Judging Books by their Covers: Eragon

Jessica at Quirky Bookworm hosts Bookworm Fridays on the first Friday of each month, and June features a "Judging Books By Their Covers" linkup. Here's my contribution!

A year or two ago I was searching my library's ebooks for something new to read. I'm a fan of fantasy books like The Lord of the Rings, and when I came across Eragon it caught my eye.

One Boy… One Dragon… A World of Adventure. When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself. Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power. With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds. Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? The fate of the Empire may rest in his hands …

I read the first two books in the series, then put it aside for awhile since they're so long (think Harry Potter, but much more in-depth and descriptive). Just a week or so ago I was in need of something new to read again and was craving some fantasy, and decided to pick up where I'd left off and start book three.

Since I'd only ever seen one cover of this book (see the 2003 hardcover edition below), I thought it would be fun to search for others for this linkup post. And boy did I discover some fun stuff!! First off, there is actually an entire wiki dedicated to this series. I found multiple book covers as well as the history of the series. I had no idea Christopher Paolini wrote the first draft of Eragon when he was only 15! His family self-published the book first, then a famous author came across a copy of it and took it to his publisher. It then became a NYT bestseller.

So which cover is your favorite? If you saw all of these together on the shelf, which one would you reach for?

2003, hardcover edition.
The paperback edition features
a closeup of Saphira's face.

Original, self-published cover, 2002

10th anniversary collector's edition

Japanese edition

Swedish edition

Vietnamese edition

I found the following covers through a Google image search, it appears a college design class had the assignment of re-designing the cover to this book! What a neat idea!

And of course, one of the movie posters. I haven't seen it, but from what I've read the movie is "loosely" based on the book. Come on people, if you're going to create a movie with the same name and plot line as a book, you should try to make it as close to the book as you can! If I remember correctly, I've heard that in the movie, Saphira isn't even blue.

I think my favorite covers out of all of these are the first of the design class -- I like the blue egg and the sunrise, it sets the stage for where the story begins -- and the original edition designed by the author. The collector's edition is pretty sweet too.