charmianland because random is good enough for most

“Adolescent boys, of the kind who take up books in the first place these days, already experience their lives as a series of ordeals: tests, in every sense. A narrative whose purpose is not to push the hero or heroine toward a moment of moral crisis, à la “Huckleberry Finn” or “Little Women,” but to put him through a telescoped series of ordeals, which aim only at preparing him for the next series of ordeals: this is the story of their life. Eragon never really grows from boy to man, as he might have in another kind of book; he mostly just learns how to be a dragon rider and contend with mysterious helpers, half hostile and half friendly, as kids do at school. Kids go to fantasy not for escape but for organization, and a little elevation; since life is like this already, they imagine that it might be still like this but more magical.”