[Suzerain of Sheol]

Yokuutsu, I think the point you may be trying to touch on involves the mytho-archetypes of the hero story that are ingrained in the human consciousness (as Campbell explores in "The Hero With a Thousand Faces". You can see similar stories arising in different areas of the world, at different time periods with no cultural diffusion between them. Hence them being part of what it is to be human on some fundamental level -- or that's what he says, at least.)

But anyway, the point is more that George Lucas (allegedly) read Campbell and incorporated those resonate archetypes into Star Wars, while Paolini (though he may or may not have read Campbell) followed in the generation after those norms were established as the framework for the fantasy genre, and hence ended up borrowing from authors who'd borrowed from Campbell, which makes his work seem rather derivative.

Granted, I've never read the books, but I've read summaries of them and followed several debates similar to this one, not to mention seeing that... thing they inflicted upon cinema audiences. So I'm not really going to weigh in on any specific details, or even take one side or the other, but I will just note that in the current literary zeitgeist of the fantasy genre, it's pretty much impossible to be original if your story resembles the Hero's Journey at all. But, on the other hand, originality isn't completely necessary in this case, since people have been enjoying such stories since the dawn of language itself, and they continue to resonate with something fundamental in our world-views.

I will also note that I do not believe, at all, that any 15-year-old (that was how old he was when he wrote it, yes?) is capable of writing a moving, original, masterfully-crafted piece of fiction. There simply isn't enough life-experience available at that point to have all the requisite skills and the insight into the craft of storytelling necessary to achieve something like that. Not to mention, a teenager is more than likely not going to be able to self-edit to the degree required to produce competent prose. It's a skill that takes years of honing, and it's rather simple logic that an older writer will be better at it than a younger writer.

Of course, that brings up the fact that Paolini is in his mid-20s now, yes? My personal theory would be that the effect of his success has insulated him from criticism or any drive to improve his craft, keeping him in a stasis where that teenage boy's skill at writing has not significantly evolved, even with a decade or more's opportunity to do so. This is something you see with a lot of authors as they become successful -- their fame reduces the publisher's interest in providing them editors since they know the books will sell anyway, so the authors' works have a tendency to actually deteriorate with time. See: Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, and many others.

Also, I will add my personal belief that monetary success is wholly divorced from the literary value of a work. The vast, vast majority of the book-buying public is not going into a book to examine it critically for its merits as a work of literature. Of course, you could argue that a "good story" or even the concept of "good" is a paradigm dependent on the perspective of a cultural majority, but I think I've said enough for the moment in this miniature essay. :p