The book is fairly good, but the sequel was far better. You can tell the author has aged a few years as he's written them. The one thing I didn't like about the second book was that each time it switched characters, I got really annoyed because I was so involved with the story I was just reading. The problem with the first book is that the first few chapters aren't half as well written as the rest... I take it that that's because he started writing it when he was 15...
I saw a pic of Sapphira (the blue dragon) when the movie was announced, and decided not to see it. One of the really cool things about the books was the explanations and the larger ideas presented, neither of which could be translated into a movie worth watching.
Of course, this series is no LOTR or Earthsea. Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the His Dark Materials books are much better also. What's impressive here is the age of the writer, and the depth of the explanations of how things work, even if the history of the world is a bit sparce.
