This book was huge back in 2006 when I first picked it up. I got WAY into it. I’d been removed from reading big fantasy novels for a while so it was a good primer for getting me back into the genre.
Someone pointed out to me that it was the plot of Star Wars with dragons, and that’s accurate, even if I didn’t want it to be at the time. You can give it a break on the grounds that the dude was 15 when he wrote the first one, and got the others done in his late 20s. I sure wouldn’t want anyone to read my stuff from back then, but I would also have taken the half-a-million dollars that came with it in a heartbeat, so no judgment there.
ERAGON was kind of like Harry Potter in the sense that it got a lot of normies into a genre that they might not have otherwise messed around with, and created a demand for more. In the end that benefits writers and readers. That’s a good thing. There are still people that really loved the series (I still have fond memories of reading the first two).
Whether it holds up now is less relevant than the space it created for more of us to generate and enjoy books of the same genre.
Audible had this on sale last week and I grabbed it for my kids, largely on the comparison to ERAGON, among other things.
Haven’t read it yet, but I’ll let you know how it goes.
DreadPennies: The Mind of Graham Bradley 
Do you really want your kids reading Eragon?
I wouldn’t have a problem with it, there’s nothing bad in there.
Yeah, I agree that sometimes a book that a lot of people like can just be a book that a lot of people like. It bugs me when people criticize others for enjoying something they don’t think is good. Just let people enjoy what they enjoy and, like you said, consider that it might actually encourage them to read more books. Not everything has to be a masterpiece.