Christopher Paolini

are essentially fantasy.

The Iliad and the Odyssey would, if published today, be classified as fantasy.

So would Beowulf.

And the list goes on.

So in some ways, these are our oldest forms of fiction.

And the fact that they have experienced such a resurgence of popularity is, I believe,

almost a reversion to the norm.

We're seeing people coming back to the sorts of stories that were what humanity embraced for thousands of years.

But of course, doing it with new takes, new visions, and new techniques.

Yeah.

And I think also it's very easy for someone to look at a genre from the outside and say, oh, well, you know, that's easy.

I could write that.

If you don't read the genre itself and understand it deeply, you're probably going to just end up rehashing something that's already been done a hundred times.

I know for my own work, I write with a very close eye to making sure that someone who doesn't normally read…

when they pick up one of these books, while at the same time providing long-term fans of the genre with things that they'll enjoy.

That's actually, I don't want to say complaint, but an issue that I've often had with specifically science fiction, but it also appears in fantasy, where

the text just become almost impenetrable to someone who doesn't read the genre.

And if you are a casual audience member and you pick up one of these books in a bookstore and you start glancing through it, you hit a wall of jargon or terminology and you kind of go, why should I be interested in this book?

And that's where the author's skill and technique comes in and ultimately their ability to write a character, hopefully,

that's going to grip and engage the reader.