Big writers become a kind of shared climate. Still, it is a little startling to see how almost entirely the mythology and the machinery of the Eragon series derive from “The Lord of the Rings.” Paolini’s elves, long-boned, graceful, and living in trees, as poetic as they are dangerous, are Tolkien’s elves; his dwarfs, short and bearded and brave, though slightly comic, are Tolkien’s dwarfs; his dark lord, Galbatorix, “cruel ruler of the Empire,” is a variant of Sauron (overlaid with bits of the galactic emperor from “Star Wars”); and his mortal hero is, of course, just one vowel (and a consonant) away from Tolkien’s mortal hero, Aragorn. Indeed, all Tolkien’s phonetics are absorbed into Paolini’s work: vowels are good, especially “E” and “A”; harsh starting consonants are suspicious, especially “K”; and though Paolini substitutes “X”s and “Z”s for Tolkien’s evil sibilant “S”s, they both practice guilt by phoneme.
— Gopnik home run
