I liked the series, though it wasn't original. I'm sure everyone already knows the originality complaints, so I won't go into depth there. The third person narration was good (I'm not a fan of first person), and Paolini was good at describing some scenes. I think Eragon had a realistic relationship with Saphira, not so much with his brother, Roran. Unfortunately, Paolini used way too many adjectives to get his point across in certain areas.
That, and sometimes he went overboard with description. For example: "his [a dwarf] tears ran down his eyes and splayed out like spokes on a wheel." Or if he's describing Arya, he describes "sculpted lips". I honestly felt my gut lurch at this. He was holding her up as a sex goddess, instead of a character.
Once upon a time (like, around 2006) there was a site called "Anti-Shurtugal" that had many informative articles detailing every single problem with the first two books of the Inheritance series. I never read the last two so I can't tell if Paolini ever actually improved, but Eragon and Eldest were literally just Star Wars set in Middle Earth. Now, there was a general consensus in the originality thread that even if your book is Star Wars set in Middle Earth, if you have good prose and compelling characters you may still have a great book. But Paolini's prose sucked and his characters were worse. I know I'm bumping this thread two months later but I was a big fan of Eragon when it came out and I posted on the shurtugal.com forums for years as well as Anti-Shurtugal and its many spinoff forums. I felt the need to comment.
