I've got a secret

I've got a secret. When I was 13, I was fixated on the ddo powerleveling role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. I usually sat in the Dungeon Master's chair, unleashing rich characters and exciting situations that seemed, to my friends at least, to have been created out of thin air.

Truth is, I just read more fantasy than they did -- often all through the night -- and could steal freely from books they hadn't read. So I feel a certain kinship with Christopher Paolini, whose first novel, "Eragon," about a 15-year- ddo powerleveling old boy who discovers a dragon egg, may have had dragons plat a similar genesis. While young readers devoured the novel, some adult readers cried foul.

The teenage author, they argued, had stolen from fantasy greats like J.R.R. Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey, and even borrowed from "Star Wars." Worse, much of the book was awkwardly overwritten. Despite the complaints, Paolini's books -- "Eldest" followed "Eragon" in 2005 -- have sold something like 15 million copies. That number ddo plat has increased by more than half a m dd gold illion just this week with the release of "Brisingr," the third novel of a promised four in his Inheritance cycle.