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** spoiler alert ** 1.5 stars - considering the author's young age at the time of writing.

When Eragon first was published, it was hyped very much - a teenage author writing a YA fantasy novel of such quality, and so on and so forth.
Reading it now for the first time ever, well past my teenage years, I really don't know how this could have gotten so big. It is exactly the kind of story you'd expect a 15-year-old fantasy reader would write: it basically is a mix-up copy/fan-fiction of the things he was reading, such as The Lord of the Rings, The Earthsea Quartet, The Hobbit, maybe a bit of the The Abhorsen Trilogy Box Set and the first volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire on the side. And those are only the ones I could identify at first glance.
There is no internal development in the main character, as you should expect from a classic hero on his or her quest: He starts as a sulky teenage boy who thinks he is a lot cleverer than he is on a farm, and ends as a sulky teenage superhero who thinks he is much cleverer than he is with magical powers, a dragon, a big sword and a crush on an elf. Also, his learning progress in, well, everything is absolutely unrealistic and, thus, boring. At least, to balance his superhero boy wonder out, Paolini might have left him an illiterate. But then, at fifteen, you want your characters to be super-everything.
The plot twists were unsurprising (of course the egg-shaped stone is a dragon egg; of course his old mentor dies, revealing himself to be the "last rider"; of course Eragon saves the day by killing the "boss", to use gaming terms, singlehandedly; etc.) and the foreshadowing blunt (of course Murtagh is his half-brother - I checked my suspicions after I read his background story). The dynamics among the characters were often only logical from an adolescent's point of view.
Another point that really bothered me were names of places and people: partly just badly or not at all disguised copies from the fantasy fiction the author has been reading, partly indiscriminately taken from all kinds of "places" (legends, myths, etc.) for the cool sound, without bothering to check if they fit together.

It was a bit of a mystery to me how something like this could have gotten published without a very rigid (and necessary) editing removing or reshaping the too obviously "inspired" passages and parts and style flaws with the young author. (I think it could have been a rather good book with that kind of help.) Reading the author's portrait at the back of my edition, I instantly knew how this got published: mum and dad working in the publishing industry might have been a bit of an advantage there. Possibly mum and dad also weren't the fantasy-versed editors who would have spotted their son's bookshelf in his book.
Also I think that Eragon might work quite well for a teenage audience with little or no previous "contact" to the fantasy genre. Then the story might seem novel, original and unique, and the characters very relatable in their adolescent mind-sets and behaviour. Once you are older or more versed in the fantasy genre as a first-time-reader, Eragon looses any magic it might have possessed.

As exceptionally young authors go, there have been more impressive ones since, like The Peculiar-author Stefan Bachmann. Therefore the saving grace of young age only added 0.5 stars to my rating.
If it weren't for this having been a buddy read, I probably would have given up on the book once Brom was dead at the latest.