Inheritance Cycle vs The Old Kingdom

In my first English seminar at university we went around the room and said which book we last finished (that wasn't on our reading lists) - it was a pretty predictable bunch, 1984, a Jane Austen or two, Moby Dick, War and Peace, it was the summer of 2011 so a couple of girls said One Day. But what about me? Well, when it came round to my turn I kept my eyes on the table and said Twilight - having stayed up until sunrise reading it for about the 6th time. I guess it's fair to say I'm not particularly high-brow.

My brow was lowered further in my Easter break this year. I had just finished a superbly uninteresting module on Victorian literature and wanted to rebel. A few blogs ago I mentioned my Young Adult Fiction binge over Easter - it consisted of skim-reading Harry Potter, re-reading the Black Magicians Trilogy by Trudi Canavan, reading the Hunger Games trilogy and the holiday came to a close with Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy.

Mum bought Sabriel (the first book in Garth Nix's trilogy) for me when I was nine or ten, I started reading it then but didn't make it past the first couple of chapters. Desperate for a YA Fantasy fix I grabbed in from my bookshelf and powered on, a few days later I stopped by a Waterstones to pick up books two and three and finished them in a handful of days. Emily is also a lover of YA Fantasy and when she spotted news of my binge on Twitter, she decided to fuel my addiction with some of her favourites. In the first few weeks of the summer term I found myself in possession of Christopher Paolini's Eragon, book one of Inheritance Cycle. Generally more popular than Trudi Canavan and Garth Nix, I had high expectations for Paolini - boy was I disappointed.

Before I continue, it is probably worth mentioning two things. Firstly, I haven't actually finished Inheritance Cycle, in fact I didn't even make it to the end of Eragon, so this review is wilfully uninformed. Secondly, Inheritance Cycle is a quadrilogy not a trilogy - I don't like quadrilogies, I can't tell you why, it's inexplicable, I just don't like them.

When I made the final decision to give up on Eragon, people who had encouraged me to read it all replied with the same shrug and "Well I was quite a lot younger when I read it." This response made me wonder, why is it that I'm too old to enjoy Eragon, but I enjoyed Old Kingdom more now than I did when I was younger? Both series are in the Teen Fiction section in Waterstones - trust me, I checked - so is the 'well, I guess you're too old for it' excuse valid?

Both series centre around magic - in Old Kingdom magical knowledge is gained through knowledge of symbols for things, magic in Eragon requires knowledge of an ancient language. So far, pretty similar? It ends there. Old Kingdom is much more original in it's a concept; a magical kingdom where electricity doesn't work shares a border with modern countries where magic barely works. Nix contrasts the country of practical technology and the country of symbolism and mysticism. The necromancy aspect to the magic also feels original within the context of a YA Fantasy.

Philip Pullman describes Sabriel as "a fantasy that reads like realism." I disagree entirely, what makes Old Kingdom such a good read is that it is entirely surreal. The first few chapters are almost uncomfortable to read as it takes a while to adjust to the casual references to the Dead, whether they be a threat to Sabriel or her servants. Old Kingdom is a trilogy you have to be utterly consumed by in order to really understand the world that Nix has created.

Eragon couldn't be more different. The phrasing and style of writing is generally dull, but that's par for the course is you're going to read YA when you're an adult. What I really couldn't handle was how much each chapter feels like an entirely separate unit and the only thing that happens in each unit is exactly what the chapter title points to. There's no sense of subplots or excess plot just for the sake of entertainment and being immersed in a story. No, everything is on a need to know basis.

This sparsity of indulgence in his world is extended to the characters that Paolini creates. I get the impression that this is the area that I'm going to get most stick for - yes I Eragon is like able enough and I could probably write a short paragraph to introduce you to him, but I don't understand him the way I do Sabriel. There's also no spare dialogue between characters, so the relationships just don't feel natural. Sabriel spends something ridiculous like 164 pages without making any contact with any other human but somehow there is more dialogue and character development than in the same number of pages in Eragon.

This experience of both loving and, for the first time, hating Young Adult Fantasy has taught me something. YA fiction is only good to read as an adult if the author does more than tick the boxes and tell a fun story. Garth Nix creates a world that he seems to generally care about, I feel like he's spent time thinking about details of his creation that are surplus to the requirement of the plot. Christopher Paolini on the other hand has created a world that fits into a box, a box that is perfectly and neatly gift wrapped for a very specific audience demographic.

It's similar to the comparison between Disney cartoons and live-action Disney Channel original movies - but that's a whole other ballgame.

Comments, tweets and disagreements welcome.