Paolini's Writing gets Worse with Practice

[edward9]

I read the first three chapters of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars for sporking purposes. I was struck by how much worse the writing was. In terms of objective measurements like grammar and sentence structure it is worse than the Inheritance Cycle. The Inheritance Cycle seems to have had a copy editor and I cannot imagine To Sleep in a sea of Stars was copy edited. A copy editor edits into a certain style and just the use of punctuation defies any system I am familiar with. I am no expert but I have never seen punctuation patterns like that. For semi objective things like writing style and structure I think most editors and writers would find it worse than the Inheritance Cycle. As has been pointed out by others nothing of significance happens in the first three chapters other than introducing the main character.

What struck me the most is the degradation in an admittedly more subjective area. The story was really boring. I found it difficult and unpleasant to read too but it was really really boring. It was so boring I could not find much to spork. Everything is just too blah, empty, with nothing to it. It is hard to imagine so many words could say so very little. How do others find To Sleep in a Sea of Stars compares to the Inheritance Cycle? Am I the only one who thinks Paolini's technical writing skills have gotten noticeably to massively worse?

Comments

[epistler]

I don't think we're really in any position to make judgements about his mental state. I think it's pretty clear though that he actually does believe he'd gotten better - that this is his big fanfare release, showing off how far he's come, how he's finally matured since his "practise novel", Eragon.
He just happens to be completely and embarrassingly wrong.

[epistler]

And you're completely right that material success doesn't necessarily make people happy. Generally it just seems to make them hungry for more and more of it, which is not good because with hollow prizes of that sort enough is never enough, and being deprived of it makes you miserable. It's probably a large reason why so may celebrities end up drinking or drugging themselves to death even when they seem to have everything.