For three weeks this was the audiobook that accompanied me to and from work. It turned something like 20 hours of tedium into an enjoyable experience. But it’s not great literature. It’s extremely derivative of Tolkien. Exactly as in Middle Earth we have Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Orcs (though the name ‘Orc’ has been slightly corrupted into ‘Urgal’), with all of the characteristics you’d expect of each (Elves are good at magic, Dwarves live underground, Orcs are smelly.) Why have the races of fantasy been cast into stone so that nobody dares creating something new?

Sometimes there’s an incredible lack of subtlety. I felt like I was being repeatedly whacked with a brick with the ‘unknown’ identity of Eragon’s brother wrapped around it. (And the story shares a certain familial structre with Star Wars.) But this is ‘young adult’ fiction and maybe the current crop of ‘young adults’ are less intelligent than I imagine :-)