Eragon, a young farmer, finds a magic dragon's egg and is swept up in a quest that will change his life forever.

I have to admit: I’ve been torn by the sudden overwhelming popularity of all things fantastic in children’s literature. On the one hand, I’m eternally grateful to Harry for his magical work in revitalizing my favorite genre. Few literary genres are hurt by a growth in new voices and increasing competition. And it’s kind of nice to finally be able to talk about my secret obsession with fantasy without all my friends thinking I’m a dungeons-and-dragons cloak-wearing nut. On the other hand, it’s a bit disconcerting to discover that ideas that were once the secret treasure of your own personal library have suddenly become commonplace knowledge to every ordinary person on the street. It’s a bit like coming home to the secret fort you built in childhood to find it overrun by neighbors throwing a party, complete with chips, hot dogs, and free beer.

That’s a bit how I felt the first time I read Eragon. I’m torn between feeling pleased by what is a reasonably coherent newcomer to fantasy literature and being irritated by the many elements that are clearly derivative. Eragon contains little that is truly innovative, and its imitative elements are glaringly obvious when read by someone who’s been obsessively reading fantasy for the past twenty-three years. It’s Anne McCaffrey’s dragons flying blithely around Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, with a hero who could have stepped out of pretty much any fantasy novel of the past twenty years. It’s reasonably well-written, and the characterization is good enough that I am (albeit a little reluctantly) looking forward to the final book in the trilogy—even though I’m pretty sure I can predict most of what will happen in it. But the reality is that the most original part about it is the fact that it was written by a sixteen year old. The second book, of course, doesn’t even have the advantage of that distinction. I would be more impressed if Inheritance had shown deeper levels of characterization and growth to correspond with the increasing age (and presumably wisdom) of the author, but it was really just more of the same.

But on the other hand, perhaps the simplicity—and derivative nature—of the Inheritance series is exactly its appeal. Fairy tales, after all, are the most enduring stories in our culture, and they are usually derivative and predictable, with many similar—even inevitable—elements. Archetypal theories of literature argue that it is these very commonalities that give stories their depth and their power. We identify with them because they are familiar, because they are even, perhaps, on some historic or mythic level, true. If nothing else, perhaps they draw their strength from the similarity which they all have with the one Great Story that is utterly true, the story which is told and re-told faithfully every Christmas season, the story that C.S. Lewis called “a true myth.” So perhaps I shouldn’t criticize Paolini for including elements in his novel that are too obviously similar to other books of the genre. He did, after all, use them in his own creative fashion. And by borrowing elements of great literature, he’s only doing what all great storytellers have done since the days when storytelling was first invented.

None of this, however, has anything to do with the real question of the moment, which is whether Eragon will make a good movie. It certainly has all the necessary elements to entertain thousands of fantasy-loving moviegoers this Christmas season: a hero’s quest, magic, special effects, a built-in audience, and a telepathic dragon. Whether director Stefan Fangmeier will succeed in turning these elements into a blockbuster remains to be seen. But if you ask whether I’ll be watching it on opening night, the answer is, of course. Because in the end, it doesn’t matter if a story’s been told a hundred times before. It doesn’t matter if half the elements are derived from timeless tales that have been told and retold since the beginning of time. Like family traditions, like summer holidays, like Christmas itself, there are some stories that deserve to be told again. Some stories never get old, and Eragon—or at least some yet-untold future variation of it—might even become one of them.