we were saying earlier on about it's got to be real. It's got to be psychologically truthful.

[Pierce]: Fantasy can be littered with laughing thieves and witty assassins, even though in the real world we can see that thieves prey on the easiest prey, like any predator, and assassins are soulless. You see so much of this, and it just creeps me out. That's scary, to say that killing doesn't have meaning and theft doesn't have meaning.

I started out with my own laughing thief, too, before I realized that he'd be looking at his noble friends' things and thinking, Well, I'm here. I could take them. I realized I didn't like the thief as much any-more, so I arranged for him to retire.

[Paolini]: It's interesting that you mention that because I was considering how Book Three is going to wrap up, and I don't want to give away the details, of course, but it involved what you do with the people who once held power. Now they're out of power. What do you do with them? You can't have them sitting around, and yet I can't have a mass murder on my hands because I would hate myself for writing it, and I would hate my characters, and I know my readers would just throw the books in the trash.

[Pierce]: I'm wrestling with the same thing.

[Paolini]: Fortunately, I managed to come up with a solution that works within the rules of magic and the laws of my world that I've already established, but for a long while I was feeling very badly because I knew realistically you can't have a threat to the power structure hanging around without it being dealt with one way or another.

[Pullman]: Well, I look forward to reading your solution because that's something we all have to deal with at some stage.

[Pierce]: It's the old slavery paradigm. If you do away with slavery, what happens to the masters?

[Paolini]: This is perhaps on a lighter note, but it's something I've always wanted to ask. I've been very curious about the way both of you view the language because, for me, one of the great joys of writing is getting to actually use the words. To use words like scintillating and carnelian. All these words have such great feel. I wondered how much of that is part of your writing.

[Pullman]: I love all that kind of thing. I have several dictionaries and can't resist reference books of any sort, especially those that have to do with language. Publishers send me new dictionaries now, which is great. I had a great big new dictionary the other day to comment on and I'm still trying it out.

I love not just the meaning of the words but the sound and the feel of them in the mouth, the shape of them, the taste, the weight, the heft, the history of them, the way they've changed. It's a great sensual pleasure to manipulate this extraordinarily rich language that we have, but at the same time you have to keep it in perspective because the main thing I think you're dealing with as a storyteller … the main materials you're working with are not actually language but events. You're working with scenes and characters and things that don't necessarily present themselves initially in the form of words, although words are the medium you use in order to convey them to the reader.

I was reading recently one of the Maigret novels of George Simenon, and I found it tremendously impressive and full of atmosphere and very skillfully put together. And I read in a little commentary, maybe it was in the introduction to the book, that Simenon deliberately restricted his vocabulary to two thousand words. He never used more than that. So you can do all sorts of things with a very simple vocabulary. It's not only the richness of the language but the things you talk about, the things you invent. You have to keep the two things in balance. We can all think of writers whose prose is majestically jeweled and wonderful, but who can't really tell a story.

[Pierce]: I'm the person who tells kids at schools, "It's your language, Play with it."

[Pullman]: Yes.

[Pierce]: My primary drive as a writer is that I'm a storyteller. I come from a long line of them, so for me the way it sounds aloud is always what determines where I go and what I use.

Where I have my fun is actually with other languages. Since I'm working in so many different cultures that I'm looting freely from the real world, I have phrase-books and dictionaries, and when I need a new word and sense that it's a good time for a word in that culture's language, I hit the books. I start looking up words that correspond to what I'm getting at and come up with a created one that still feels like it came from a different language.

The other area where I revolve totally around language is dialogue, which has been an area of contention between me and my copy editors. I'm a pretty good sport about most things, but I've gently and then not-so-gently requested my editors to inform my copy editors that unless the sentence is out-and-out unclear, do not touch my dialogue. People speak in bad grammar, they use partial sentences, they trail off, they use slang and incorrectness all over the place, and when it's in dialogue …

Has either of you heard of the old Raymond Chandler quote? "I'm a professor of English and if I split an infinitive, it goddamn well stays split." That's how I feel about my dialogue. Every now and then I'll get a copy-edited manuscript, and I'll have to call my publisher and very gently say, "Did my former editor there warn you about me and dialogue?"

I did eight years in radio, so at least I come by it natural. People speak like people speak, and for me that's fun. To find the different ways that people say the same thing? I love that.

[Paolini]: It's interesting you mention invented languages because the ancient language, the language used by the elves in Eragon, I based almost entirely on Old Norse. I did a god-awful amount of research into the subject when I was composing it. I found that it gave the world a much richer feel, a much older feel, using these words that had been around for centuries and centuries. I had a lot of fun with that.

[Pullman]: It is a lot of fun you can have with language. It's one of the most pleasurable things. Names for characters are a way you can play with languages. You mentioned Old Norse. My bear is called Iorek Byrnison. I got his name from a glossary of Old Norse. I just looked through it until I found a word that meant roughly bear, which is kind of a natural way of finding a name for a bear, I think.

[Pierce]: I have twenty-two baby name books, plus urls for three baby name databases and CD-Roms and my own personal lists. You never know what will come in useful.

[Paolini]: I only have one baby name book, but I've found a web site …

[Pierce]: Kabalarians?

[Paolini]: Yes!

[Pierce]: Six hundred eighty seven thousand names!

[Paolini]: The problem is they have so many names that once you start skimming through none of them seems right.

[Pierce]: For me, my cast list helps because I can go through and see how many names I have starting with that letter, and if I have too many I don't use that letter again. You narrow it down as you can.

[Paolini]: I was really lucky with Eragon because it's just dragon with one letter changed. It fits the story perfectly, but some other names have caused me real headaches. Days and days of searching. But I was looking recently in a few supposedly very comprehensive thesauruses and I was dismayed by how pale and wan the language was in these thesauruses. They seemed to be lacking a lot of the richness. And I was able to find in an ancient thesaurus dating from the early nineteen hundreds words in there you cannot find anywhere else. Not that you would maybe want to use them, but it's been a wonderful resource.

[Pullman]: I'm always a little wary of the thesaurus because it's just a list of words. It comes without the meanings or the history attached. I have got a thesaurus, but it's the one reference book I almost never use. If I can't find a word, I'll flick through the dictionary at random, probably Chambers Dictionary, which is my favorite because it's got a lot of old Scottish words and old English words in it—but I'm always a little careful with a thesaurus because I've seen people take a word at random without really considering the history of the word or the implications or the alternative meanings of the word. I just like to have all that extra stuff that you get in a big dictionary.

[Pierce]: I got trapped that way, not by linguistic problems in my own language, but my German translator emailed me and said they wanted to change ogre in my books to something else, and they didn't tell me why. I said no. I was already ticked off at them over something else. And when the book came out I saw that ogre in German is Menschenfresser, which is man-eater. And I thought, If you'd have told me that's what the word was I would have found something else.

[Pullman]: Do your translators consult you very much? I must say, I've only been consulted once and that was on one word into Italian.

[Pierce]: No. Arayna, the German publisher, consulted me four or five times, and I corresponded with my Danish publisher but that's just for fun. Usually, I don't hear from them. And German I feel a little personally about just because I took it in college so I can sort of muddle my way through. But none of the others have, and frankly if the Japanese came to me I would just blink at them like a startled fawn.

[Pullman]: I can only read the French, and I can't read much of that either. You just have to cross your fingers and hope, don't you?

[Pierce]: You really do.

[Paolini]: We have Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail on DVD. In the extras, they have an example of the film as it was dubbed in Japanese. But not only that, they subtitled it with the Japanese translation back into English. Instead of searching for the Holy Grail they're searching for the Holy Sake Cup. And instead of shrubbery, it's, "We want bonsai!" It wasn't quite the same.

GENERAL COMMENTARY

John Marshall (essay date 3 January 2003)

SOURCE: Marshall, John. "Lessons in Book Promotion Pay off for Young Self-Published Author." Seattle Post-Intelligencer (online edition), http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/102548_book03.shtml?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=607 (3 January 2003).

[In the following essay, Marshall examines how Paolini promoted Eragon as a self-published author and Paolini's eventual major publishing contract for the Inheritance series.]

The fresh-faced young man sat at a table at last fall's Northwest Bookfest in Seattle, sometimes outfitted in costume as a storyteller of yore, but not altogether pleased with the number of buyers for his self-published fantasy novel. Eighteen-year-old Christopher Paolini of Paradise Valley, Mont., had been on the road hawking his book for most of the year and was used to far more buyer interest, sometimes approaching sales of 100 copies in a single day.

So Paolini was not just indulging in idle grousing when he told a Saturday visitor to his display, "This is a bookfest, but nobody is buying."

Those frustrations are behind Paolini now. This young author became one of the latest graduates of the difficult world of self-publishing to climb into the major publisher big leagues. World rights to Paolini's Eragon and its two unwritten sequels were sold recently to the youth division of one of the country's most prestigious houses, Alfred A. Knopf, in a deal reportedly worth more than $500,000.

"I'm sorry," Paolini said this week from Montana, "but I can't confirm the size of the deal."

The young author, who recently turned 19, has now learned far more than just to sound like a big-time author. He has learned about the draining grind of book promotion, with more than 70 appearances around the country during 2002, from elementary schools to bookstores. And he has also learned the power of persistence, to keep slogging away through good times and bad.

Since his novel was self-published in February, Paolini says he had never spent more than three days in a row at his home near Livingston where he was home-schooled and where he graduated with a high school degree at 15. That was the same year when he first started writing Eragon. He finished his first draft of the book at 16, his second draft at 17. And at 18, he was a published author with a 472-page paperback novel that also bore a cover he designed.

The road to Knopf in New York was paved with tireless personal appearances and strong word-of-mouth response from readers that soon resulted in some impressive reviews, including readers posting their comments at Amazon.com and in Publishers Weekly, the trade journal that described it as an "impressive epic fantasy."

Some of the interest in the young man's novel was, no doubt, generated by the huge popularity of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings and their film versions. Paolini's publicity flier attempts to make that connection on its cover: "After Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, read Eragon. "

But there were also bookstore owners who trumpeted Eragon to their customers. Among the most enthusiastic was Roger Page, owner of Island Books on Mercer Island, who has sold 200 copies of the novel.

"I've had a 50-year-old reader say Eragon is the best book he's read since Lord of the Rings and a 10-year-old reader say the same thing," Page relates. "I've also had 25 people say this novel is just a great read."

So much momentum had been building for the novel that Paolini and his family were starting to find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of running their own publishing business, including an exhaustive Web site supporting the novel's sales (www.factsource.com). And the author himself was feeling a tad tired from a promo schedule that left him finding it difficult to focus much attention on the writing of his second novel.

"We couldn't handle things any longer on our own, then Knopf came to us, so it was a case of perfect timing," Paolini said. "It's incredible to me, very, very exciting. I think it's wonderful that so many more people will be able to read Eragon. "

Knopf plans to bring out a hardback edition of the first novel in Paolini's planned "Inheritance Trilogy" next September. Sales of the self-published paperback will be discontinued in the next few weeks.

Paolini's Eragon is the second self-published novel by a Northwest author to be given the big-bucks boost by a major publisher in the past nine months. Craig Joseph Danner of Hood River, Ore., received a six-figure payment for Himalayan Dhaba, which was published last spring by E. P. Dutton.

Yvonne Zipp (essay date 7 August 2003)

SOURCE: Zipp, Yvonne. "Teen Author Wins Readers Book by Book." Christian Science Monitor (7 August 2003): 20.

[In the following essay, Zipp chronicles the effectiveness of Paolini's take-charge self-publishing and self-promotion of Eragon.]

A lot of writers prefer to remain above the actual business of selling books. Christopher Paolini is not numbered among those. In fact, the young author has gone to great personal lengths to get his book into the hands of as many people as possible.

Take the time he arm-wrestled a Montana farmhand at an outdoor festival in Livingston.

"Fantasy wasn't his thing. Actually, I don't think reading was his thing," Paolini says. So he threw down his challenge. "We cleared off the table right there in the middle of the park. He was 6 ft. something, and I'm 5 ft., 8 in., and I ended up beating him."

Another Copy Sold

This kind of take-charge entrepreneurial spirit helped Paolini and his parents, who published the book for him, sell about 10,000 copies of his fantasy epic Eragon. As if writing around 500 pages about a 15-year-old who discovers a dragon's egg wasn't enough, Paolini designed the cover art and drew the illustrated map of his kingdom, marketed the book, and acted as chief salesman. And the 19-year-old did it all by the time most teens are filling out freshman orientation packets for college.

Time on His Hands

Paolini started writing Eragon when he was 15—the same year he got his GED. He didn't want to go to college right away, and the nearest town to his family's farmhouse is 18 miles away. "So there was not a whole lot … to take up big chunks of my time," he says. "I decided to try to write a story I would enjoy reading." For Paolini, who admires authors like Mervyn Peake, Philip Pullman, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Octavia Butler, that meant fantasy.

He worked a year on the first draft—and was less than impressed by the results. "I know what a book is supposed to read like, and this wasn't it," he says. Draft No. 2 took another year, at which point his parents, who own a small publishing firm, helped him edit the book.

Around that time, Paolini had to make a choice. He had been accepted on a full scholarship to Reed College in Portland, Ore. "I literally had the orientation papers on my desk," he says.

Instead of moving into a dorm, he and his parents took Eragon on the road.

Paolini made more than 130 presentations at bookstores, schools, libraries, and fairs around the United States—dressed in leather lace-up boots, black pantaloons, a red swordsman's shirt, and a black beret. "The first time I spoke in public was [at] my local high school, which I never attended," says Paolini, who was home-schooled by his mom. "I find out they're going to cycle the whole school through in three batches. It's a farming community and there are all these ranchers' sons, and there I am standing on stage in medieval costume. I was petrified."

A Year on the Publicity Circuit

After about a year on the road, public speaking held few terrors and Paolini had picked up a new hobby on the long car rides: making chainmail—a process he says involves galvanized fencing wire, metal snips, and a lot of patience.

But the book's success was becoming logistically overwhelming for the family. And Paolini was so busy selling Book 1, he wasn't making much headway on Book 2, Eldest.

"In 2002, I literally only got 60 pages written," he says. "I've been working on the trilogy already for about five years. I do kind of want to get it out of my system."

As it happened, one of those 10,000 copies the Paolinis had sold landed in the hands of Carl Hiaasen's stepson, when the family was vacationing in Montana. Hiaasen, author of Striptease and the Newberywinning Hoot, called his editor at Alfred A. Knopf and suggested the firm might want to take a look.

It did, and at the end of this month, a newly edited hardcover edition of Eragon hits bookstores. The first printing is more than 100,000 copies. Paolini's original drawing is no longer on the cover, but he doesn't sound terribly upset. The new cover was designed by John Jude Palencar, an artist Paolini admired so much he named Eragon's home, Palancar Valley, after him.

One Character Drawn from Real Life

Paolini's own home of Paradise Valley—and the Beartooth Mountains—served as a model for his book. But Paolini says there's only one character that he drew from real life: Angela the herbalist, the funniest and warmest of his female characters. Paolini, as it happens, has a younger sister, Angela, who he says knows the Latin names of all the plants in their valley. She got her GED at 14. "She was determined to beat what I did," says Paolini.

"I put her in as a joke," he adds. But "her appearance ended up giving me the solution for the entire story arc."

The real Angela, now 17, has returned the favor, he says, installing him as a character in her first fantasy novel. In fact, all the Paolinis are working on books. "We all have computers and sit in our rooms typing all day," says Paolini, who, while he doesn't see college in his immediate future, listens to university lectures from The Teaching Co. "We come down to dinner, watch a movie or something, and then go back up."

So far, aside from plush advances, covers designed by his artistic heroes, and opportunities to talk to authors like Mr. Pullman and Tamora Pierce, Paolini says life has actually gotten quieter since his deal with Knopf. But that's only until the end of this month. After that, Paolini goes back on tour.

This time, though, he says, "I won't be in costume."

Brandon Griggs (essay date 28 September 2003)

SOURCE: Griggs, Brandon. "Paolini, Only 19, Breathes Fire as a Fantasy Writer." Salt Lake Tribune (28 September 2003): D4.

[In the following essay, Griggs discusses the history behind Paolini's novel Eragon and how the self-published author promoted his debut work.]

America's hottest teenage author took the stage Thursday in Salt Lake City before an ABC News camera crew and a roomful of grade-schoolers, some barely younger than he was when he began his book.

"Walking up to people and saying, 'Hi, I'm 15 years old and I just finished the first draft of my novel'… I'd get some strange responses," said Christopher Paolini to students at J. E. Cosgriff Memorial School. "After a while, I didn't even want to talk about it anymore."

There is no such problem these days for the boy wonder—now all of 19—whose debut fantasy novel, Eragon, has drawn comparisons to J. R. R. Tolkien and leapfrogged past Harry Potter books on the best-seller lists. In recent weeks Paolini has been featured in Newsweek and People and is being courted by the Today show and David Letterman.

It's all a bit bewildering for the precocious youth, who whipped through Utah on the third leg of a 15-city book tour.

"I got up at 4:20 this morning in San Francisco," he said, shaking his head. "I can't believe it's the same day."

The story of Paolini's success is almost as fantastical as his book. Raised in a farmhouse in Montana's Paradise Valley, he was home-schooled by his parents and earned his GED at 15. That same year, inspired by the fantasy and science fiction novels he loves, Paolini began writing Eragon.

The book is the story of a 15-year-old farm boy in a medieval empire who discovers a large blue egg in a forest and watches in amazement as it hatches a baby dragon. Armed with only an ancient sword and the advice of a wizened storyteller—shades of Gandalf?—the boy and his maturing dragon undertake a perilous journey to battle the dark forces of a tyrannical king.

Not one to shrink from a challenge, Paolini conceived the book as the first chapter in a Tolkien-like trilogy. Although Tolkien's influence appears in Paolini's Middle Earth-like realm, elfin characters and reluctant young hero, the young author says he was inspired more by Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials saga and even Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher.

Paolini's book began as a homegrown project. He designed the original cover art and drew its illustrated map of his kingdom, called Alagaesia. His parents, who own a small publishing company, helped edit Eragon and published the book themselves in early 2002.

His father then drove him to dozens of schools and libraries around the Northwest where Paolini, dressed in medieval garb, introduced readers to Eragon. On a dare, the slender Paolini even arm-wrestled a Montana farmhand over the book; the farmhand lost and bought a copy.

Paolini eventually made some 135 appearances as far away as Texas and sold more than 10,000 copies of Eragon —an impressive number for a self-published novel.

Then he got lucky. Best-selling mystery writer Carl Hiaasen, author of Strip Tease, was on a fly-fishing vacation in Montana last year when his 12-year-old stepson picked up Paolini's book. Enthralled, he showed it to Hiaasen, who alerted his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. Soon Paolini had a $500,000 contract for three books and a freshly minted hardcover, which hit stores last month. Eragon is No. 3 this week on The New York Times' children's chapter (non-picture) book best-seller list.

Already Paolini has seen both sides of his sudden celebrity. Hollywood is interested in the Eragon movie rights. And his family, deluged with calls, have changed to an unlisted phone number.

For the Paolinis, who live south of Livingston along the Yellowstone River, writing is a family vocation. Christopher's parents are working on nonfiction books and his younger sister Angela—who earned her GED at 14 and inspired an herbalist character in Eragon —has just completed her own fantasy novel. The four scatter to their rooms during the day to write, then gather in the evenings to watch movies from their vast home video library, which contains almost 4,000 titles.

Paolini is more than halfway through writing Eldest, the second volume in his trilogy, due in late 2004.

"I'm basically being paid to write down my daydreams," says the avid reader, who counts the sci-fi classic Dune and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina among his favorite novels. He remains flabbergasted by the fuss over Eragon. "I can't believe it. I've had people walk up to me and say, 'I've been reading fantasy for 30 years and this is my favorite book."

Paolini is arguably more qualified than most to write fiction for young adults. After all, he is one. Dressed in jeans, hiking shoes and a red T-shirt, the boyish prodigy stepped before several hundred fifth-through eighth-graders Thursday at Cosgriff. The students, gathered from six Wasatch Front Catholic schools, seemed largely unfamiliar with his book—a condition that should change soon.

After outlining Eragon 's plot and reading from the novel, Paolini adroitly fielded questions from his attentive young audience: What's your favorite part in the book? (He has several.) Do you have a job? (Writing.) Do any of your characters have a hamster? (No.)

Afterward, students rushed Paolini for his autograph, but the apologetic author couldn't stay: There were interviews, books to sign and a standing-room-only reading Thursday night at The King's English Book-shop, where he sold a Potteresque 214 books.

By Friday morning, Paolini was back on an airplane. More readings, TV appearances and fame await. It's his fantasy, and he's living it.

Diane Roback (essay date 20 October 2003)

SOURCE: Roback, Diane. "A Teen Fantasy Come True." Publishers Weekly 250, no. 42 (20 October 2003): 17.

[In the following essay, Roback details the publication success of Eragon as part of the Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers series.]

A 19-year-old media star? Sure, the pages of People magazine are filled with them, but they're not usually children's book authors. Christopher Paolini and his fantasy novel Eragon, however, are taking the nation's booksellers by storm. Written by Paolini at the age of 15 (and previously self-published), Eragon, released on August 26 with a first printing of 100,000 copies, is the first in a planned trilogy about a boy who discovers a dragon egg that is destined to hatch in his care, thus resurrecting the mission of the legendary Dragon Riders.

Knopf distributed 3,600 pre-pub ARCs via BEA, ALA, Book Sense, account mailings, reviewer mailings, etc., and the response was "tremendous," according to executive director of publicity Judith Haut. An eighth trip back to press on October 14 brought the in-print figure to 300,000 copies. Rights have been sold in eight countries, and Fox 2000 has optioned the novel for a feature film. Paolini is currently on a 14-city tour; national media coverage has included features in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, People, the Sunday Times in London and on The Today Show. It's #1 on PW's children's fiction bestseller list and is in its seventh week on the NewYork Times list. Heady stuff for any first novelist, let alone a teenager, who—like his fictional hero—seems to be embarking on a story that's the stuff of legends.

Walt Williams (essay date 24 October 2003)

SOURCE: Williams, Walt. "Hollywood Plans Eragon Movie." Bozeman Daily Chronicle (online edition), http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2003/10/24/news/moviebzbigs.txt (24 October 2003).

[In the following essay, Williams explores the publication history of Eragon and the plans to adapt the novel as a major motion picture.]

First there was Harry Potter. Next came The Lord of the Rings. Now comes Eragon.

A major Hollywood studio has acquired the film rights to the best-selling fantasy novel by 19-year-old author Christopher Paolini, who lives in the Paradise Valley with his family.

Fox 2000 is now searching for a script writer to adapt Eragon into a motion picture, according to a recent report by The Hollywood Reporter.

Paolini was out of town wrapping up a book tour Thursday, but his father, Kenneth, said the family was excited about the deal.

"Christopher originally conceived of Eragon as a film idea," he said.

Eragon is a novel set in a medieval fantasy world of kings and dwarves. The story concerns a boy who finds a magical stone that hatches into a dragon.

Paolini started writing the book at age 15. While he wanted to make a movie, that was something beyond the capability of a young teen, so he settled for writing a book instead, his father said.

"A lot of people have a lot of passion over the story, and one of the reasons I see for that is the story being so visually oriented," he said.

Eragon is the first in a planned trilogy of novels, but Fox only acquired the film rights for the first book.

The book was originally self-published and later picked up by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers.

Since then, it has risen to the top of the best-seller lists. It has been No. 3 on the New York Times children's book list for six weeks, with only the more established Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket books ahead of it.

The Country Bookshelf on Main Street has sold more than 60 copies of Paolini's book in just over a month, a good run for a new author, said Jill Friedrick, children's book buyer.

The book is well researched and full of interesting characters, which may explain its mass appeal, she said.

It also helps that the fantasy genre is seeing a resurgence in popularity, thanks to the Harry Potter novels and The Lord of the Rings movies.

"I think it's just perfect timing," Friedrick said. "People are really into fantasy."

Paolini has also become something of a celebrity, with profiles of the young author appearing in The New York Times and other national publications. He recently appeared on CNN and will be interviewed on the Fox News Channel's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren starting at 8 p.m. today.

TITLE COMMENTARY

ERAGON (2002)

Midwest Book Review (review date April 2002)

SOURCE: Review of Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Midwest Book Review 12, no. 4 (online edition) http://midwestbookreview.com/ibw/apr_02.htm (April 2002).

Eragon by science fiction and fantasy enthusiast Christopher Paolini is a vigorously written high fantasy epic of Eragon, a young man armed with a mythic red sword, accompanied by a beautiful dragon companion named Saphira, and the recipient of Brom's old storyteller wisdom. Our hero is drawn into a complex, interwoven saga of a fantastic land with a cruel and ruthless king. Legacies etched in stars and dreams guide his steps in this enchanting adventure. Eragon is highly recommended for dedicated fantasy enthusiasts.

Amy Alessio (review date 2003)

SOURCE: Alessio, Amy. Review of Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Teenreads.com (online magazine), http://teenreads.com/reviews/0375826688.asp (2003).

One day, a young farm boy named Eragon finds a blue stone while hunting and tries to sell it for money. Unsuccessful in his attempts, he takes the stone back to his cabin and lets it sit there—until it hatches into a beautiful blue dragon. Eragon realizes he can talk to this secret pet dragon with his mind, and eventually learns that he and the dragon are part of a legacy of secret heroes called the Riders.

With the help of Brom, a wise man, Eragon matures into his destiny. The challenges he faces include fighting a long-standing war, helping an ethereal elf, and dealing with tragedy and revenge. Certain details, such as Eragon's revelation that he cannot read, develop this rich work and blend together to produce a number of plot twists. The story builds suspense steadily until the end.

Remarkably, author Christopher Paolini began writing Eragon at the age of 15. Now 19, he has already established himself as an exciting new creator whose influences include Tolkien, McCaffrey, and others. His world is intricate, his characters believable, and his writing engaging.

Both casual readers and hardcore fans of fantasy and science fiction novels will be enchanted by this well-crafted fantasy and unquestionably will look forward to parts two and three of this exciting trilogy.

Kirkus Reviews (review date 15 July 2003)

SOURCE: Review of Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Kirkus Reviews 71, no. 14 (15 July 2003): 967.

This solid, sweeping epic fantasy [Eragon ] crosses vast geography as it follows 15-year-old Eragon from anonymous farm boy to sword-wielding icon on whose shoulders may rest the fate of Alagaësia. Dragon Riders have died out over the years, leaving the Empire under the iron fist of King Galbatorix; but hunting in the forest one day, Eragon finds a blue stone that soon hatches into his very own dragon. The next months find him learning magic, sword skills, and bits of his land's history. A slight tone of arrogance running through the narrative voice will hardly bother readers busily enjoying the reliable motifs of elegant immortal elves, mining dwarves, a wise elderly man, and a hero of mysterious birth. Replete with histories, names, and languages, this high fantasy with visible Tolkien influence ends with Eragon's first battle and a tempting pointer towards the second installment, when Eragon will visit the unseen elven city and plunge headlong into his destiny.

Publishers Weekly (review date 21 July 2003)

SOURCE: Review of Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Publishers Weekly 250, no. 29 (21 July 2003): 196.

In the first volume in Paolini's planned Inheritance trilogy [Eragon ], 15-year-old Eragon discovers an odd blue gemstone while exploring an infamous stretch of forest. It is a dragon egg, fated to hatch in his care. Eragon quickly develops a psychic connection with the female dragon that emerges, whom he names Saphira ("His emotions were completely open to her mind, and she understood him better than anyone else"). Eragon narrowly escapes doom with Saphira's help, but the uncle who raised him is killed, setting up a robust revenge/adventure tale. The scope quickly expands: Eragon turns out to be the first of a new generation of Riders, a lodge of legendary dragon-riding warriors killed by the evil King Galbatorix. As a result, he becomes the focal point in a war between Galbatorix's forces and the resistance efforts of the Varden. Paolini, who was 15 years old himself when he began this book, takes the near-archetypes of fantasy fiction and makes them fresh and enjoyable, chiefly through a crisp narrative and a likable hero. He carries a substantial Tolkien influence—fanciful spellings of geographical names, the use of landscape as character, as well as the scale and structure of the story itself. But his use of language dispenses with the floral, pastoral touch in favor of more direct prose. The likeness does not end there: the volume opens with a detailed map of Paolini's world, and ends with a glossary and pronunciation guide for his invented language. An auspicious beginning to both career and series. Ages 12-up.

Sally Estes (review date August 2003)

SOURCE: Estes, Sally. Review of Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Booklist 99, no. 22 (August 2003): 1981.

Gr. 7-12. Was the mysterious blue stone that appears out of nowhere sent by accident [in Eragon ] or is teenage Eragon meant to have it? When a dragon, Saphira, hatches from it, beast and boy connect (in much the same way dragons and riders do in Anne McCaffrey's popular Pern series) and face danger together. In this story, Eragon is thrust into a new role as the first Dragon Rider in more than 100 years who is not under the evil king's control. After the king's ghastly minions kill Eragon's uncle as they search for the teen, Eragon and Saphira, mentored by the village's aged "storyteller," hunt for the killers and, in turn, find themselves being hunted. This unusual, powerful tale, begun when Paolini was 15 (he's now 19) and self-published in 2002 before being picked up by Knopf, is the first book in the planned Inheritance trilogy. It's obvious that Paolini knows the genre well—his lush tale is full of recognizable fantasy elements and conventions. But the telling remains constantly fresh and fluid, and he has done a fine job of creating an appealing and convincing relationship between the youth and the dragon. It's an impressive start to a writing career that's sure to flourish.

Susan L. Rogers (review date September 2003)

SOURCE: Rogers, Susan L. Review of Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. School Library Journal 49, no. 9 (September 2003): 218.

Gr. 5-Up—Eragon, 15, is hunting for wild game when he witnesses a mysterious explosion. At the center of the blast radius he finds a polished blue stone marked with white veins. Brom, the village storyteller, has shown interest in it, so it is to him that Eragon turns when it starts squeaking, then wobbling, and then hatches into a majestic sapphire blue dragon. His decision to keep and raise Saphira starts him on an epic journey of Tolkienesque proportions that is only partially told in the 500 pages of this book. Eragon learns that the Empire's cruel and oppressive king will stop at nothing to get Eragon and Saphira to serve him. Training and traveling with Brom, the teen and dragon learn to work together in war and peace, using a combination of traditional fighting arts and magic. They encounter massive humanoid warriors with savage intentions and are befriended by Murtagh, a human warrior with mysterious ties to the Varden and the Empire. Eventually, they seek refuge with dwarves who harbor the Varden, who exist to free the Empire. Eragon does not approach the depth, uniqueness, or mastery of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, and sometimes the magic solutions are just too convenient for getting out of difficult situations. However, the empathetic characters and interesting plot twists will appeal to the legions of readers who have been captivated by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and are looking for more books like it.

James Neal Webb (review date September 2003)

SOURCE: Webb, James Neal. "A Boy and His Dragon." Children's Book Page (online edition), http://www.bookpage.com/0309bp/children/eragon.html (September 2003).

Kids are fantasy literature's natural audience. After all, children are exposed to magic from the moment their little eyes are able to focus on a page and find a cow jumping over a moon or a velveteen rabbit that becomes real.

In a story that almost seems like a fairy tale itself, a young author named Christopher Paolini, only 19, has emerged with a fantasy novel of amazing depth and scope geared specifically to his own demographic. Eragon is both the title and the protagonist of Paolini's promised Inheritance trilogy. The story of a teenage boy who by happenstance—or perhaps design—becomes the partner of a dragon, the book is set in a place much like medieval Europe.

When Eragon's discovery and subsequent adoption of the young dragon Saphira results in danger and tragedy for his family and his town, he goes on a quest for vengeance with the help of a local storyteller named Brom. His is a world in which magic, while real, is feared, a fear based in large part on the ascendance to power of the evil lord of the land, Galbatorix, the last of the Dragon riders.

Fantasy writing is a tricky business; some authors slap on a thin coat of backdrop for their characters to parade against, and others lay on detail after excruciating detail. Paolini strikes a happy medium, showing wisdom beyond his years. He gives his world and his characters depth and reality. The dragon Saphira is a sentient creature equipped with both intellect and instinct. She and Eragon bond mentally, and their relationship deepens as the novel progresses. The old man Brom is an enigma; he serves as Eragon's guide and teacher, and there's more to him than meets the eye.

Paolini started this novel when he was only 15. He self-published it, and when the son of author Carl Hiaasen happened upon a copy, the book soon found its way to Random House. Four years later, Paolini is at the starting line for what may be a long writing career. Eragon is an exciting beginning.

Vicki Arkoff (review date November 2003)

SOURCE: Arkoff, Vicki. Review of Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Midwest Book Review 2, no. 11 (online edition), http://midwestbookreview.com/mbw/nov_03.htm#vicki (November 2003).

Eragon is a standout, a major achievement in the flourishing genre of fantasy fiction for children. Not only is this debut novel the impressive bow of an imaginative new writing talent, it's a masterful introduction to an epic fantasy trilogy that will be this decade's answer to J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" series. That's quite an accomplishment for any mere mortal, but it's even more remarkable considering that this book was written by a home-schooled 19-year-old who self-published the story earlier this year. Edited by Knopf for this edition, the story is the majestic tale of a young man, Eragon, who lives in a magical land called Alagaesia, and believes he is merely a poor orphan until a mysterious blue stone changes his life forever. He unwittingly becomes linked with a brilliant blue dragon, Saphira, and inherits the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders. The tyrannical King Galbatorix, however, has no intention of letting a Rider challenge his authority, and his dark servants murder Eragon's family. Bereft of his home, Eragon and Saphira embark on a quest for vengeance. Deeply involving and endlessly inventive, Eragon is a lushly-detailed adventure that will have readers mesmerized for every one of the book's vast 514 pages. Bravo! Highly recommended for fans of Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula Le Guin and Philip Pullman.

FURTHER READING

Biographies

Gardner, Chris. "Kid's Dragon Tale Flies at Fox." Hollywood Reporter (13 October 2003): 3, 53.

Describes Paolini's debut into self-publishing and highlights how his novel Eragon became an optioned feature film by Fox 2000.

Martens, Ellin. "A Boy's Novel Fantasy." Time 162, no. 16 (20 October 2003): 87.

Brief biographical sketch of Paolini.

Criticism

Paolini, Christopher. "The Author." Random House (online magazine), http://www.randomhouse.com/teens/eragon/christopherpaolini.htm (2003).

Paolini discusses his writing techniques and the inspirations behind Eragon.

Smith, Sean. "Living a Real-Life Fantasy." Newsweek 142, no. 13 (29 September 2003): 67.

Traces Paolini's evolution from a fledgling self-published author to the eventual publication of Eragon by a major publishing house.

Winship, Michele. Review of Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Kliatt 37, no. 5 (September 2003): 10.

Offers a positive assessment of Eragon.

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Additional coverage of Paolini's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Thomson Gale: Contemporary Authors, Vol. 219; and Literature Resource Center.

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