Eragon and Hunger Games, making headlines

It's been a big week for young adult fiction. First, there was the much-anticipated release of the trailer of "The Hunger Games" on "Good Morning America" earlier this week. In case you still haven't seen it, you can watch it here. We'll wait!

There's a lot of debate among fans of the books whether the movie will be as good. THe main thing I hope is that they don't water down Katniss. It still makes me angry that they excluded Hermione's hero scene from the "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" film, where she solves the logic puzzle and figures out which flask Harry needs to drink in order to proceed. I don't want them to turn one of contemporary literature's most badass female characters into a wimp. I didn't see Jennifer Lawrence (who plays Katniss) in "X-Men: First Class," but I did see her in "Winter's Bone," and she was great.

I had long held out hope that they'd cast Robert Downey Jr. as Haymitch. I've adored him in everything I've seen him in, from "Iron Man" to "The Soloist," and I still think he would have been awesome, but Woody Harrelson will also be good. I didn't know that Lenny Kravitz acted, but he definitely looks like how I imagined Cinna. I had heard of Donald Sutherland, who plays President Snow, but couldn't recall what he'd been in. So I looked him up on iMDB, and was pretty blown away by the wide variety of roles he's had in his lifetime. He should be a good President Snow as well.

The timing of the film's opening concerns me a bit. It's due to open March 23, 2012, and that's usually the time of year they reserve for bottom-shelf releases. Gross-out comedies with no-name actors, romantic comedies rejected from Lifetime Movie Network on the grounds of excessive sappiness, small-budget action films that might as well be titled "Shit Blows Up Near Boobs"...and rotten adaptions of less-popular books and graphic novels. "Hunger Games" doesn't fall into that category, though. It topped bestseller lists and garnered many accolades and awards. Google-search "The Hunger Games," and 142 million results will appear. People will definitely be watching this film.

Also, the final installment of the "Eragon" series by Christopher Paolini hit stores last week. The series was initially supposed to be a trilogy, but Paolini had so much left over, he created a fouth book. The new book is called "Inheritance." I know very little about it, as I read only the first book in this series. The series has many, many fans, though (including Mr. Library Diva!) and I know they've been anxiously awaiting this book for several years. If anyone out there has read it, I'm interested in your thoughts!

Dragon FEVER

I just finished a two-week long project, Eragon, by Christopher Paolini.

The title character of Eragon is a young farm boy who finds a strange stone in the woods while hunting. He tries, unsuccessfully, to sell or trade it. Then, it hatches into a dragon (which he names Saphira). Eragon and his fellow townsmen live under the rule of a totalitarian leader, Galbatorix, and his henchmen come in search of him, and torch his house, killing his uncle and forcing Eragon and Saphira to depart on an epic journey, along with the town storyteller, Brom, who soon reveals himself to be more than what Eragon had guessed. Eragon learns that he is the first of a new generation of Riders, and will be a key player in the struggle between the Empire of Galbatorix and the free people who oppose him, the Varden.

At 450 pages long, this book is rather slow-moving. It took me a very long time to get into it. I'd seen the movie first. When my boyfriend and I returned from seeing it, a friend of his who had read all three books said that he thought the movie sucked and that they'd cut so much from it, he didn't see how they could make a second movie. Naturally, they'd have to make some cuts, but they did leave out some key scenes.

The book is populated with wonderful characters: Brom, the storyteller; Angela the herbalist and her werecat Solembum; Murtagh, with a dark heritage; Ajihad, leader of the Varden; and of course Saphira herself, who is no dumb animal, but a highly intelligent creature with as much of a consciousness as person. Yet, Eragon himself is not among the wonderful characters. Eragon is bland, defined only by external events. Perhaps Paolini did this deliberately, to allow young readers to project whatever they wanted onto Eragon. If so, it was unneccesary -- Harry Potter is a pretty defined character and that series hasn't suffered in popularity because of that.

The book was also rather geeky. If you've ever drawn a map of Middle Earth or attempted to hold a conversation in Elvish, you'd love that aspect of these books. In fact, many of the ideas are borrowed from Tolkien: the dwarves in this book are mostly miners and metalworkers, the elves are respected for their intelligence and knowledge of magic, there's an ancient language, there's a race of fighters which much resembles Orcs Paolini calls them "Urgals").

But it wasn't terrible. The book picks up towards the end, and often the first book in a trilogy is the weakest because of all the exposition. I will probably give the rest of the series a chance.