Let's skip the praise that he wrote it at such a young age, blah blah blah. Amelia Atwater-Rhodes wrote absolutely stunning things at thirteen. Paolini is an idiot. Well, actually, he's an idiot with parents who have connections in the publishing industry. Thus, he was able to pluck what he liked best from Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and numerous (better!) storylines and mash them all together in a book his parents said was wonderful. Honestly, his parents are even worse. They didn't have the backbone to say "Son, I know you worked hard on this... but it's awful. I'm sorry; I don't want to burn anyone's eyes out, so it'll have to stay in your desk drawer." Would that really be so hard? Now we have to deal with an absolutely trash movie and numerous fans (most of whom couldn't tell Shakespeare from their ***) defending this piece of garbage.

You know the reason it did so well? It has dragons. That makes for a great image on your advertising promos, and little children are attracted to anything scaly with wings. If Eragon had, say, giant slugs who could fly instead... the blindfold would be gone and everyone would be able to see why Eragon is such trash.