I liked eragon and eldest a lot, it was not a tolkein rip off because he added a lot more detail to things. Tolkein was an awesome writer yes, but he really didnt describe things to the extent that a lot of writers did. It was kinda like he expected everyone to know what hes talking about. Magic in LOTR was horribly done in my opinion. Christopher Paolini was 16 when he came up with the idea for eragon and around 18 or 19 when it was written and published. Hes like 21 or 22 now