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The Inheritance Cycle #4
Inheritance
Not so very long ago, Eragon—Shadeslayer, Dragon Rider—was nothing more than a poor farm boy, and his dragon, Saphira, only a blue stone in the forest. Now the fate of an entire civilization rests on their shoulders.Long months of training and battle have brought victories and hope, but they have also brought heartbreaking loss. And still, the real battle lies they must confront Galbatorix. When they do, they will have to be strong enough to defeat him. And if they cannot, no one can. There will be no second chances. The Rider and his dragon have come further than anyone dared to hope. But can they topple the evil king and restore justice to Alagaësia? And if so, at what cost?This is the much-anticipated, astonishing conclusion to the worldwide bestselling Inheritance cycle.Sneak Peek at Chapter TItles from InheritanceMooneaterTo Feed a GodBlack-Shrike-Thorn-CaveA Crown of Ice and SnowA Cradle SongDancing with SwordsA Sea of NettlesNo Honor, No Glory, Only Blisters in Unfortunate PlacesThe Hall of the SoothsayerBurrow GrubsFrom the Hardcover edition.
880 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 8, 2011
8558 people are currently reading
121204 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Paolini
112 books42.7k followersChristopher Paolini was born in Southern California and has lived most of his life in Paradise Valley, Montana. He published his first novel, Eragon, in 2003 at the age of nineteen, and quickly became a publishing phenomenon. His Inheritance Cycle—Eragon and its three sequels—have sold nearly 40 million copies worldwide.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
was his first adult novel.
Visit Paolini.net and Fractalverse.net for the latest news about this project and follow Christopher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
Visit Paolini.net and Fractalverse.net for the latest news about this project and follow Christopher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
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December 4, 2013Before I begin this, I'd like to say that it's a rant. For those of you who don't like ranting- Don't read it. I actually happened to love this book, but I'm just a tad mad at the ending at the moment.
Dear Christopher Paolini,
How. Could. You.
Sincerely,
A Very Angry Fan.
December 26, 2025
This book makes my heart happy.
"Why does everything have to be so hard? "
"...Because," said Saphira, "Everyone wants to eat, but no one wants to be eaten."
Eragon has graduated from isolated farm boy to savior of the kingdom. Along the way, he's faced trials, tribulations and terror.
He's fought the shade, the Ra'zac, Murtagh and more. All that's left is to defeat King Galbatorix. Easier said than done.
The king has held his long reign through more than sheer luck. He's stockpiled unimaginable power - power so great that despite all of the training in the world, Eragon and Sapphira can barely hold a candle to the evil king.
But fight they must, for the alternative is far more terrifying than either of them are willing to comprehend.
GAH! My heart is just so happy.
"I am not who I was," he whispered, gripping the edges of the column, "but I know who I am...And I won't give up."
For context - I first read this series in middle school and absolutely adored it.
Now, that I'm 25, I've decided to go for a reread - all the while crossing my fingers that I still love it (am I the only one who gets scared by rereads? What if the book doesn't hold to my memories? What if younger-me had bad taste?)
And oh thank goodness - I still love this series.
The first one will always be my favorite but all in all, I'm really pleased by the way this series turned out.
Angela and the werecats absolutely riveted.
What little we know of Angela's origins is expanded upon in this novel...though, instead of filling in the gaps, I feel like it's creating whole new ones. I'm so curious about her life - this girl deserves her own book!
I love at the hints of Nasuada and Murtagh - that pairing completely blindsided me at first but it developed so slowly and naturally that I am just crossing my fingers that there will be a later book that wraps up that story line.
And honestly, I wasby the lack of Eragon and Arya.
Logically, I totally understand why the author did that for the time being (Eragon IS of age, but he's still SO much younger than her)...and yet, just one sentence or two to hint at a future romance would have just cinched this story for me.
Overall - loved it the first time through, and every time I read it, I fall a little bit more in love.
Audiobook Comments
Really enjoyed this audio, Murtagh's accent was a cool drink of water on a hot day. Sapphira's accent was a congested Yoda gargling nails.
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October 4, 2012
Inheritance
Book 4 of the Inheritance Cycle
By Christopher Paolini
A Review by Eric Allen
After his early success, Christopher Paolini set to the final book of his trilogy. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, the outline he'd written for the third book wasn't going to fit in a single volume. He decided to split it in two. I have to question why, but I'll get into that later in the review. Now we've finally come to the end with the fourth and final book of the series. Was it a good ending? Well, to be blunt, no, it wasn't. The best I can say is that it IS the end. Thar be spoilers ahead, be ye warned.
I'm not really a fan of this series. I saw the movie and thought it was one of the worst things I'd ever seen. A friend of mine told me that the book was way different and much better. He was right on both counts, though I still didn’t like it much. It was generic, not exceptionally well written, and it blatantly stole from Star Wars so much I had to wonder how Paolini didn't get sued for it. He uses some very awkward, repetative, and inappropriate wording in his imagery, and lingers on describing completely unimportant things as though they are the holy grail. One example from this book is something like three entire pages devoted to the fingernails of a character whose name we never even learn. Why am I still reading this series? Because Paolini, much to my regret, did make a villain compelling enough that I really wanted to see how he would be defeated. One thing I can say about him is that the quality of his writing does improve with each book. That is like saying of two hot pokers in the eye, one of them burns a little less, but at least he's improving his skills, such as they are. Also, you've really got to hand it to anyone that can so consistently steal from other, more creative people and call it his own work with a straight face. That takes balls my friend.
This book was both too long, and too short. That may seem rather paradoxical, but it's true. I would say that at least 70% of this book was padding that was completely irrelevant to the story, and the 30% that actually had anything to do with the story was so underdeveloped because of it that it felt rushed and unsatisfying. The padding made it far too long, and the lack of attention paid to the relevant plot elements makes it far to too short. It’s neither a consistently good book, nor is it consistently bad. It does have some decent moments, albeit, most of them were shamelessly lifted directly from Star Wars, but if you’re going to rip something off, it might as well be quality material.
Inheritance begins with several very one-sided battles that are full of Paolini telling us that there's tension rather than actually building it into the story. The Varden are taking cities from the King on their way toward Uru'Baen. Unfortunately, these are largely completely irrelevant to the story, and basically do nothing but add padding. When your heroes can literally walk over a city wall, wade through an army, waltz into the lord's stronghold, and intimidate the soldiers there simply by the power of their own awesomeness rather than having to fight them, and come out on the other side with little more than a few scratches that they instantly magically heal, what's the point? They're never in anything resembling peril, and that makes these battle scenes extremely boring. I equate the first 300 pages or so of this book to shining a laser pointer in front of a cat, or jingling keys over a baby. It adds nothing to the story, but entertains the easily amused. It feels very Michael Bay-ish. Explosions do not equal a well thought out story, and neither do one-sided battles where there is litterally not one ounce of tension, because the characters are so much stronger than the ones that they are fighting. These sorts of things may dazzle those who don't care about anything deeper than pointless action, like anyone who claims to be a Michael Bay fan, but they'll leave everyone else feeling cheated.
One such battle involves Roran riding a horse halfway across the kingdom to win a battle in less than a week. Why? What was the point to that? It served no purpose to the plot, the city wasn't anywhere near where the characters were headed, obviously, and Roran did not grow as a character during this excursion. After winning, he just went right back to the main army where he was to begin with, having learned nothing, and not having been strengthened by his ordeal. We didn't see any new sides of him, and the entire thing is mentioned in passing maybe twice during the rest of the book. Why? Why did we need to spend 100+ pages on this? We didn't, because it was completely irrelevant to the plot. The only thing of note that happens in the first 300 pages is the acquisition of the completely unpronouncable Spear of Dues Ex Machina, which could very easily have been obtained at Dras-Leona, leaving this entire beginning out all together. Or better yet, not at all, allowing the characters to use their own strength to triumph in the end rather than relying on magical artifacts that basically fall out of the freaking sky into their hands.
After that considerably bloated section of filler, the book's actual plot begins with the siege of Dras-Leona, where Murtagh and Thorn have arrived in defense. As the Varden wait outside the walls, Eragon trains against the elves with his sword, and with the disembodied Dragon Glaedr in strengthening his mind, basically relearning things he has spent the last two books learning. A lot of nothing interesting happens, and then a way into the city is found.
In comparison to the rest of the book, the conquest of Dras-Leona is a relatively well done, and exciting diversion from the hundreds of pages of meh yet to come. A few horrors befall those sent inside to open the gates, placing characters that were basically gods in the first 300 pages in real mortal peril, and the battle itself is rather entertaining if you can turn your brain off for most of it and just roll with Paolini's complete lack of skill in writing action scenes. Pointless gore does not make an action scene exciting, especially if it is not realistic, serving no real purpose except to distract from the fact that there's no real skill put into crafting a compelling battle scene full of tension and horror. It sets the Varden up to strike at the very heart of the kingdom, Uru'Baen, where Galbatorix sits waiting for their arrival.
The defeated Murtagh attacks in the night after the victory and kidnaps Nasuada, leader of the Varden, taking her back to be personally questioned and tortured by the king, in another extremely long and irrelevant plotline that ultimately leads nowhere. Again, why? Why do we need 100+ pages of Nasuada, a relatively MINOR character being tortured? What does this add to the story? I could see if maybe she turned to the figurative dark side, or if she pretended to so she could betray the king at the most opportune moment, giving Eragon the chance he needs to defeat him. But no, she is bound and gagged during the entire final confrontation, contributing nothing except a sudden case of Damsel in Distress Syndrome. Eragon didn't even realize she was there at first. Why was so much time and attention paid to a completely irrelevant subplot like this when there were elements of the actual story that needed so much more fleshing out?
And yes, I know this helps Murtagh to change his true name. I call this irrelevant because all of the relevant character changes happen in HIM. He is the most important character during this part and we focus on HER instead. Therefore, this whole section of the book was pointless.
Following the business model of the Underpants Gnomes, Eragon becomes the leader of the Varden because … and leaves to go hunting down a prophecy that may hold the key to defeating the king. This is another part of the story that, in comparison to the rest, is relatively well done. Eragon flies to the old stronghold of the Riders, seeing for himself the grandeur that was, and the ruin left by their fall. There’s quite a bit of history given, and some decent character development. However, it feels very rushed, and they find a treasure trove of dues ex machina, that basically gives Eragon the ability to stand up to the king without really trying very hard to find a way to defeat or outsmart him. Again, why was so much of this book spent on irrelevant filler, when this part was in dire need of fleshing out?
Eragon races to Uru’Baen and the final battle begins. He enters the city with some elves whilst the army attacks the walls, drawing the defenders. They then sneak past many rather silly traps. The final confrontation is very unsatisfying and rather abrupt. Rather than outsmarting, converting, or utterly destroying the antagonist on his own strength, Eragon relies on the strength of others and literally pulls the solution to defeating the king right out of his ass on the spot without a single prior word or thought on the method. We saw him continuously worry about how to beat the king, but he never actually comes up with any real ideas, so when he does it on the fly, and drawing heavily upon the strength and knowledge of others, instead of his own, it feels as though we’re being cheated. Eragon is not developed well enough as a character for Paolini to pull this off believably. Four books have built up to this moment, and it was completely ruined because he doesn't ever show us any hints of spontaneous brilliance, such as it is, in Eragon's character beforehand. He basically became a different character entirely for a few seconds in order to defeat Galbatorix
The book then spends far too long tying up every. Single. Loose. End. Imaginable. And it is EXTREMELY boring. Yes, your ending should tie up loose ends, but really, some of these should have been addressed earlier in the story so you don’t have them all dumped at the end in a jumble that’s frankly a chore to read through, and also, I don’t know about you, but I actually kind of enjoy when some loose ends are left. It gives you something to ponder over when all is said and done. This ending also heavily steals directly from Return of the King, so badly, in fact, that Tolkien must be rolling in his grave. And there is a huge difference in storytelling here as well. Where Paolini made sure that every single loose end imaginable was addressed in the actual book, making it hugely boring, and a complete waste of a reader's time, Tolkien left most of that junk for the appendices, where a reader didn't actually have to read them, or could skim through and find the specific afterward event that he or she was curious about.
The Good? There were some passably good moments in this book, the events leading up to the battle of Dras-Leona, and the battle itself were ok, as was the trip to the ruined city of the Riders. Although my like of these sections of the book may be largely based on comparing them to the rest of the book, rather than on them actually being good. They really stand out amongst the rest of the book as they are both relevant to the plot, and by the time they rolled around I was literally screaming for ANYTHING relevant. Paolini, as an author, has made some very big steps in developing his talents since his first book, and this one is almost passably adequate, if not for all of the irrelevant filler. In this book, he did seem to actually try taking a few steps away from his shameless stealing from other more talented authors, and the book was much better for it. Though he did return to it in force by the end. He could almost be considered a decent writer if he'd only just put some effort into coming up with his own ideas for stories.
The Bad? The amount of time spent on story arcs for minor characters that ultimately lead nowhere is extremely annoying. The core story needs a vast amount of further developing, and instead of doing so, Paolini wasted hundreds of pages on Nasuada’s storyline, which dead-ends in no actual payoff, and Glaedr’s storyline about overcoming depression and coming to terms with his new life as an inanimate object. Did we really need this? No. These are minor characters that really don’t play a very large part in, or contribute terribly much to, the story, and to spend so much time on them when there were more important things that didn’t get the attention they needed was just plain stupid.
The ugly? Filler. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an author spend so much time of a book this massive spinning his wheels on storylines that had no point at all to the actual story. And in this case, I’m not blaming the author. When he outlined this book he was fifteen years old. The one the blame really falls to is the editor. I listened to the audiobook while at work, and there is an interview at the end between the editor and Paolini, in which she makes incredibly clear that she did not do her job on this book AT ALL. Rather than sending this unfinished mess back to the author with notes saying 70% of this is irrelevant and needs to be dropped completely or developed further to the point that it is relevant, she basically spent the entire time squeeing over it like an excited fangirl. She's probably a Michael Bay fan too. The job of the editor is basically to coax the absolute best out of the writer. They are the ones that understand the mechanics of storytelling and grammar, and tell the writer what work still needs to be done. She failed at that spectacularly. This book is unfinished, and rather than pointing it out to the author like she was supposed to, this idiot encouraged more of it. She dropped the ball so badly that she should be fired on the spot.
If 70% of the book is completely irrelevant to the plot, and can be cut out without even changing the rest of the book to make up for the absence, it’s incomplete. It needs to be cut. Everything up to the siege of Dras-Leona can be completely dropped without missing a single thing of importance, the entire storylines about Glaedr and Nasuada can be dropped without missing a single thing of importance, and almost everything after Eragon visits Brom’s grave, and more than a few things before, can also be dropped without missing a single thing of importance. The fault of this is partly on the author for not really knowing how to lay out a proper storyline where everything is relevant, but the vast majority of the blame lies on the editor. She came at it as a fan, rather than as a professional. She should have sent it back saying to drop all of the irrelevance, and develop the rest of the plot to the point that the reliance on dues ex machina for the climax is minimal to none.
The final book of the trilogy was split in two, Brisingr and Inheritance. Why? Brisingr suffered from some of the same problems of irrelevance that Inheritance did. If everything I mentioned above was dropped from Inheritance, and the 300 page long tangent about the dwarf king in Brisingr had been dropped as it was ultimately pointless as well, this would have fit very easily into one novel. To make matters worse, he broke one of the ten commandments of writing in the previous book, which was a MAJOR problem in this one. Thou shalt not make thine villain so powerful that he cannot be defeated. Again, where was the editor. This is a huge flaw that should have been pointed out and fixed before the third book was even published. Now, there is literally no way AT ALL, that Eragon can triumph without resorting to dues ex machina and plot convenience. He did not learn and grow as a character until the point that he could defeat Galbatorix on his own merits. He used a very large stepping stool provided by others, pulled a baseball bat out of his ass, and hit the king over the head with it when he wasn’t looking.
The entire climax of this book is a complete failure that steals heavily from Return of the Jedi. Plus it takes place closer to the middle of the book than the end. Again, Paolini seems to have completely missed the entire point of the source material that he is ripping off. The duel at the end of Jedi was more about the talking, the temptation, the taunting, with occasional clashes of lightsabers as punctuation to the emotion, climaxing when Luke loses his temper and just starts wailing on Vader, leading him to the realization that he could, in fact, become like his father. This makes his final defiance of the emperor, tossing his weapon aside, all the more powerful, because he's felt the power that could be his if he joined the dark side of the force. This is a poorly xeroxed copy, with none of the meaning or emotion behind it, and no true victory over the enemy, only a hollow shell of one. There's nothing to tempt Eragon. The King keeps saying "join me" and Eragon keeps saying "no". It's meaningless, because there is no attempt by either side at temptation. He hasn't seen the power that could be his, he hasn't felt it flowing through him, he hasn't almost let it consume him and pulled back at the last possible moment in defiance.
One thing I hate when authors do is they will have a character start explaining something and say "ok, this is what I'm going to do..." and then skip the rest of the conversation, leaving the reader in the dark on what is about to happen. It's a crap transitional element that no one should ever use in any medium EVER. Paolini did it at least four times AFTER THE FREAKING CLIMAX OF THE BOOK when there was really no need WHATSOEVER to withhold any information from the reader. He did it several times earlier in the book too. In fact, he did it so many times that I was literally yelling at the audiobook narrator by the end over it. Why? Why would you withold information like that, ESPECIALLY when you go on to reveal it almost immediately afterward. That's just lazy, pointless, and annoying storytelling in the guise of trying to be clever.
In conclusion, this book suffers heavily from an editor that didn’t do her job, and a writer with no concept of relevance. It is an ending to the series, and some people might call it good, though I think a lot more are going to call it bad. Most of this book is just Paolini jingling his keys at his readers, and really should have been cut or developed to the point that it actually was relevant to the plot. I think he felt he had to add filler to this book because there wasn’t enough of the story left to make a full book after the split, but honestly, had he developed the areas of the story that needed it fully, rather than wasting his time with filler, this would have been a much better, if a little shorter, book. It’s not the length that counts, it’s the story. If it’s told well, a great story can be finished in a page, rather than hundreds.
I’m giving this book two stars, because there were some genuinely entertaining moments in it, but they are bogged down by hundreds of pages of completely irrelevant crap that should have been cut. Paolini is steadily improving as an author, and if he ever decides to stop shamelessly stealing from other authors and figures out how to properly use imagery and metaphors, he might make a decent writer of himself someday. When 70% of the book can be completely removed without changing a single word in the rest with nobody noticing it, there is a huge problem that needs a great deal of addressing before the book is ready for publication. Shame on the editor for not seeing past her fandom to the fact that this book needed massive amounts of work still. Someone needs to sit her down and explain to her what, exactly, her job is, because she certainly isn't doing it.
The best thing I can say about this series is THANK GOD IT'S OVER!!! I didn't completely hate it, but I wouldn't say I liked it either.
Check out my other reviews.
Book 4 of the Inheritance Cycle
By Christopher Paolini
A Review by Eric Allen
After his early success, Christopher Paolini set to the final book of his trilogy. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, the outline he'd written for the third book wasn't going to fit in a single volume. He decided to split it in two. I have to question why, but I'll get into that later in the review. Now we've finally come to the end with the fourth and final book of the series. Was it a good ending? Well, to be blunt, no, it wasn't. The best I can say is that it IS the end. Thar be spoilers ahead, be ye warned.
I'm not really a fan of this series. I saw the movie and thought it was one of the worst things I'd ever seen. A friend of mine told me that the book was way different and much better. He was right on both counts, though I still didn’t like it much. It was generic, not exceptionally well written, and it blatantly stole from Star Wars so much I had to wonder how Paolini didn't get sued for it. He uses some very awkward, repetative, and inappropriate wording in his imagery, and lingers on describing completely unimportant things as though they are the holy grail. One example from this book is something like three entire pages devoted to the fingernails of a character whose name we never even learn. Why am I still reading this series? Because Paolini, much to my regret, did make a villain compelling enough that I really wanted to see how he would be defeated. One thing I can say about him is that the quality of his writing does improve with each book. That is like saying of two hot pokers in the eye, one of them burns a little less, but at least he's improving his skills, such as they are. Also, you've really got to hand it to anyone that can so consistently steal from other, more creative people and call it his own work with a straight face. That takes balls my friend.
This book was both too long, and too short. That may seem rather paradoxical, but it's true. I would say that at least 70% of this book was padding that was completely irrelevant to the story, and the 30% that actually had anything to do with the story was so underdeveloped because of it that it felt rushed and unsatisfying. The padding made it far too long, and the lack of attention paid to the relevant plot elements makes it far to too short. It’s neither a consistently good book, nor is it consistently bad. It does have some decent moments, albeit, most of them were shamelessly lifted directly from Star Wars, but if you’re going to rip something off, it might as well be quality material.
Inheritance begins with several very one-sided battles that are full of Paolini telling us that there's tension rather than actually building it into the story. The Varden are taking cities from the King on their way toward Uru'Baen. Unfortunately, these are largely completely irrelevant to the story, and basically do nothing but add padding. When your heroes can literally walk over a city wall, wade through an army, waltz into the lord's stronghold, and intimidate the soldiers there simply by the power of their own awesomeness rather than having to fight them, and come out on the other side with little more than a few scratches that they instantly magically heal, what's the point? They're never in anything resembling peril, and that makes these battle scenes extremely boring. I equate the first 300 pages or so of this book to shining a laser pointer in front of a cat, or jingling keys over a baby. It adds nothing to the story, but entertains the easily amused. It feels very Michael Bay-ish. Explosions do not equal a well thought out story, and neither do one-sided battles where there is litterally not one ounce of tension, because the characters are so much stronger than the ones that they are fighting. These sorts of things may dazzle those who don't care about anything deeper than pointless action, like anyone who claims to be a Michael Bay fan, but they'll leave everyone else feeling cheated.
One such battle involves Roran riding a horse halfway across the kingdom to win a battle in less than a week. Why? What was the point to that? It served no purpose to the plot, the city wasn't anywhere near where the characters were headed, obviously, and Roran did not grow as a character during this excursion. After winning, he just went right back to the main army where he was to begin with, having learned nothing, and not having been strengthened by his ordeal. We didn't see any new sides of him, and the entire thing is mentioned in passing maybe twice during the rest of the book. Why? Why did we need to spend 100+ pages on this? We didn't, because it was completely irrelevant to the plot. The only thing of note that happens in the first 300 pages is the acquisition of the completely unpronouncable Spear of Dues Ex Machina, which could very easily have been obtained at Dras-Leona, leaving this entire beginning out all together. Or better yet, not at all, allowing the characters to use their own strength to triumph in the end rather than relying on magical artifacts that basically fall out of the freaking sky into their hands.
After that considerably bloated section of filler, the book's actual plot begins with the siege of Dras-Leona, where Murtagh and Thorn have arrived in defense. As the Varden wait outside the walls, Eragon trains against the elves with his sword, and with the disembodied Dragon Glaedr in strengthening his mind, basically relearning things he has spent the last two books learning. A lot of nothing interesting happens, and then a way into the city is found.
In comparison to the rest of the book, the conquest of Dras-Leona is a relatively well done, and exciting diversion from the hundreds of pages of meh yet to come. A few horrors befall those sent inside to open the gates, placing characters that were basically gods in the first 300 pages in real mortal peril, and the battle itself is rather entertaining if you can turn your brain off for most of it and just roll with Paolini's complete lack of skill in writing action scenes. Pointless gore does not make an action scene exciting, especially if it is not realistic, serving no real purpose except to distract from the fact that there's no real skill put into crafting a compelling battle scene full of tension and horror. It sets the Varden up to strike at the very heart of the kingdom, Uru'Baen, where Galbatorix sits waiting for their arrival.
The defeated Murtagh attacks in the night after the victory and kidnaps Nasuada, leader of the Varden, taking her back to be personally questioned and tortured by the king, in another extremely long and irrelevant plotline that ultimately leads nowhere. Again, why? Why do we need 100+ pages of Nasuada, a relatively MINOR character being tortured? What does this add to the story? I could see if maybe she turned to the figurative dark side, or if she pretended to so she could betray the king at the most opportune moment, giving Eragon the chance he needs to defeat him. But no, she is bound and gagged during the entire final confrontation, contributing nothing except a sudden case of Damsel in Distress Syndrome. Eragon didn't even realize she was there at first. Why was so much time and attention paid to a completely irrelevant subplot like this when there were elements of the actual story that needed so much more fleshing out?
And yes, I know this helps Murtagh to change his true name. I call this irrelevant because all of the relevant character changes happen in HIM. He is the most important character during this part and we focus on HER instead. Therefore, this whole section of the book was pointless.
Following the business model of the Underpants Gnomes, Eragon becomes the leader of the Varden because … and leaves to go hunting down a prophecy that may hold the key to defeating the king. This is another part of the story that, in comparison to the rest, is relatively well done. Eragon flies to the old stronghold of the Riders, seeing for himself the grandeur that was, and the ruin left by their fall. There’s quite a bit of history given, and some decent character development. However, it feels very rushed, and they find a treasure trove of dues ex machina, that basically gives Eragon the ability to stand up to the king without really trying very hard to find a way to defeat or outsmart him. Again, why was so much of this book spent on irrelevant filler, when this part was in dire need of fleshing out?
Eragon races to Uru’Baen and the final battle begins. He enters the city with some elves whilst the army attacks the walls, drawing the defenders. They then sneak past many rather silly traps. The final confrontation is very unsatisfying and rather abrupt. Rather than outsmarting, converting, or utterly destroying the antagonist on his own strength, Eragon relies on the strength of others and literally pulls the solution to defeating the king right out of his ass on the spot without a single prior word or thought on the method. We saw him continuously worry about how to beat the king, but he never actually comes up with any real ideas, so when he does it on the fly, and drawing heavily upon the strength and knowledge of others, instead of his own, it feels as though we’re being cheated. Eragon is not developed well enough as a character for Paolini to pull this off believably. Four books have built up to this moment, and it was completely ruined because he doesn't ever show us any hints of spontaneous brilliance, such as it is, in Eragon's character beforehand. He basically became a different character entirely for a few seconds in order to defeat Galbatorix
The book then spends far too long tying up every. Single. Loose. End. Imaginable. And it is EXTREMELY boring. Yes, your ending should tie up loose ends, but really, some of these should have been addressed earlier in the story so you don’t have them all dumped at the end in a jumble that’s frankly a chore to read through, and also, I don’t know about you, but I actually kind of enjoy when some loose ends are left. It gives you something to ponder over when all is said and done. This ending also heavily steals directly from Return of the King, so badly, in fact, that Tolkien must be rolling in his grave. And there is a huge difference in storytelling here as well. Where Paolini made sure that every single loose end imaginable was addressed in the actual book, making it hugely boring, and a complete waste of a reader's time, Tolkien left most of that junk for the appendices, where a reader didn't actually have to read them, or could skim through and find the specific afterward event that he or she was curious about.
The Good? There were some passably good moments in this book, the events leading up to the battle of Dras-Leona, and the battle itself were ok, as was the trip to the ruined city of the Riders. Although my like of these sections of the book may be largely based on comparing them to the rest of the book, rather than on them actually being good. They really stand out amongst the rest of the book as they are both relevant to the plot, and by the time they rolled around I was literally screaming for ANYTHING relevant. Paolini, as an author, has made some very big steps in developing his talents since his first book, and this one is almost passably adequate, if not for all of the irrelevant filler. In this book, he did seem to actually try taking a few steps away from his shameless stealing from other more talented authors, and the book was much better for it. Though he did return to it in force by the end. He could almost be considered a decent writer if he'd only just put some effort into coming up with his own ideas for stories.
The Bad? The amount of time spent on story arcs for minor characters that ultimately lead nowhere is extremely annoying. The core story needs a vast amount of further developing, and instead of doing so, Paolini wasted hundreds of pages on Nasuada’s storyline, which dead-ends in no actual payoff, and Glaedr’s storyline about overcoming depression and coming to terms with his new life as an inanimate object. Did we really need this? No. These are minor characters that really don’t play a very large part in, or contribute terribly much to, the story, and to spend so much time on them when there were more important things that didn’t get the attention they needed was just plain stupid.
The ugly? Filler. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an author spend so much time of a book this massive spinning his wheels on storylines that had no point at all to the actual story. And in this case, I’m not blaming the author. When he outlined this book he was fifteen years old. The one the blame really falls to is the editor. I listened to the audiobook while at work, and there is an interview at the end between the editor and Paolini, in which she makes incredibly clear that she did not do her job on this book AT ALL. Rather than sending this unfinished mess back to the author with notes saying 70% of this is irrelevant and needs to be dropped completely or developed further to the point that it is relevant, she basically spent the entire time squeeing over it like an excited fangirl. She's probably a Michael Bay fan too. The job of the editor is basically to coax the absolute best out of the writer. They are the ones that understand the mechanics of storytelling and grammar, and tell the writer what work still needs to be done. She failed at that spectacularly. This book is unfinished, and rather than pointing it out to the author like she was supposed to, this idiot encouraged more of it. She dropped the ball so badly that she should be fired on the spot.
If 70% of the book is completely irrelevant to the plot, and can be cut out without even changing the rest of the book to make up for the absence, it’s incomplete. It needs to be cut. Everything up to the siege of Dras-Leona can be completely dropped without missing a single thing of importance, the entire storylines about Glaedr and Nasuada can be dropped without missing a single thing of importance, and almost everything after Eragon visits Brom’s grave, and more than a few things before, can also be dropped without missing a single thing of importance. The fault of this is partly on the author for not really knowing how to lay out a proper storyline where everything is relevant, but the vast majority of the blame lies on the editor. She came at it as a fan, rather than as a professional. She should have sent it back saying to drop all of the irrelevance, and develop the rest of the plot to the point that the reliance on dues ex machina for the climax is minimal to none.
The final book of the trilogy was split in two, Brisingr and Inheritance. Why? Brisingr suffered from some of the same problems of irrelevance that Inheritance did. If everything I mentioned above was dropped from Inheritance, and the 300 page long tangent about the dwarf king in Brisingr had been dropped as it was ultimately pointless as well, this would have fit very easily into one novel. To make matters worse, he broke one of the ten commandments of writing in the previous book, which was a MAJOR problem in this one. Thou shalt not make thine villain so powerful that he cannot be defeated. Again, where was the editor. This is a huge flaw that should have been pointed out and fixed before the third book was even published. Now, there is literally no way AT ALL, that Eragon can triumph without resorting to dues ex machina and plot convenience. He did not learn and grow as a character until the point that he could defeat Galbatorix on his own merits. He used a very large stepping stool provided by others, pulled a baseball bat out of his ass, and hit the king over the head with it when he wasn’t looking.
The entire climax of this book is a complete failure that steals heavily from Return of the Jedi. Plus it takes place closer to the middle of the book than the end. Again, Paolini seems to have completely missed the entire point of the source material that he is ripping off. The duel at the end of Jedi was more about the talking, the temptation, the taunting, with occasional clashes of lightsabers as punctuation to the emotion, climaxing when Luke loses his temper and just starts wailing on Vader, leading him to the realization that he could, in fact, become like his father. This makes his final defiance of the emperor, tossing his weapon aside, all the more powerful, because he's felt the power that could be his if he joined the dark side of the force. This is a poorly xeroxed copy, with none of the meaning or emotion behind it, and no true victory over the enemy, only a hollow shell of one. There's nothing to tempt Eragon. The King keeps saying "join me" and Eragon keeps saying "no". It's meaningless, because there is no attempt by either side at temptation. He hasn't seen the power that could be his, he hasn't felt it flowing through him, he hasn't almost let it consume him and pulled back at the last possible moment in defiance.
One thing I hate when authors do is they will have a character start explaining something and say "ok, this is what I'm going to do..." and then skip the rest of the conversation, leaving the reader in the dark on what is about to happen. It's a crap transitional element that no one should ever use in any medium EVER. Paolini did it at least four times AFTER THE FREAKING CLIMAX OF THE BOOK when there was really no need WHATSOEVER to withhold any information from the reader. He did it several times earlier in the book too. In fact, he did it so many times that I was literally yelling at the audiobook narrator by the end over it. Why? Why would you withold information like that, ESPECIALLY when you go on to reveal it almost immediately afterward. That's just lazy, pointless, and annoying storytelling in the guise of trying to be clever.
In conclusion, this book suffers heavily from an editor that didn’t do her job, and a writer with no concept of relevance. It is an ending to the series, and some people might call it good, though I think a lot more are going to call it bad. Most of this book is just Paolini jingling his keys at his readers, and really should have been cut or developed to the point that it actually was relevant to the plot. I think he felt he had to add filler to this book because there wasn’t enough of the story left to make a full book after the split, but honestly, had he developed the areas of the story that needed it fully, rather than wasting his time with filler, this would have been a much better, if a little shorter, book. It’s not the length that counts, it’s the story. If it’s told well, a great story can be finished in a page, rather than hundreds.
I’m giving this book two stars, because there were some genuinely entertaining moments in it, but they are bogged down by hundreds of pages of completely irrelevant crap that should have been cut. Paolini is steadily improving as an author, and if he ever decides to stop shamelessly stealing from other authors and figures out how to properly use imagery and metaphors, he might make a decent writer of himself someday. When 70% of the book can be completely removed without changing a single word in the rest with nobody noticing it, there is a huge problem that needs a great deal of addressing before the book is ready for publication. Shame on the editor for not seeing past her fandom to the fact that this book needed massive amounts of work still. Someone needs to sit her down and explain to her what, exactly, her job is, because she certainly isn't doing it.
The best thing I can say about this series is THANK GOD IT'S OVER!!! I didn't completely hate it, but I wouldn't say I liked it either.
Check out my other reviews.
June 1, 2012
Before Reading:
I can't wait for this book to come out, but a tiny, miniscule part of me doesn't want it to come out because if it is not absolutly flipping fantastic, then I may have to kill myself. This final book needs to be better than the previous books, which is not an easy feat. Plus all the lose ends need to be tied up. I for one, am interested to see how Christopher Paolini pulls it all together.
Two things I am hoping for in Inheritance:
1. We will see some action from Galbatorix. And I'm not talking about his army. I want him to actually talk or do something. The closest we've gotten is him talking/fighting through Murtagh's body. Everyone talks about his great evil, but I want to see him preform some. I. half believe he is just some terrifying legend made up by... someone, but obviously that's not true 'cause of the Murtagh thing.
1.5 The new Rider ISN'T Roran. It seems that when he couldn't accomplish magic, he would eventually be able to do it. I think that Roran is too ready to give up anything for Katerina. To me he seems dangerous, and not just in the big hammer way, either.
2. Something will happen in Eragon's love life. Maybe it will have to do with Arya, although she seems more like the wise best friend type than girlfriend.
Two things that I expect to happen:
1. The Rider is Roran
1.25 The girl Eragon cursed, Eva, will cause trouble for him
1.5 Eragon and Saphira will kill Murtagh and Thorn OR Murtagh and Thorn will flee
2. There will be an epic battle between Eragon and Saphira, and Galbatorix and his dragon, whose winner will be decided by a small factor that seemed irrelevant but really was important
What I wonder...
How old is Nasuada (ruler of the Varden) anyway? When she was introduced, begging Saphira for Eragon's whereabouts, Paolini described her as a young woman. Who knows? The reason I wonder this is because in Brisinger, she meantions that she is feeling alone and wants a relashonship. Know of any other young bachelors looking for love? But of course we do not know her exact age, so I can't really single any man out for her.
*Update*
I jusrt re-read the second book and it says that she is a few years older than Eragon. November is so far away. I have to content myself with reading excerpts from Inheritance online. Wow, writing that down made me realize how much of a dork I am. Sigh.
*Another Update*
Speaking of excerpts, DOES RORAN DIE WHEN THE WALL FALLS??? This could change everything! Paolini wouldn't make the new Rider die, would he? Which means that the new Dragon Rider probably isn't Roran. WHO IS IT?! This discovory is going to keep me up for days of diliberation. Could Nasuada be the Rider? But she is the leader of the Varden, and they don't want one of the Undying to lead, which would mean she would have to give up her position. But I'm getting ahead of myself, (funny, that seems to happen alot) because what if the Rider is on Galbatorix's side? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! I really hope Eragon is able to steal the egg back. Maybe that was what they were trying to do when Roran got crushed (killed?) at the castle....... (sorry, I started hyperventilating)
*Yet Another Update*
I just reread Eragon, and the part where he gets his fortune told by Angela. It says he will have an epic romance with a woman of noble blood, and who is beautiful and powerful beyond measure. This is almost undoubtably Arya. Dang it. That takes a lot of fun out of my fantisising.What I don't get is the part where Eragon will never set foot in the Empire again. Doesn't it count as going into the Empire by rescuing Katrina from the Ra'zac? Hmmmmm...
I just realized something; I need to get a life. But where's the fun in that?
*I'm getting sick of the word Update*
I was arguing with a friend last night about who the new Rider will be, (yes, we do argue about things that haven't even happened yet, thank you very much) and she offered a different opinion. Maybe it will be Arya? This hadn't occured to me. Some crazy obssesed book nerd I turned out to be. *shakes head exasperatedly at self*
*Final Update, I swear*
I just remembered something! When Eragon and Saphira are walking to Nasuda's tent in Brisinger, they come across Angela, who asks them to bless two travelers, an older woman and a young girl just becoming an adult. When Eragon asks for their names, the older woman says she prefers for him not to know. Eragon accepts this and blesses them. He notices that the woman has a well-armored mind. He asks Angela about them, and she says they are pilgrims on their own quest. I wonder if they will be metioned. That mention of them seemed very ominous... I feel tingly with excitment!!!! (Is that normal?)
With all these freaking updates I won't even have room for the actual review. I may have to delete some of this pointless gibberish.
My predictions have a nasty habit of not coming true, so I wouldn't put to much faith in them. But one thing I know is that Inheritance will be a good book. Whether it is good enough to end a series as amazing as the Inheritance Series has yet to be seen.
6 days...
5 days...
4 days...
3 days...
2 days...
1 day...
IT'S OUT TODAY!!!!! OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After Reading:
Wow.
I very much doubt I could write a review that would do Inheritance justice. I'm seriously thinking this book has reached HPL (Harry Potter Level). That's impressive. A lot of my predictions were true (suprisingly, cosidering I was half delirious with giddiness when I wrote them) but a few were a bit off the mark. I won't give anything away. (I'm not a spoiler!) You'll have to read it yourself (or ask a spoiler to tell you- shameful way to get out of reading a book) to get the specific details, but I'll go over the basics.
The Varden are attacking the Empire.
Eragon and Saphira are still their only hope.
Roran makes the impossible possible and captures a seemingly impenetrable city, earning him captain status.
Glaedr starts training Eragon again.
Something happens to Nasuada.
Eragon becomes leader of the Varden.
Eragon realizes that only he and Saphira remember the Rock of Kuthian, because some mysterious force is making everyone in Alegesia forget it. Even Solembum, the werecat who gave Eragon the advice to go to the Rock of Kuthian when all hope is lost, does not remember.
Murtagh has a change of heart.
Eragon and Saphira discover something about themselves.
They find a way to possibly defeat Galbatorix.
The Varden attack Uru'ben.
Galbatorix has the ultimate power.
Murtagh helps them.
Galbatorix...
That's all I can give up.
Sorry if the after review wasn't as amusing as my pre-review, but I'm currently in just-finished-reading-an-amazing-book shock. Christopher Paolini did say that he will write more books in the world of Alegaesia in the future. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? I just lived through these torturous past months waiting for Inheritance to come out and now you're telling me that I have to wait some more? He even goes so far as to say it could be 5 years before he writes it!
That's it.
I'm not reading his books anymore.
Until I learn the title of his next one.
Then I will become re-obsessed.
Sigh. How fickle I am.
Read Inheritance. It will knock your socks off!
I can't wait for this book to come out, but a tiny, miniscule part of me doesn't want it to come out because if it is not absolutly flipping fantastic, then I may have to kill myself. This final book needs to be better than the previous books, which is not an easy feat. Plus all the lose ends need to be tied up. I for one, am interested to see how Christopher Paolini pulls it all together.
Two things I am hoping for in Inheritance:
1. We will see some action from Galbatorix. And I'm not talking about his army. I want him to actually talk or do something. The closest we've gotten is him talking/fighting through Murtagh's body. Everyone talks about his great evil, but I want to see him preform some. I. half believe he is just some terrifying legend made up by... someone, but obviously that's not true 'cause of the Murtagh thing.
1.5 The new Rider ISN'T Roran. It seems that when he couldn't accomplish magic, he would eventually be able to do it. I think that Roran is too ready to give up anything for Katerina. To me he seems dangerous, and not just in the big hammer way, either.
2. Something will happen in Eragon's love life. Maybe it will have to do with Arya, although she seems more like the wise best friend type than girlfriend.
Two things that I expect to happen:
1. The Rider is Roran
1.25 The girl Eragon cursed, Eva, will cause trouble for him
1.5 Eragon and Saphira will kill Murtagh and Thorn OR Murtagh and Thorn will flee
2. There will be an epic battle between Eragon and Saphira, and Galbatorix and his dragon, whose winner will be decided by a small factor that seemed irrelevant but really was important
What I wonder...
How old is Nasuada (ruler of the Varden) anyway? When she was introduced, begging Saphira for Eragon's whereabouts, Paolini described her as a young woman. Who knows? The reason I wonder this is because in Brisinger, she meantions that she is feeling alone and wants a relashonship. Know of any other young bachelors looking for love? But of course we do not know her exact age, so I can't really single any man out for her.
*Update*
I jusrt re-read the second book and it says that she is a few years older than Eragon. November is so far away. I have to content myself with reading excerpts from Inheritance online. Wow, writing that down made me realize how much of a dork I am. Sigh.
*Another Update*
Speaking of excerpts, DOES RORAN DIE WHEN THE WALL FALLS??? This could change everything! Paolini wouldn't make the new Rider die, would he? Which means that the new Dragon Rider probably isn't Roran. WHO IS IT?! This discovory is going to keep me up for days of diliberation. Could Nasuada be the Rider? But she is the leader of the Varden, and they don't want one of the Undying to lead, which would mean she would have to give up her position. But I'm getting ahead of myself, (funny, that seems to happen alot) because what if the Rider is on Galbatorix's side? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! I really hope Eragon is able to steal the egg back. Maybe that was what they were trying to do when Roran got crushed (killed?) at the castle....... (sorry, I started hyperventilating)
*Yet Another Update*
I just reread Eragon, and the part where he gets his fortune told by Angela. It says he will have an epic romance with a woman of noble blood, and who is beautiful and powerful beyond measure. This is almost undoubtably Arya. Dang it. That takes a lot of fun out of my fantisising.What I don't get is the part where Eragon will never set foot in the Empire again. Doesn't it count as going into the Empire by rescuing Katrina from the Ra'zac? Hmmmmm...
I just realized something; I need to get a life. But where's the fun in that?
*I'm getting sick of the word Update*
I was arguing with a friend last night about who the new Rider will be, (yes, we do argue about things that haven't even happened yet, thank you very much) and she offered a different opinion. Maybe it will be Arya? This hadn't occured to me. Some crazy obssesed book nerd I turned out to be. *shakes head exasperatedly at self*
*Final Update, I swear*
I just remembered something! When Eragon and Saphira are walking to Nasuda's tent in Brisinger, they come across Angela, who asks them to bless two travelers, an older woman and a young girl just becoming an adult. When Eragon asks for their names, the older woman says she prefers for him not to know. Eragon accepts this and blesses them. He notices that the woman has a well-armored mind. He asks Angela about them, and she says they are pilgrims on their own quest. I wonder if they will be metioned. That mention of them seemed very ominous... I feel tingly with excitment!!!! (Is that normal?)
With all these freaking updates I won't even have room for the actual review. I may have to delete some of this pointless gibberish.
My predictions have a nasty habit of not coming true, so I wouldn't put to much faith in them. But one thing I know is that Inheritance will be a good book. Whether it is good enough to end a series as amazing as the Inheritance Series has yet to be seen.
6 days...
5 days...
4 days...
3 days...
2 days...
1 day...
IT'S OUT TODAY!!!!! OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After Reading:
Wow.
I very much doubt I could write a review that would do Inheritance justice. I'm seriously thinking this book has reached HPL (Harry Potter Level). That's impressive. A lot of my predictions were true (suprisingly, cosidering I was half delirious with giddiness when I wrote them) but a few were a bit off the mark. I won't give anything away. (I'm not a spoiler!) You'll have to read it yourself (or ask a spoiler to tell you- shameful way to get out of reading a book) to get the specific details, but I'll go over the basics.
The Varden are attacking the Empire.
Eragon and Saphira are still their only hope.
Roran makes the impossible possible and captures a seemingly impenetrable city, earning him captain status.
Glaedr starts training Eragon again.
Something happens to Nasuada.
Eragon becomes leader of the Varden.
Eragon realizes that only he and Saphira remember the Rock of Kuthian, because some mysterious force is making everyone in Alegesia forget it. Even Solembum, the werecat who gave Eragon the advice to go to the Rock of Kuthian when all hope is lost, does not remember.
Murtagh has a change of heart.
Eragon and Saphira discover something about themselves.
They find a way to possibly defeat Galbatorix.
The Varden attack Uru'ben.
Galbatorix has the ultimate power.
Murtagh helps them.
Galbatorix...
That's all I can give up.
Sorry if the after review wasn't as amusing as my pre-review, but I'm currently in just-finished-reading-an-amazing-book shock. Christopher Paolini did say that he will write more books in the world of Alegaesia in the future. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? I just lived through these torturous past months waiting for Inheritance to come out and now you're telling me that I have to wait some more? He even goes so far as to say it could be 5 years before he writes it!
That's it.
I'm not reading his books anymore.
Until I learn the title of his next one.
Then I will become re-obsessed.
Sigh. How fickle I am.
Read Inheritance. It will knock your socks off!
November 29, 2011
I am desperately trying to think of one concise word which sums up the sheer misery of the last five and a half days, in which I had to slog my painful way through this 849-page monstrosity. The horrors of Inheritance are so vast and so many that I am unable to; instead, I find my mind reliving the pain, the awefulness, and the absolute boredom of this book. So maybe I should give up trying to express my feelings in one word - since it apparently cannot effectively be done - and just relate to you the attrocities which face any Reader brave enough - or dumb enough, depending on what led to such an unforunate circumstance (I was being paid) - to pick Inheritance up. One thing I will say to my fellow critics - especially those being hired to read this book: you should demand hazard payment!
Whatever small hopes I might have expressed in my review of Brisingr, they were all crushed. Character development? Ha! Plot twists? Dream on. Deepening of character relationships? If you even wanted that, then you are already way too much into this series and will probably stone me for this review. Character deaths? My mind is drawing a blank. Paolini promised surprises and unexpectedness of all kinds; the only thing that surprised me was that I managed to finish this fourth - and blessedly last - book in this torturous four-volume collection as quickly as I did. Every single thing that happens is predictable, - no psychics needed - right down to the end.
But don't despair - there are some . . . surprises. Let's start with the worst of it, shall we? Now, I have often commented about the wrongness that prevades these books - in descriptions, word choice, and events. In Eldest, we were presented with a bathing scene where our oh-so-lovable hero shamelessly eyes his now-naked teacher (who is male, by the way) from head to toe, and the Author finds it necessary to inform us helpless Readers that Oromis has absolutely no hair on any of his person. I didn't think things could get much worse than that, and it doesn't, but my goodness, does it come close. There is a certain chapter in Inheritance which I have lovingly titled "The Chest Hair Chapter." Ladies, if you were picturing Roran as a buff young man with a waxed chest, think again, because our beloved Author makes it quite clear in this section - and others - that Mr. Muscleman is as wooly as a baboon.
Descriptions only get worse. In the same chapter, Roran is attacked by an assassin, and they fall into a heap at one point, trapped under a now-collapsed tent. Rather than expressing this in somesuch words as "Roran and the assassin fell atop each other in a tangle of limbs," he instead chooses the phrase (and I quote directly): "Roran continued to hold him as the life drained out of him, their embrace as intimate as any lovers.'" I am sorry, but unless you are trying to creep your Readers out, an Author does not use such . . . wrong imagery, because the Reader's mind is going to immediately jump to unwanted thoughts. I can't tell you how much I squirmed in my chair and made faces; I even got a bad taste in my mouth and shrieked out loud in horror.
However, among all of the chaos of just plain badly-written battle scenes (where Paolini attempts to be like Michael Cadnum and throws in gore, which doesn't succeed; there is a proper way to write gory scenes, and he didn't do it), looonngggg nightly character routines (we get to read about Eragon's regular spelling sessions!), and side travels that shouldn't take as much time as they do, the Reader is finally presented with a character! Enter, Mr. Fingernails! This part, by far, outweighed even The Chest Hair Chapter when it came to over-the-top unnecessary and ultimately vomit-enducing descriptions (though the number of flared nostrils nearly did me in). Page 414-416 is entirely devoted to describing, in microscopic detail, the clean and cultivated - yes, cultivated - fingernails of a character whose name you never even find out. And I hate to say it, but those fingernails were the only thing in that entire book which had even a smidgen of personality. By the end of page 416, I knew those fingernails so well that I was inclined to give them names, and the description is so in-your-face thorough that whenever the owner of the nails walked through the door, I no longer pictured a man, but a giant fingernail with googly eyes.
And if that isn't scary enough, Inheritance abounds with monsters fit for your worst nightmares. Imagine, if you are brave enough, being attacked by . . . a giant snail!!!! No joke! Eragon is attacked by a giant snail, like the sort you find in your garden, which proves, once and for all, that Eragon really is a vegetable. If the Author inserted these snails for comic relief, it is a joke which falls flat and wastes time. It is plain stupid and adds to the length of an already-lengthy novel. But apparently Paolini has some fear of insects, because before the giant snails, he introduces us to maggots called - again, I am not joking - burrow grubs with "obscene little mouths." I'm sorry, but there simply is nothing threatening about maggots. Spiders? Yes. Or even beetles, because there are actual existing beetles which are poisonous. But maggots?!
The rest of the book is just disappointing - even for an anti-fan like myself. Anyone who was anticipating an even halfway decent stand-off between Galbatorix and Eragon will be really disappointed. Not surprisingly, the oh-so-evil King sets up a one-on-one duel between Eragon and Darth Vader - I mean, Murtagh. Also not surprising, Murtagh has a "change of heart" and does something that helps Eragon kill Galbatorix. I thought I would never say this, but for once I would have rather had a cliche hero-kills-villain death, as opposed to how Galbatorix really dies. I am sorry if I an spoiling the book for anyone, but presumebly if you're reading this, you either don't care or you've already read the book. Rather than a sword through the heart or a fireball to the head, Eragon and his accomanying Power Jellybeans kindly show Galbatorix the error in his ways, from when he stole a candycane from his baby sister at Christmas, to his tempting people to join his side with their favorite cookies. In the words of the book, Eragon "makes him understand." Galbatorix is so overcome with all the awefulness he's committed that he spontaneously combusts. What do I need to add to this? What's wrong with this picture, people?! The villain - the evilest person in the book - is killed with sad memories!!!!!
That brings up another point that plagued me throughout the book, and that is Galbatorix's supposed badness. When a country is controlled by a tyrant, there are signs of it: soldiers in cities, secret police, crushing taxes, executions, people dragged from their homes at night, furtive glances over one's shoulder, starving peasants, closed borders - just to name a few. If I walked through Alagaesia and a random citizen came up to me and said, "Hey, our king is a tyrant!" I would be flummoxed, because there seems to be no real evidence of an evil monarch. Every once in a while, the Author kind of mentions a few high taxes, just in passing, but there has never been any real indication of a controlling king. Heck, Eragon and Brom traveled the entire country in the first book with no Imperial soldiers stopping or attacking them! No bands of knights or whatever pillaging. Nothing! And I failed to see his massive evilness in Inheritance when he had occasion to talk with other characters. He, in fact, seems no more evil than the average evil person. He sits in his tower all day, twiddling his thumbs, admiring his riches, eating cookies, making the occasional threat, and watching instructional videos on his plasma-screen TV. Explain to me how that makes him the Big Cheese out of the evil people in the kingdom.
All in all, Inheritance was as I anticipated - aweful, painful, and boring. If you wanted an effective way of torturing people - well, this would be it! No one could recover from the giant snails, maggots, fingernails, and chest hair - or the fact that the book ends a good seven times. All I can say is - thank God I am done with the Inheritance Cycle for good! And I feel for anyone who had to suffer as I did through it. Thumbs up to you critics who bulldozed your way to the 849th page, and didn't cringe too badly at the ending so obvioulsy stolen from The Lord of the Rings! I take my hat off to you!
Whatever small hopes I might have expressed in my review of Brisingr, they were all crushed. Character development? Ha! Plot twists? Dream on. Deepening of character relationships? If you even wanted that, then you are already way too much into this series and will probably stone me for this review. Character deaths? My mind is drawing a blank. Paolini promised surprises and unexpectedness of all kinds; the only thing that surprised me was that I managed to finish this fourth - and blessedly last - book in this torturous four-volume collection as quickly as I did. Every single thing that happens is predictable, - no psychics needed - right down to the end.
But don't despair - there are some . . . surprises. Let's start with the worst of it, shall we? Now, I have often commented about the wrongness that prevades these books - in descriptions, word choice, and events. In Eldest, we were presented with a bathing scene where our oh-so-lovable hero shamelessly eyes his now-naked teacher (who is male, by the way) from head to toe, and the Author finds it necessary to inform us helpless Readers that Oromis has absolutely no hair on any of his person. I didn't think things could get much worse than that, and it doesn't, but my goodness, does it come close. There is a certain chapter in Inheritance which I have lovingly titled "The Chest Hair Chapter." Ladies, if you were picturing Roran as a buff young man with a waxed chest, think again, because our beloved Author makes it quite clear in this section - and others - that Mr. Muscleman is as wooly as a baboon.
Descriptions only get worse. In the same chapter, Roran is attacked by an assassin, and they fall into a heap at one point, trapped under a now-collapsed tent. Rather than expressing this in somesuch words as "Roran and the assassin fell atop each other in a tangle of limbs," he instead chooses the phrase (and I quote directly): "Roran continued to hold him as the life drained out of him, their embrace as intimate as any lovers.'" I am sorry, but unless you are trying to creep your Readers out, an Author does not use such . . . wrong imagery, because the Reader's mind is going to immediately jump to unwanted thoughts. I can't tell you how much I squirmed in my chair and made faces; I even got a bad taste in my mouth and shrieked out loud in horror.
However, among all of the chaos of just plain badly-written battle scenes (where Paolini attempts to be like Michael Cadnum and throws in gore, which doesn't succeed; there is a proper way to write gory scenes, and he didn't do it), looonngggg nightly character routines (we get to read about Eragon's regular spelling sessions!), and side travels that shouldn't take as much time as they do, the Reader is finally presented with a character! Enter, Mr. Fingernails! This part, by far, outweighed even The Chest Hair Chapter when it came to over-the-top unnecessary and ultimately vomit-enducing descriptions (though the number of flared nostrils nearly did me in). Page 414-416 is entirely devoted to describing, in microscopic detail, the clean and cultivated - yes, cultivated - fingernails of a character whose name you never even find out. And I hate to say it, but those fingernails were the only thing in that entire book which had even a smidgen of personality. By the end of page 416, I knew those fingernails so well that I was inclined to give them names, and the description is so in-your-face thorough that whenever the owner of the nails walked through the door, I no longer pictured a man, but a giant fingernail with googly eyes.
And if that isn't scary enough, Inheritance abounds with monsters fit for your worst nightmares. Imagine, if you are brave enough, being attacked by . . . a giant snail!!!! No joke! Eragon is attacked by a giant snail, like the sort you find in your garden, which proves, once and for all, that Eragon really is a vegetable. If the Author inserted these snails for comic relief, it is a joke which falls flat and wastes time. It is plain stupid and adds to the length of an already-lengthy novel. But apparently Paolini has some fear of insects, because before the giant snails, he introduces us to maggots called - again, I am not joking - burrow grubs with "obscene little mouths." I'm sorry, but there simply is nothing threatening about maggots. Spiders? Yes. Or even beetles, because there are actual existing beetles which are poisonous. But maggots?!
The rest of the book is just disappointing - even for an anti-fan like myself. Anyone who was anticipating an even halfway decent stand-off between Galbatorix and Eragon will be really disappointed. Not surprisingly, the oh-so-evil King sets up a one-on-one duel between Eragon and Darth Vader - I mean, Murtagh. Also not surprising, Murtagh has a "change of heart" and does something that helps Eragon kill Galbatorix. I thought I would never say this, but for once I would have rather had a cliche hero-kills-villain death, as opposed to how Galbatorix really dies. I am sorry if I an spoiling the book for anyone, but presumebly if you're reading this, you either don't care or you've already read the book. Rather than a sword through the heart or a fireball to the head, Eragon and his accomanying Power Jellybeans kindly show Galbatorix the error in his ways, from when he stole a candycane from his baby sister at Christmas, to his tempting people to join his side with their favorite cookies. In the words of the book, Eragon "makes him understand." Galbatorix is so overcome with all the awefulness he's committed that he spontaneously combusts. What do I need to add to this? What's wrong with this picture, people?! The villain - the evilest person in the book - is killed with sad memories!!!!!
That brings up another point that plagued me throughout the book, and that is Galbatorix's supposed badness. When a country is controlled by a tyrant, there are signs of it: soldiers in cities, secret police, crushing taxes, executions, people dragged from their homes at night, furtive glances over one's shoulder, starving peasants, closed borders - just to name a few. If I walked through Alagaesia and a random citizen came up to me and said, "Hey, our king is a tyrant!" I would be flummoxed, because there seems to be no real evidence of an evil monarch. Every once in a while, the Author kind of mentions a few high taxes, just in passing, but there has never been any real indication of a controlling king. Heck, Eragon and Brom traveled the entire country in the first book with no Imperial soldiers stopping or attacking them! No bands of knights or whatever pillaging. Nothing! And I failed to see his massive evilness in Inheritance when he had occasion to talk with other characters. He, in fact, seems no more evil than the average evil person. He sits in his tower all day, twiddling his thumbs, admiring his riches, eating cookies, making the occasional threat, and watching instructional videos on his plasma-screen TV. Explain to me how that makes him the Big Cheese out of the evil people in the kingdom.
All in all, Inheritance was as I anticipated - aweful, painful, and boring. If you wanted an effective way of torturing people - well, this would be it! No one could recover from the giant snails, maggots, fingernails, and chest hair - or the fact that the book ends a good seven times. All I can say is - thank God I am done with the Inheritance Cycle for good! And I feel for anyone who had to suffer as I did through it. Thumbs up to you critics who bulldozed your way to the 849th page, and didn't cringe too badly at the ending so obvioulsy stolen from The Lord of the Rings! I take my hat off to you!
December 7, 2011
This is my ABRIDGED VERSION of my essay/review about Inheritance by Christopher Paolini. Read the really long version here.
So let's break format and start with what I liked.
This was my favorite of the Inheritance series. It was enough less of a chore to read than Brisingr that I very nearly considered rating this two stars out of five. But then I realized I was thinking that way based on hating it less rather than liking it more, and figured that objectively I'm afraid it still deserves a bottom-of-the-barrel rating. Sorry, fans.
First off, Paolini corrected a number of things that he's had trouble with in previous volumes. He introduced horses that actually get tired. He introduced characters who dislike the protagonists and don't automatically get written as evil or get punished for it. He acknowledged that the elf Arya would be a better fighter than plucky farm boy Eragon owing to over a century of practice. He wrote a couple of conversations that felt like conversations. There was no Super Special explanation for why Cousin Roran was such a badass. Nobody got brought back to life in a cheesy touching resurrection.
But what I appreciated most about this book was that it managed to evoke real emotions sometimes--and what the characters went through wasn't always completely one-dimensional. I felt less like I was being fed lines and more like what the characters experienced was actually born from their situations combined with their mindsets. There was some decent human emotion describing Eragon's self-doubt, inner conflicts, sorrow, and crushing fear under his great responsibility. Roran's protectiveness and savagery as a man of war worked for me too (when it wasn't weird or over the top).
Paolini regularly tried way too hard and forced the emotions until they turned into cloying thesaurus poop, but sometimes he did okay. (There were also certain bits that I realized I felt the way I did because of my personal experiences; in other words, at times I brought my own emotions to the table instead of actually being affected by the words, much like a fanboy loves a dragon no matter how poorly it's written.) Eragon has a "This Used To Be My Playground" moment. I'm a sucker for that, because I'm a huge nostalgic hippie.
Eragon's philosophizing moments and contradictory feelings were sometimes organic and they worked. It mostly just made me sad that this happened so rarely in the book. This kinda made it seem like he has the capability to . . . maybe . . . evoke emotion in his writing, even though he almost never hits the bullseye. The thing he really needs to learn is how and when to back off. Emotional evocation is easy. Humans do it eagerly when they read. Just get out of the way, Paolini. Get out of the way of yourself.
But let's get on to why you guys actually want to read my essays. All the stuff I hate!
The biggest problem is still the obnoxious decoration. Sentences aren't Christmas trees. Stop decorating them.
Even at this late stage, Paolini hasn't improved his tone-deaf prose or his tendency to decorate awkward sentences instead of pruning them. We still constantly encounter overdescription--and not just of weapons and clothes and faces and courtyards, but unneeded comparisons of perfectly good images to other things in a ham-fisted attempt to enhance them. We can picture post-battle smoke as viewed from the sky just fine without being told that it "hung over Belatona like a blanket of hurt, anger, and sorrow," and it would actually be more poignant if he would stop forcing these associations onto every image. Let us feel it ourselves. Stop telling us what every cloud of smoke "means."
If just about every time an image pops up, the reader has to put up with comparisons and weird personification, and we get seasick. A little of this is okay. Weaving it into EVERY SENTENCE is not. Having no natural understanding of voice and tone and no knack for writing character cannot be amended or hidden through excessive adjective insertion. Whenever I read a Paolini book, I feel like I was promised a comfortable shirt and was given an ill-fitting, scratchy garment whose tailor elected to "fix" its flaws with a frigging Bedazzler.
Some particularly egregious examples:
* we would fall before him like dry leaves before a winter storm
* the dragons' blood rained from the sky like a summer downpour
* her small pink tongue was visible; it lay like a soft, moist slug
* musty aroma clung to the girl, like the smell of a forest floor on a warm summer day
* which seemed to press against Roran like a thick, heavy blanket made of the most unpleasant substance he could imagine
* the plume of dancing water, which glittered like handfuls of diamonds tossed into the air
* the bags under her eyes like small, sad smiles
* with eyes like chips of obsidian
* Blood trailed from the tip in long, twisting ribbons that slowly separated into glistening drops, like orbs of polished coral
* there emerged Thorn, red as blood and glittering like a million shifting stars
* The passageway smelled like damp straw and moth wings
* an overwhelming sense of dread clutched at Eragon, pressing down on him like a pile of sodden fleeces
* putting each morsel of food into her mouth as carefully as if it were a hollow orb of glass that might shatter at any sudden movement
* he thought the mountains looked like so many molars erupting from the brown gums of the earth
The description also occurs at very inappropriate times. It consistently interrupts the action, resulting in situations like having a man running toward Eragon urgently, only to pause for two paragraphs while the man, his family, their history, and philosophy surrounding these folks is imparted to us in indulgent narration. There's also an annoying pattern Paolini had in just under half the chapters: Some sort of action opens the chapter, and then we get at least a paragraph of description of the surroundings. If that didn't happen, more often than not we got a flashback that led up to whatever the current situation was. It got very repetitive.
And speaking of repetitive, Paolini has been doing this thing where he latches onto a certain phrase and keeps using it. For example:
* Relief and trepidation swept through Eragon.
* Relief swept through Eragon.
* As his hand closed around the hilt, a sense of relief swept through him.
* Relief swept through Eragon as he saw his cousin alive and well.
* An urge to strike the king swept through Roran.
* Dismay swept through Eragon.
* Eragon watched for a minute longer, then a sudden rush of emotion swept through him.
* Wonder swept through Eragon, wonder that such a thing had come to pass.
Add that to all the metaphors of leaves getting swept away in a storm of some sort, and this book just starts getting silly to read. Other overused words include "crimson" (nearly 50 times) and "growled" (regularly overused as a speech tag). At one point Eragon says "How is it you keep besting me?" and the speech tag is "he growled, far from pleased." Got that? He's growling. And far from pleased. Because Arya is beating him at sword-fighting. I'm sure you needed to know that this did not please him, in case the angry phrase itself and the GROWLING didn't tell you enough yet. And just in case you were wondering, we get a paragraph of detail on Eragon's thumbs. Is your life complete now?
Narrating the sacred
Paolini spends far too long on an irrelevant scene in which Saphira flies them through a storm for no real good reason, and we're treated to several "poetic" pages full of descriptions of the beautiful post-storm night sky. The serenity and power of his observations is yanked away immediately as Paolini begins to narrate to us what exactly this is supposed to "mean" to Eragon. He babbles on for a while and then hands down a trite little revelation about how people probably wouldn't fight each other anymore if they could see what he's seen. It cheapens it so much.
You know what would have driven home the majesty and beauty he was going for?
Some freakin' silence.
Don't narrate the sacred, okay? Just invoking an image and then leaving us to marinate in that would have actually been good storytelling--a good character-building lesson in perspective for Eragon. Instead, we get a litany of hollow platitudes yammered into our ears, rambling about how small he'd once thought the world was and how big it seemed now, and specific ways in which he "was once an ant is now an eagle" or some crap, and on and on about how he's reorienting his life because of this perspective shift.
Bad Dialogue:
"And to what do we owe the unexpected pleasure of this visit, Your Highness? Werecats have always been noted for their secrecy and their solitude, and for remaining apart from the conflicts of the age, especially since the fall of the Riders. One might even say that your kind has become more myth than fact over the past century. Why, then, do you now choose to reveal yourselves?"
Thank you, Ms. Exposition!
There's this thing called "As you know, Bob." This is bleedingly, horrifyingly terrible exposition. It is so written that it's insulting.
Silly dialogue is also frequently praised by other characters, proving once again that even Paolini's characters love Paolini.
Here are a few lines of dialogue I thought were ridiculous:
"These are customs older than time itself." [No they're not.]
"I fight to win, not to lose. . . . " [I can't imagine why.]
"Nor do I want to sit alone in my tent, watching mine beard grow." [What's wrong with thine English, Orik?]
"It doesn't rhyme, but then, you can't expect me to compose proper verse on the spur of the moment." [Yeah, who do you think I am, the great poet Paolini?]
Shameless thefts:
Lord of the Rings, of course: Elves are said to have come from across the silver sea. There is a line of Gollum dialogue.
Dune: I still think Elva is inspired by Alia. But the jig was up on Paolini cribbing from Herbert when he named a dragon "Bid'Daum." I'm not kidding; he really did that.
Monty Python: Seriously, the insults still sound like the French Taunter.
Predictable nonsense:
The red herrings were painful.
Contradictions: Ugh. Brace yourselves.
During a cheeky "history" ramble at the beginning, Paolini retells the events of his previous three books and promptly makes several misleading explanations which suggest he hasn't read his own books.
Katrina's pregnant at the start of the book and was already showing in the previous book. The baby isn't born until well after a huge denouement, before which occurred the planning, attack, and defeat of the dark lord, followed by rebuilding and a few uprisings. Apparently all this happened in seven months.
A newborn baby "smiles" at Eragon. Sorry, dude. Babies that young can't smile. That was gas.
Healing a baby's face takes longer than . Why.
Post-baby-face-healing, the elves praise Eragon and say that his amazing feat in doing so was far beyond anything any of their spellcasters could have achieved.
Eragon starts eating meat again, displaying no recognition that he decided earlier that eating meat was excusable only if other food sources were unavailable or if he thought it'd be too rude to refuse.
Paolini has stated in interviews as well as in his ancient language rules that the suffix "ya" makes stuff plural. He proceeds to break that rule about 140 times in this book.
Elva gets shamed and manipulated by Eragon in a horribly offensive way. She refuses to come on a mission. Someone dies. Eragon blames her, threatens her, makes her cry, forces her to apologize, and shames her into helping him next time. When confronting Galbatorix, he points out how weak it is to bring a child in, and he claims she came of her own free will.
Nonsense/Contrived events: Lots of this too.
A special spear that was thought lost to the ages is recovered in the first chapter when someone tries to kill Saphira with it. It's a lance designed specifically to kill dragons. And then, despite having struck home on both Saphira and Thorn, it doesn't actually kill any dragons until
Roran creates a ruse that is so improbable that it was stupid. It depended on such dumb chance events that I couldn't swallow it. Especially when an enemy soldier who's suspicious of Roran is totally willing to just take a sip of his alcoholic beverage. Sounds totally like what military dudes would do before retreating!
Sometimes, using the ancient language makes something become true (like saying "fire" and suddenly there is fire). Other times, it's suggested you can't possibly say something in the ancient language unless it already is true, so it's a litmus test for lies. That doesn't make sense. Especially if you can bully someone into swearing loyalty to you which MAKES it true. Wouldn't a lie just BECOME true if you said it in the ancient language?
A cartoon villain scene occurs when Eragon and Arya are left chained up while a monster hatches from an egg. Once it hatches, it will eat them. Oh no! But of course, the culprits from a gore-obsessed religion don't stay to watch them get eaten alive. They stick around long enough to laugh at their plight, then leave the room. Which of course leads to them being able to escape in time. Why is the video game boss so surprised when they emerge alive? It knows it signed up to be a Bond villain.
When Eragon is directionless and doesn't know how to lead the Varden to victory, a prophecy is invoked, which leads him directly to a giant deus ex machina. He goes on the prophesied quest, finds exactly what he needs, and also finds out that Happy happy.
Eragon seems fine (though sad) over leaving Alagaësia to go train dragons in the east. When people keep asking him why he has to go and "never return," he invokes a prophecy Angela made. Angela also prophesied that he would have an epic romance.
And finally, a few author fails:
Paolini's how-to on removing suspense from your novels: Eragon's cousin Roran and several other members of the Varden get crushed under a crumbling wall. Roran is the only one who survives because he happened to be underneath some kind of support thing when it fell. Paolini, you see, you're trying to inject your story with reasonable doubt about who might die, but you're doing it really poorly if a wall collapses and EVERYONE DIES EXCEPT THE IMPORTANT GUY. It doesn't fool us into thinking your main characters are actually in mortal danger.
A character like Roran could only die in self-sacrifice because there was no other way, or in a prophesied scenario, or, I don't know, saving a disabled child who's holding a puppy or something.
Paolini doesn't trust his audience. He thinks we're kinda thick. (And I guess we are, if we're still reading these books expecting to get some kind of pleasure out of the experience.) I've noticed it's very common for him to say something that we can completely understand, but then just in case we're extraordinarily thick, he'll have an ignorant character show up and ask questions so he can explain stuff to us that was usually pretty obvious.
Roran acts sexist, especially when he's doing so while pretending to give the finger to gender roles. And Chris still hasn't figured out the difference between writing a strong hero and writing an antisocial bastard.
Paolini's narration also suggests disabled people would be better off born dead, repeatedly compares people bending over to "like a cripple" or "like an old man with rheumatism," and advocates animal cruelty by having no one object to the werecats compelling regular cats to kill themselves in battle. There is too much torture--with details that involve the famous geological comparisons--and sometimes he includes so many details that it sounds like he's trying to prove he did the research this time.
And finally. . . .
Are you sure Eragon isn't you, Paolini?
Quote:
Wherever he looked, he saw an overwhelming amount of detail, but he was convinced there was even more that he was not perceptive enough to notice.
I found this sentence kind of ironic. Eragon's been told that he's not actually SEEING what he's looking at, and therefore he's trying to see more. However, very much like his author, Eragon doesn't understand that detail is NOT what you need in order to fully and properly understand something. I'd like Paolini to stop fixating on details and understand essence.
So let's break format and start with what I liked.
This was my favorite of the Inheritance series. It was enough less of a chore to read than Brisingr that I very nearly considered rating this two stars out of five. But then I realized I was thinking that way based on hating it less rather than liking it more, and figured that objectively I'm afraid it still deserves a bottom-of-the-barrel rating. Sorry, fans.
First off, Paolini corrected a number of things that he's had trouble with in previous volumes. He introduced horses that actually get tired. He introduced characters who dislike the protagonists and don't automatically get written as evil or get punished for it. He acknowledged that the elf Arya would be a better fighter than plucky farm boy Eragon owing to over a century of practice. He wrote a couple of conversations that felt like conversations. There was no Super Special explanation for why Cousin Roran was such a badass. Nobody got brought back to life in a cheesy touching resurrection.
But what I appreciated most about this book was that it managed to evoke real emotions sometimes--and what the characters went through wasn't always completely one-dimensional. I felt less like I was being fed lines and more like what the characters experienced was actually born from their situations combined with their mindsets. There was some decent human emotion describing Eragon's self-doubt, inner conflicts, sorrow, and crushing fear under his great responsibility. Roran's protectiveness and savagery as a man of war worked for me too (when it wasn't weird or over the top).
Paolini regularly tried way too hard and forced the emotions until they turned into cloying thesaurus poop, but sometimes he did okay. (There were also certain bits that I realized I felt the way I did because of my personal experiences; in other words, at times I brought my own emotions to the table instead of actually being affected by the words, much like a fanboy loves a dragon no matter how poorly it's written.) Eragon has a "This Used To Be My Playground" moment. I'm a sucker for that, because I'm a huge nostalgic hippie.
Eragon's philosophizing moments and contradictory feelings were sometimes organic and they worked. It mostly just made me sad that this happened so rarely in the book. This kinda made it seem like he has the capability to . . . maybe . . . evoke emotion in his writing, even though he almost never hits the bullseye. The thing he really needs to learn is how and when to back off. Emotional evocation is easy. Humans do it eagerly when they read. Just get out of the way, Paolini. Get out of the way of yourself.
But let's get on to why you guys actually want to read my essays. All the stuff I hate!
The biggest problem is still the obnoxious decoration. Sentences aren't Christmas trees. Stop decorating them.
Even at this late stage, Paolini hasn't improved his tone-deaf prose or his tendency to decorate awkward sentences instead of pruning them. We still constantly encounter overdescription--and not just of weapons and clothes and faces and courtyards, but unneeded comparisons of perfectly good images to other things in a ham-fisted attempt to enhance them. We can picture post-battle smoke as viewed from the sky just fine without being told that it "hung over Belatona like a blanket of hurt, anger, and sorrow," and it would actually be more poignant if he would stop forcing these associations onto every image. Let us feel it ourselves. Stop telling us what every cloud of smoke "means."
If just about every time an image pops up, the reader has to put up with comparisons and weird personification, and we get seasick. A little of this is okay. Weaving it into EVERY SENTENCE is not. Having no natural understanding of voice and tone and no knack for writing character cannot be amended or hidden through excessive adjective insertion. Whenever I read a Paolini book, I feel like I was promised a comfortable shirt and was given an ill-fitting, scratchy garment whose tailor elected to "fix" its flaws with a frigging Bedazzler.
Some particularly egregious examples:
* we would fall before him like dry leaves before a winter storm
* the dragons' blood rained from the sky like a summer downpour
* her small pink tongue was visible; it lay like a soft, moist slug
* musty aroma clung to the girl, like the smell of a forest floor on a warm summer day
* which seemed to press against Roran like a thick, heavy blanket made of the most unpleasant substance he could imagine
* the plume of dancing water, which glittered like handfuls of diamonds tossed into the air
* the bags under her eyes like small, sad smiles
* with eyes like chips of obsidian
* Blood trailed from the tip in long, twisting ribbons that slowly separated into glistening drops, like orbs of polished coral
* there emerged Thorn, red as blood and glittering like a million shifting stars
* The passageway smelled like damp straw and moth wings
* an overwhelming sense of dread clutched at Eragon, pressing down on him like a pile of sodden fleeces
* putting each morsel of food into her mouth as carefully as if it were a hollow orb of glass that might shatter at any sudden movement
* he thought the mountains looked like so many molars erupting from the brown gums of the earth
The description also occurs at very inappropriate times. It consistently interrupts the action, resulting in situations like having a man running toward Eragon urgently, only to pause for two paragraphs while the man, his family, their history, and philosophy surrounding these folks is imparted to us in indulgent narration. There's also an annoying pattern Paolini had in just under half the chapters: Some sort of action opens the chapter, and then we get at least a paragraph of description of the surroundings. If that didn't happen, more often than not we got a flashback that led up to whatever the current situation was. It got very repetitive.
And speaking of repetitive, Paolini has been doing this thing where he latches onto a certain phrase and keeps using it. For example:
* Relief and trepidation swept through Eragon.
* Relief swept through Eragon.
* As his hand closed around the hilt, a sense of relief swept through him.
* Relief swept through Eragon as he saw his cousin alive and well.
* An urge to strike the king swept through Roran.
* Dismay swept through Eragon.
* Eragon watched for a minute longer, then a sudden rush of emotion swept through him.
* Wonder swept through Eragon, wonder that such a thing had come to pass.
Add that to all the metaphors of leaves getting swept away in a storm of some sort, and this book just starts getting silly to read. Other overused words include "crimson" (nearly 50 times) and "growled" (regularly overused as a speech tag). At one point Eragon says "How is it you keep besting me?" and the speech tag is "he growled, far from pleased." Got that? He's growling. And far from pleased. Because Arya is beating him at sword-fighting. I'm sure you needed to know that this did not please him, in case the angry phrase itself and the GROWLING didn't tell you enough yet. And just in case you were wondering, we get a paragraph of detail on Eragon's thumbs. Is your life complete now?
Narrating the sacred
Paolini spends far too long on an irrelevant scene in which Saphira flies them through a storm for no real good reason, and we're treated to several "poetic" pages full of descriptions of the beautiful post-storm night sky. The serenity and power of his observations is yanked away immediately as Paolini begins to narrate to us what exactly this is supposed to "mean" to Eragon. He babbles on for a while and then hands down a trite little revelation about how people probably wouldn't fight each other anymore if they could see what he's seen. It cheapens it so much.
You know what would have driven home the majesty and beauty he was going for?
Some freakin' silence.
Don't narrate the sacred, okay? Just invoking an image and then leaving us to marinate in that would have actually been good storytelling--a good character-building lesson in perspective for Eragon. Instead, we get a litany of hollow platitudes yammered into our ears, rambling about how small he'd once thought the world was and how big it seemed now, and specific ways in which he "was once an ant is now an eagle" or some crap, and on and on about how he's reorienting his life because of this perspective shift.
Bad Dialogue:
"And to what do we owe the unexpected pleasure of this visit, Your Highness? Werecats have always been noted for their secrecy and their solitude, and for remaining apart from the conflicts of the age, especially since the fall of the Riders. One might even say that your kind has become more myth than fact over the past century. Why, then, do you now choose to reveal yourselves?"
Thank you, Ms. Exposition!
There's this thing called "As you know, Bob." This is bleedingly, horrifyingly terrible exposition. It is so written that it's insulting.
Silly dialogue is also frequently praised by other characters, proving once again that even Paolini's characters love Paolini.
Here are a few lines of dialogue I thought were ridiculous:
"These are customs older than time itself." [No they're not.]
"I fight to win, not to lose. . . . " [I can't imagine why.]
"Nor do I want to sit alone in my tent, watching mine beard grow." [What's wrong with thine English, Orik?]
"It doesn't rhyme, but then, you can't expect me to compose proper verse on the spur of the moment." [Yeah, who do you think I am, the great poet Paolini?]
Shameless thefts:
Lord of the Rings, of course: Elves are said to have come from across the silver sea. There is a line of Gollum dialogue.
Dune: I still think Elva is inspired by Alia. But the jig was up on Paolini cribbing from Herbert when he named a dragon "Bid'Daum." I'm not kidding; he really did that.
Monty Python: Seriously, the insults still sound like the French Taunter.
Predictable nonsense:
The red herrings were painful.
Contradictions: Ugh. Brace yourselves.
During a cheeky "history" ramble at the beginning, Paolini retells the events of his previous three books and promptly makes several misleading explanations which suggest he hasn't read his own books.
Katrina's pregnant at the start of the book and was already showing in the previous book. The baby isn't born until well after a huge denouement, before which occurred the planning, attack, and defeat of the dark lord, followed by rebuilding and a few uprisings. Apparently all this happened in seven months.
A newborn baby "smiles" at Eragon. Sorry, dude. Babies that young can't smile. That was gas.
Healing a baby's face takes longer than . Why.
Post-baby-face-healing, the elves praise Eragon and say that his amazing feat in doing so was far beyond anything any of their spellcasters could have achieved.
Eragon starts eating meat again, displaying no recognition that he decided earlier that eating meat was excusable only if other food sources were unavailable or if he thought it'd be too rude to refuse.
Paolini has stated in interviews as well as in his ancient language rules that the suffix "ya" makes stuff plural. He proceeds to break that rule about 140 times in this book.
Elva gets shamed and manipulated by Eragon in a horribly offensive way. She refuses to come on a mission. Someone dies. Eragon blames her, threatens her, makes her cry, forces her to apologize, and shames her into helping him next time. When confronting Galbatorix, he points out how weak it is to bring a child in, and he claims she came of her own free will.
Nonsense/Contrived events: Lots of this too.
A special spear that was thought lost to the ages is recovered in the first chapter when someone tries to kill Saphira with it. It's a lance designed specifically to kill dragons. And then, despite having struck home on both Saphira and Thorn, it doesn't actually kill any dragons until
Roran creates a ruse that is so improbable that it was stupid. It depended on such dumb chance events that I couldn't swallow it. Especially when an enemy soldier who's suspicious of Roran is totally willing to just take a sip of his alcoholic beverage. Sounds totally like what military dudes would do before retreating!
Sometimes, using the ancient language makes something become true (like saying "fire" and suddenly there is fire). Other times, it's suggested you can't possibly say something in the ancient language unless it already is true, so it's a litmus test for lies. That doesn't make sense. Especially if you can bully someone into swearing loyalty to you which MAKES it true. Wouldn't a lie just BECOME true if you said it in the ancient language?
A cartoon villain scene occurs when Eragon and Arya are left chained up while a monster hatches from an egg. Once it hatches, it will eat them. Oh no! But of course, the culprits from a gore-obsessed religion don't stay to watch them get eaten alive. They stick around long enough to laugh at their plight, then leave the room. Which of course leads to them being able to escape in time. Why is the video game boss so surprised when they emerge alive? It knows it signed up to be a Bond villain.
When Eragon is directionless and doesn't know how to lead the Varden to victory, a prophecy is invoked, which leads him directly to a giant deus ex machina. He goes on the prophesied quest, finds exactly what he needs, and also finds out that Happy happy.
Eragon seems fine (though sad) over leaving Alagaësia to go train dragons in the east. When people keep asking him why he has to go and "never return," he invokes a prophecy Angela made. Angela also prophesied that he would have an epic romance.
And finally, a few author fails:
Paolini's how-to on removing suspense from your novels: Eragon's cousin Roran and several other members of the Varden get crushed under a crumbling wall. Roran is the only one who survives because he happened to be underneath some kind of support thing when it fell. Paolini, you see, you're trying to inject your story with reasonable doubt about who might die, but you're doing it really poorly if a wall collapses and EVERYONE DIES EXCEPT THE IMPORTANT GUY. It doesn't fool us into thinking your main characters are actually in mortal danger.
A character like Roran could only die in self-sacrifice because there was no other way, or in a prophesied scenario, or, I don't know, saving a disabled child who's holding a puppy or something.
Paolini doesn't trust his audience. He thinks we're kinda thick. (And I guess we are, if we're still reading these books expecting to get some kind of pleasure out of the experience.) I've noticed it's very common for him to say something that we can completely understand, but then just in case we're extraordinarily thick, he'll have an ignorant character show up and ask questions so he can explain stuff to us that was usually pretty obvious.
Roran acts sexist, especially when he's doing so while pretending to give the finger to gender roles. And Chris still hasn't figured out the difference between writing a strong hero and writing an antisocial bastard.
Paolini's narration also suggests disabled people would be better off born dead, repeatedly compares people bending over to "like a cripple" or "like an old man with rheumatism," and advocates animal cruelty by having no one object to the werecats compelling regular cats to kill themselves in battle. There is too much torture--with details that involve the famous geological comparisons--and sometimes he includes so many details that it sounds like he's trying to prove he did the research this time.
And finally. . . .
Are you sure Eragon isn't you, Paolini?
Quote:
Wherever he looked, he saw an overwhelming amount of detail, but he was convinced there was even more that he was not perceptive enough to notice.
I found this sentence kind of ironic. Eragon's been told that he's not actually SEEING what he's looking at, and therefore he's trying to see more. However, very much like his author, Eragon doesn't understand that detail is NOT what you need in order to fully and properly understand something. I'd like Paolini to stop fixating on details and understand essence.
November 3, 2017
I must admit this has been a tough series for me. I had to really push myself through them when I started out. But I am so glad I did as this final instalment was incredible! Paolini creates a deeply intricate fantasy world filled with its own politics, magic and villainy. I loved the deeper focus on all the separate characters rather than just Eragon and to see the way in which the war against tyranny affected so many others. I actually felt melancholy when I reached the end. I loved this world and everything in it - from the majestic dragons, mysterious elves, aggressive Urgals and tough dwarves. Also Nasuada is my favourite! There were views from the different tribes that I didn't understand and almost disliked but that just reinforced the idea that it is a broad world, like our own but also nothing like it. I will definitely be re reading them again at some point as some of the information was so dense that I may have missed it the first time round. Overall a beautiful, well constructed fantasy world that I am sad to leave behind.
August 24, 2016
I REALLY enjoyed how the finale came about, and how everything led up to this. Everything felt well deserved, and there was plenty of closure. The climax came about in a unique and fascinating way. BUT, the first half of this book dragged on longer than it needed to in my opinion.
This is a truly epic series. If you love heroic quests with amazing dragons, interesting magic systems, and little romance, this is definitely one to check out!
This is a truly epic series. If you love heroic quests with amazing dragons, interesting magic systems, and little romance, this is definitely one to check out!
February 22, 2023
that ending was so emotional i am bawling 😭
review to come
review to come
November 24, 2011
It took me forever to read this book (it's over 800 pages) but I am finally done and ready to write a review.
Obviously, this book is the end of the Inheritance cycle. You have no idea how profoundly sad that makes me. I love this series, and some of my all-time favorite book moments occur during it. I shall never forget you . . .
Despite, how long it is, you don't really notice. Riordan paced the book perfectly, so it never feels like some new, completely unfeasible stretch is being made to end the series. Believe me, nothing outlandish (like, oh, say, coming back to life after being hit by a death spell) happens to force an end to the series. The end comes naturally, and you can see it coming.
Inheritance reminds me of another, lasting pillar in the fantasy community; The Return of the King from the Lord of the Rings. Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if thirty or so years from now, this cycle is held in the same sort of esteem. I believe this series shall endure for a long time.
And don't forget, Paolini still has years of writing ahead of him, and in the acknowledgments he mentioned possibly returning to Alagaesia. If he does, I doubt Eragon and Saphira shall play any role, but there are so many other characters he could turn to, Roran and Thorn especially. I feel their story is only beginning. Of course, even if the characters we love are never mentioned, I would still eagerly embark on any new tale Paolini presents. With Inheritance, he has proved himself a truly amazing author, and concluded a riveting tale begun so many years ago.
Keep writing, Paolini, and Sé onr sverdar sitja hvass!
Obviously, this book is the end of the Inheritance cycle. You have no idea how profoundly sad that makes me. I love this series, and some of my all-time favorite book moments occur during it. I shall never forget you . . .
Despite, how long it is, you don't really notice. Riordan paced the book perfectly, so it never feels like some new, completely unfeasible stretch is being made to end the series. Believe me, nothing outlandish (like, oh, say, coming back to life after being hit by a death spell) happens to force an end to the series. The end comes naturally, and you can see it coming.
Inheritance reminds me of another, lasting pillar in the fantasy community; The Return of the King from the Lord of the Rings. Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if thirty or so years from now, this cycle is held in the same sort of esteem. I believe this series shall endure for a long time.
And don't forget, Paolini still has years of writing ahead of him, and in the acknowledgments he mentioned possibly returning to Alagaesia. If he does, I doubt Eragon and Saphira shall play any role, but there are so many other characters he could turn to, Roran and Thorn especially. I feel their story is only beginning. Of course, even if the characters we love are never mentioned, I would still eagerly embark on any new tale Paolini presents. With Inheritance, he has proved himself a truly amazing author, and concluded a riveting tale begun so many years ago.
Keep writing, Paolini, and Sé onr sverdar sitja hvass!
December 3, 2011
Ohgods. The dreaded Green Brick's actually lurking out there now. And some incredibly masochistic part of myself desires to find out whether it's as horrible as the prequels. Oh Paolini, why do you have to insist on being the Stephanie Meyer of "high fantasy"?
November 9, 2014
My feelings right now:
Coming to its end, this series was overall amazing and made me feel so cozy and at home that I won't ever be able to part with it.
I cannot begin to describe my love for the protagonist, Eragon, who is by far my favorite male lead character. Paolini created a character and managed to make us grasp Eragon's entity. He is not just a fictional character to me, he is more, he is real and if you try to contradict me I will hurt you. This series had so many aspects to the things and it may have sometimes grown boring but that doesn't make it any less perfect.
I got to know to many characters, I grew to love many characters and in each of them I find a little bit of myself and for that I'm grateful to Paolini. I am pretty happy with the way the series came to end and I full understand why the author chose to do it this way.. Eragon is responsible and he is afraid of power and what it does to people (check Galbatorix) and he is also selfless and puts everyone before himself and he, of course, would choose to do something that would benefit the entire Alagaësia.
What I'm not content with is the way Eragon and Arya parted. He loves her so much and I'm not sure he will ever be able to forget his feelings about her and I'm also sure that she is every bit in love with him as he is with her and I would have liked, at least, a kiss before they parted. Not words. Just a kiss in order to hold on to the thought that in some AU Arya joins Eragon in the unknown and have many babies. I'm so helplessly cheesy, I know.
Lastly, this book has wrecked me for life. This entire world. I love it. It's a part of me.
Coming to its end, this series was overall amazing and made me feel so cozy and at home that I won't ever be able to part with it.
I cannot begin to describe my love for the protagonist, Eragon, who is by far my favorite male lead character. Paolini created a character and managed to make us grasp Eragon's entity. He is not just a fictional character to me, he is more, he is real and if you try to contradict me I will hurt you. This series had so many aspects to the things and it may have sometimes grown boring but that doesn't make it any less perfect.
I got to know to many characters, I grew to love many characters and in each of them I find a little bit of myself and for that I'm grateful to Paolini. I am pretty happy with the way the series came to end and I full understand why the author chose to do it this way.. Eragon is responsible and he is afraid of power and what it does to people (check Galbatorix) and he is also selfless and puts everyone before himself and he, of course, would choose to do something that would benefit the entire Alagaësia.
What I'm not content with is the way Eragon and Arya parted. He loves her so much and I'm not sure he will ever be able to forget his feelings about her and I'm also sure that she is every bit in love with him as he is with her and I would have liked, at least, a kiss before they parted. Not words. Just a kiss in order to hold on to the thought that in some AU Arya joins Eragon in the unknown and have many babies. I'm so helplessly cheesy, I know.
Lastly, this book has wrecked me for life. This entire world. I love it. It's a part of me.
January 24, 2021
Christopher Paolini brings his fantasy series for young adults to an end with Inheritance, the fourth and final book in The Inheritance Cycle.
Eragon, Saphira, the Varden and their various allies including elves, dwarves and urgals, make their way to Uru-baen, the capital of the evil Galbatorix's empire, in a thrilling set of battles that bring a conclusion to the struggle between the characters of this world.
If you've been following my reviews as I made my way through this series, you'll note that this is the highest rating (four stars) I've given any of the books. I could tell that Paolini brought all of the skills that he learned in writing the first three books to this one.
The characters are well-developed as he's had thousands of pages to make them that way. The battles are nail-bitingly awesome.
The fallout after the main confrontation is long enough to tie up loose ends, but not so long that I was tired of reading about the world.
And it is a fun world to visit. Paolini took his cues from the classics of fantasy to craft his own world so that it feels familiar in a comforting way to fans of fantasy fiction.
But that familiarity cuts both ways. Paolini doesn't move far from the expected tropes in the creation of his story. There were a few large reveals in Inheritance that I wanted to be more imaginative than the twists that Paolini crafted.
That being said, I did enjoy this book more than all the others. Once I started the final hundred pages, I couldn't put the book down.
I think this series could be a lot of fun for young readers. Despite its predictability, there is much to enjoy in The Inheritance Cycle. Older readers or the young at heart might want something that veers a little more off of the expected paths.
Eragon, Saphira, the Varden and their various allies including elves, dwarves and urgals, make their way to Uru-baen, the capital of the evil Galbatorix's empire, in a thrilling set of battles that bring a conclusion to the struggle between the characters of this world.
If you've been following my reviews as I made my way through this series, you'll note that this is the highest rating (four stars) I've given any of the books. I could tell that Paolini brought all of the skills that he learned in writing the first three books to this one.
The characters are well-developed as he's had thousands of pages to make them that way. The battles are nail-bitingly awesome.
The fallout after the main confrontation is long enough to tie up loose ends, but not so long that I was tired of reading about the world.
And it is a fun world to visit. Paolini took his cues from the classics of fantasy to craft his own world so that it feels familiar in a comforting way to fans of fantasy fiction.
But that familiarity cuts both ways. Paolini doesn't move far from the expected tropes in the creation of his story. There were a few large reveals in Inheritance that I wanted to be more imaginative than the twists that Paolini crafted.
That being said, I did enjoy this book more than all the others. Once I started the final hundred pages, I couldn't put the book down.
I think this series could be a lot of fun for young readers. Despite its predictability, there is much to enjoy in The Inheritance Cycle. Older readers or the young at heart might want something that veers a little more off of the expected paths.
April 23, 2020
The last book of the inheritance cycle....
... that because of complexity, it ended up much larger than what the author anticipated... Blah... Blah... Blah
Frustrated waiting for a sale for this one, because no matter how I count, my money is not enough...
Then one day, I passby our local bookstore, and the sales lady named Jessica called me up and says the book you want is half the price. I immediately went to the display book in order to get this book... But someone is holding it (the last stock in sale) Letting my finger cross, and saying in my head please don't buy it... Please🙏🙏🙏.
Luckily, she just put it down and go somewhere else... And I say a loud YES in my head... Then I got to buy the book.... Inheritance, I got you...
...from the journal of cjituralde, nov. 20, 2013
The book is nice, blah, blah, blah... Its the ending... Right?
I guess I like Brisgr more than this one, but I will always treasure the book because it reminds of patience and luck sometimes join forces in order for me to have a smile. 😊😀😄😂
... that because of complexity, it ended up much larger than what the author anticipated... Blah... Blah... Blah
Frustrated waiting for a sale for this one, because no matter how I count, my money is not enough...
Then one day, I passby our local bookstore, and the sales lady named Jessica called me up and says the book you want is half the price. I immediately went to the display book in order to get this book... But someone is holding it (the last stock in sale) Letting my finger cross, and saying in my head please don't buy it... Please🙏🙏🙏.
Luckily, she just put it down and go somewhere else... And I say a loud YES in my head... Then I got to buy the book.... Inheritance, I got you...
...from the journal of cjituralde, nov. 20, 2013
The book is nice, blah, blah, blah... Its the ending... Right?
I guess I like Brisgr more than this one, but I will always treasure the book because it reminds of patience and luck sometimes join forces in order for me to have a smile. 😊😀😄😂
January 29, 2022
Note, Jan. 19, 2022: I've just edited this review to correct an error in a reference to an earlier book in the series (wrong title!).
As the Goodreads description indicates, this concluding volume of the series sees the epic battle between good and evil, freedom and tyranny, come to its powerfully-depicted, awesome conclusion. But the struggle against Galbatorix isn't the only significant issue here, though it's certainly the central one on which everything else hangs. Win or lose, who will survive the showdown --and who won't? Can the races of Alagaesia learn to live in harmony? What is the future of magic, and of dragonkind? Are Eragon and Arya destined to be together? And have you forgotten the blood debt that Birgit thinks Roran owes her? (Paolini hasn't.) Our author wraps all these strands up here, in a grand tapestry that's as well-written and compelling in the fourth volume as it was in the first; his mastery of style, characterization and world-building has remained remarkably consistent all the way through. (As a result, many of the general comments in my reviews of earlier books in the series apply to this one as well.)
It's hard to discuss some of the specific elements here without resorting to spoilers (though readers who know much about my general tastes in fiction will garner some conclusions about the ending from the five-star rating itself! :-) ) But I can say that we get to encounter Galbatorix in person here, and he's a vivid, fully-human character, not just an embodied force of evil (although he is evil) as Sauron, for instance, is in the LOTR series. He's also the kind of tyrant who, at a conscious level, is wholly convinced that he's good for the kingdom and that his opponents are the dangerous bad guys; and he's able to articulate his attitude in rhetoric that's eerily parallel to claims we might hear from politicos who want power over us in the real world. Personally, I give Paolini high marks on both grounds. Moreover, IMO, every aspect of his plotting is excellent; it frequently surprises, and yet you feel, on reflection, that yes, this is exactly the way things needed to happen. He looks unflinchingly at the high cost that doing what's right sometimes carries, and readily affirms that it's worth paying. And he's not afraid to depart from expected convention in the realistic way that his story ends.
A word can be in order here about Paolini's resolution of the debate over theism that's cropped up in places over the course of the four books, since Eragon is directly asked at one point if he believes in the gods. The conversation there arises naturally, and it's a short one (in contrast to the long lecture on the subject that we get at one point in Eldest). While not embracing the elves' atheism, Eragon's stance remains agnostic and secular; he's not certain that the gods exist, doubts that they care about people, believes morality should be practiced for its own sake, not fear of punishment, and isn't sure he wants immortality (though, as a dragonrider, he's apt to live for centuries). Before Christian readers react too negatively to this, though, it's important to recognize that in the context of his world's pagan polytheism, these aren't unreasonable attitudes. "Gods," in Alagaesia, are entities whose existence is vouched for mostly by nothing more than ethnic traditions (which conflict with each other); they have never acted in verifiable history, never sacrificed or suffered on behalf of people, don't offer an eschatology or teleology, nor a standard for critiquing an unjust social order, and are not supported by anything resembling the body of Christian evidences that exists in the real world. None of the various cults in Alagaesia contribute constructively to the world in any obvious way (that of the priests of Helgrind is obviously pathological). And an embrace of goodness for its own sake, not from fear of punishment, is the whole goal of Christian sanctification. So as a Christian reader, I'm not offended by Eragon's self-distancing from Alagaesian religion. To be sure, Paolini as an author may have no clue (indeed, probably doesn't) that Christianity has any different characteristics than Alagaesian paganism. (We assume that everybody in "Christian" America knows what Christians basically believe; but the reality is that vast numbers of Americans have almost no knowledge of our beliefs.) But for those of us who know that it does, this is both a window into the perceptions of others and a way for us to better understand our own unique faith by contrast --thus better equipping us to communicate the difference.
Predicting what works of contemporary literature will stand the test of time is a chancy business. But I'd hazard the guess that Paolini's Inheritance Cycle will be recognized in succeeding centuries (if the world endures) as one of this century's more significant contributions to the fantasy genre.
As the Goodreads description indicates, this concluding volume of the series sees the epic battle between good and evil, freedom and tyranny, come to its powerfully-depicted, awesome conclusion. But the struggle against Galbatorix isn't the only significant issue here, though it's certainly the central one on which everything else hangs. Win or lose, who will survive the showdown --and who won't? Can the races of Alagaesia learn to live in harmony? What is the future of magic, and of dragonkind? Are Eragon and Arya destined to be together? And have you forgotten the blood debt that Birgit thinks Roran owes her? (Paolini hasn't.) Our author wraps all these strands up here, in a grand tapestry that's as well-written and compelling in the fourth volume as it was in the first; his mastery of style, characterization and world-building has remained remarkably consistent all the way through. (As a result, many of the general comments in my reviews of earlier books in the series apply to this one as well.)
It's hard to discuss some of the specific elements here without resorting to spoilers (though readers who know much about my general tastes in fiction will garner some conclusions about the ending from the five-star rating itself! :-) ) But I can say that we get to encounter Galbatorix in person here, and he's a vivid, fully-human character, not just an embodied force of evil (although he is evil) as Sauron, for instance, is in the LOTR series. He's also the kind of tyrant who, at a conscious level, is wholly convinced that he's good for the kingdom and that his opponents are the dangerous bad guys; and he's able to articulate his attitude in rhetoric that's eerily parallel to claims we might hear from politicos who want power over us in the real world. Personally, I give Paolini high marks on both grounds. Moreover, IMO, every aspect of his plotting is excellent; it frequently surprises, and yet you feel, on reflection, that yes, this is exactly the way things needed to happen. He looks unflinchingly at the high cost that doing what's right sometimes carries, and readily affirms that it's worth paying. And he's not afraid to depart from expected convention in the realistic way that his story ends.
A word can be in order here about Paolini's resolution of the debate over theism that's cropped up in places over the course of the four books, since Eragon is directly asked at one point if he believes in the gods. The conversation there arises naturally, and it's a short one (in contrast to the long lecture on the subject that we get at one point in Eldest). While not embracing the elves' atheism, Eragon's stance remains agnostic and secular; he's not certain that the gods exist, doubts that they care about people, believes morality should be practiced for its own sake, not fear of punishment, and isn't sure he wants immortality (though, as a dragonrider, he's apt to live for centuries). Before Christian readers react too negatively to this, though, it's important to recognize that in the context of his world's pagan polytheism, these aren't unreasonable attitudes. "Gods," in Alagaesia, are entities whose existence is vouched for mostly by nothing more than ethnic traditions (which conflict with each other); they have never acted in verifiable history, never sacrificed or suffered on behalf of people, don't offer an eschatology or teleology, nor a standard for critiquing an unjust social order, and are not supported by anything resembling the body of Christian evidences that exists in the real world. None of the various cults in Alagaesia contribute constructively to the world in any obvious way (that of the priests of Helgrind is obviously pathological). And an embrace of goodness for its own sake, not from fear of punishment, is the whole goal of Christian sanctification. So as a Christian reader, I'm not offended by Eragon's self-distancing from Alagaesian religion. To be sure, Paolini as an author may have no clue (indeed, probably doesn't) that Christianity has any different characteristics than Alagaesian paganism. (We assume that everybody in "Christian" America knows what Christians basically believe; but the reality is that vast numbers of Americans have almost no knowledge of our beliefs.) But for those of us who know that it does, this is both a window into the perceptions of others and a way for us to better understand our own unique faith by contrast --thus better equipping us to communicate the difference.
Predicting what works of contemporary literature will stand the test of time is a chancy business. But I'd hazard the guess that Paolini's Inheritance Cycle will be recognized in succeeding centuries (if the world endures) as one of this century's more significant contributions to the fantasy genre.
February 5, 2012
Update:
If you would like a chapter-by-chapter commentary/sarcastic review of Eragon and Inheritance, check out "distinctvagueness" on youtube...he pretty hilarious :)
POST-RELEASE REVIEW
Well, I have to say I was extremely disappointed with this conclusion. It was by far TOO perfect and way too tidy. It was over complicated with wards, spells, ways to kill dragons, ways characters avoided death, perfect weapons, too perfect characters, anti-climatic battle with the king, and references to other books/ tv shows. Seriously? A blade that can slice through anything except the sheath it's kept in?! *cough AMBER SPYGLASS cough* And really? "Raxacori-" Yes, Paolini, I realize you are a Doctor Who fan for real now. (The reference was Raxacoricofallapatorius...an alien planet from Doctor Who series 1 (revived series))
I personally really wished Angela's past would have been revealed a bit more. You won't be disappointed with her parts in the book (my opinion, some of the best parts), but Paolini dangles this mysterious character in our face for three books and gives us NOTHING concrete at the end. There are some vague hints you can put together however you want, I just wish he would have gave us something definitive.
In my opinion, the book was okay, but not great. That's my opinion. I would, however, recommend this series because while I didn't like the last book doesn't mean you won't like it. It's a matter of opinion; I think some people will love this book, others (like me) will think it's ok but that it could have been better, and others will absolutely hate it. Grades 9+
PRE-RELEASE REVIEW
Arya BETTER NOT BE THE NEXT DRAGON RIDER!! She is too perfect already and that (being a dragon rider) is the only thing Eragon is better than her at--admit it...she's too perfect!
I think that the next dragon rider will be a character that was briefly mentioned in the past two books...and she (or he) will be on the Varden's side.
No more speculations, but all I have to say is that I can't wait for November!!! :D
If you would like a chapter-by-chapter commentary/sarcastic review of Eragon and Inheritance, check out "distinctvagueness" on youtube...he pretty hilarious :)
POST-RELEASE REVIEW
Well, I have to say I was extremely disappointed with this conclusion. It was by far TOO perfect and way too tidy. It was over complicated with wards, spells, ways to kill dragons, ways characters avoided death, perfect weapons, too perfect characters, anti-climatic battle with the king, and references to other books/ tv shows. Seriously? A blade that can slice through anything except the sheath it's kept in?! *cough AMBER SPYGLASS cough* And really? "Raxacori-" Yes, Paolini, I realize you are a Doctor Who fan for real now. (The reference was Raxacoricofallapatorius...an alien planet from Doctor Who series 1 (revived series))
I personally really wished Angela's past would have been revealed a bit more. You won't be disappointed with her parts in the book (my opinion, some of the best parts), but Paolini dangles this mysterious character in our face for three books and gives us NOTHING concrete at the end. There are some vague hints you can put together however you want, I just wish he would have gave us something definitive.
In my opinion, the book was okay, but not great. That's my opinion. I would, however, recommend this series because while I didn't like the last book doesn't mean you won't like it. It's a matter of opinion; I think some people will love this book, others (like me) will think it's ok but that it could have been better, and others will absolutely hate it. Grades 9+
PRE-RELEASE REVIEW
Arya BETTER NOT BE THE NEXT DRAGON RIDER!! She is too perfect already and that (being a dragon rider) is the only thing Eragon is better than her at--admit it...she's too perfect!
I think that the next dragon rider will be a character that was briefly mentioned in the past two books...and she (or he) will be on the Varden's side.
No more speculations, but all I have to say is that I can't wait for November!!! :D
Want to read
May 14, 2010Anyone else wondering why he hasn't finished the freaking book yet?
September 12, 2014
Old review when the prospective title was Shur'tugal:
Title fail. Brisingr was hard enough, this is suicide. Only the hardcore fans (like me) will even bother to learn how to pronounce the title. "Empire" would have been a great title.
New review:
"Inheritance" is a GREAT title :) First of all, it's a pronounceable, English word, and second, it will actually help us remember what the proper name of the series is! lol And the cover is just Gorgeous! :)
Looking forward to reading it :)
____________
Read it, loved it. Hope we get to see more of the dragons! There is still a lot of story to be told!
Title fail. Brisingr was hard enough, this is suicide. Only the hardcore fans (like me) will even bother to learn how to pronounce the title. "Empire" would have been a great title.
New review:
"Inheritance" is a GREAT title :) First of all, it's a pronounceable, English word, and second, it will actually help us remember what the proper name of the series is! lol And the cover is just Gorgeous! :)
Looking forward to reading it :)
____________
Read it, loved it. Hope we get to see more of the dragons! There is still a lot of story to be told!
January 13, 2012
It was better than I expected and then some.
The good stuff:
1. An admirable end to thetrilogy cycle, with a fair amount of action, intrigue, magic and dragons.
2. The epic battle at Uru'baen was skillfully done and kept me at the edge of my seat.
3. Loved both Murtagh's and Nasuada's storyline.
4. Paolini's writing has picked up immensely; there was never a dull moment in the book - everybody was always on the move.
5. I'm glad the focus was more on Eragon and Saphira in the book. It was getting too crowded.
6. Angela Mooneater.
The not-so-good stuff:
1. The editing was shoddy at first. It was painful going through the recap at the beginning.
2. The reveal of the final dragon was a bit of an anticlimax. And I SO saw the identity of last dragon rider coming.
3.
4. I skimmed through most of the chapters which focused on Roran. (I know I'm in the minority here but he just bores me. Somehow, I could never get invested in his character as much I was invested in Eragon's. Brisingr was totally ruined for me because of him.)
5. There wasn't enough about Angela in the book to my liking. Grrr.
6.
7. The ending. (HOW COULD YOU, PAOLINI????)
The good stuff:
1. An admirable end to the
2. The epic battle at Uru'baen was skillfully done and kept me at the edge of my seat.
3. Loved both Murtagh's and Nasuada's storyline.
4. Paolini's writing has picked up immensely; there was never a dull moment in the book - everybody was always on the move.
5. I'm glad the focus was more on Eragon and Saphira in the book. It was getting too crowded.
6. Angela Mooneater.
The not-so-good stuff:
1. The editing was shoddy at first. It was painful going through the recap at the beginning.
2. The reveal of the final dragon was a bit of an anticlimax. And I SO saw the identity of last dragon rider coming.
3.
4. I skimmed through most of the chapters which focused on Roran. (I know I'm in the minority here but he just bores me. Somehow, I could never get invested in his character as much I was invested in Eragon's. Brisingr was totally ruined for me because of him.)
5. There wasn't enough about Angela in the book to my liking. Grrr.
6.
7. The ending. (HOW COULD YOU, PAOLINI????)
June 16, 2025
Inheritance is the fourth and final book in the Eragon series, and I'm so sad to have to part with Saphira, Eragon, and many of the other characters I've grown to love within this series.
This book was another chunky volume and was a little dragged out in parts, but I still enjoyed the story. I've loved seeing Eragon and Roran grow and mature throughout these books and really felt the pressures and strains placed upon both characters within this book, especially. I raced through the end of the book with bated breath, hoping that all of my favourite characters would survive the battle with Galbatorix and his fearsome dragon. I did feel really sad during the battle at one particular loss.
This series has been on my list to read for so long, and I'm so glad I've finally read the series back to back and will cherish the series for a long time to come.
This book was another chunky volume and was a little dragged out in parts, but I still enjoyed the story. I've loved seeing Eragon and Roran grow and mature throughout these books and really felt the pressures and strains placed upon both characters within this book, especially. I raced through the end of the book with bated breath, hoping that all of my favourite characters would survive the battle with Galbatorix and his fearsome dragon. I did feel really sad during the battle at one particular loss.
This series has been on my list to read for so long, and I'm so glad I've finally read the series back to back and will cherish the series for a long time to come.
Read
July 2, 2015The romantic in me was dying at the end of this. Arya! Still it was a very satisfying conclusion to the series and I feel so awed by what Chris Paolini has been able to accomplish. The language alone for all the different cultures included in the book must have taken an incredible amount of work. My favorite parts of this book were the dragon eggs, the green dragon, the giant snail creatures, and Murtagh. I have a soft spot for him and hope he finds happiness.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
August 2, 2019Ποιος να το 'λεγε ότι θα έβαζα πεντάρι στον Έραγκον;
Δηλαδή τόσο αψεγάδιαστο ήταν;
Όχι φυσικά, αλλά απόλαυσα τόσο πολύ την ιστορία, επιτέλους θα μάθαινα πώς τελειώνει μετά από δέκα χρόνια σχεδόν αναμονής, και έτσι τις ατέλειες σχεδόν δεν τις πρόσεχα.
Ατέλειες όπως;
Αρκετές φορές υπήρχαν από μηχανής θεοί που βοηθούσαν ούτως ώστε να προχωρήσει η ιστορία, οι ήρωες, και πολλές φορές έρχονταν out of the blue που λένε και στο χωριό μου, χωρίς πολλές φορές να δίνεται κάποια εξήγηση γι' αυτό.
Η αρχή (βασικά οι πρώτες 260 σελίδες) ήταν κυρίως στρατηγική, συμβούλια, πολιορκίες και η ιστορία κυλούσε κάπως αργά.
Από ένα σημείο και μετά πήρε σιγά σιγά μπρος μέχρι το τέλος.
Και όπως με κάθε τέλος μια σειράς που διαρκεί αρκετό καιρό ένιωσα μια πίκρα αποχωρισμού όταν τέλειωσε το βιβλίο αλλά και ανακούφισης που πλέον δεν είναι πια αδιάβαστο στο ράφι σαν γεροντοκόρη.
Σίγουρα υπήρξε βελτίωση στη γραφή του Παολίνι, ειδικά από το πρώτο και δεύτερο βιβλίο αλλά δεν παύει να στολίζει τις προτάσεις με αμέτρητα επίθετα, επιρρήματα, μετοχές, αξιόγραφα, λες κι οι προτάσεις είναι χριστουγεννιάτικα δέντρα.
Ένα άλλο μικρό αρνητικούλι που είχε αυτή η τέταρτη και τελευταία ανάγνωση ήταν ότι τα προηγούμενα τρία βιβλία τα διάβασα στα ελληνικά και αυτό το τέταρτο στα αγγλικά, διότι ήταν δώρο. Δυσκολεύτηκα έτσι να συσχετίσω ποιος ήταν ποιος διότι ο τρόπος γραφής των ονομάτων, τοπωνυμίων, και των φράσεων διέφερε αρκετά από τα πιο 'straightforward' ελληνικά:
Γκλέιντερ = Glaedr
Ουρουμπέιν = Urû'baen
Κάρβαχολ = Carvahall
Και αρκετές αμετάφραστες φράσεις στην γλώσσα των ξωτικών των νάνων κλπ που με έκαναν να πηγαινοέρχομαι μπρος πίσω λες και διάβαζα το Κονφιτέορ από τις εκδόσεις Πόλις.
Αλλά όπως είπα η ιστορία με απορρόφησε τόσο πολύ που δεν πρόσεξα τα αρνητικά που υπήρχαν, σχεδόν καθόλου.
Διαβάστε τη συνέχεια στο βιβλιομπλόγκ μου ΒιβλιοΑλχημείες
Δηλαδή τόσο αψεγάδιαστο ήταν;
Όχι φυσικά, αλλά απόλαυσα τόσο πολύ την ιστορία, επιτέλους θα μάθαινα πώς τελειώνει μετά από δέκα χρόνια σχεδόν αναμονής, και έτσι τις ατέλειες σχεδόν δεν τις πρόσεχα.
Ατέλειες όπως;
Αρκετές φορές υπήρχαν από μηχανής θεοί που βοηθούσαν ούτως ώστε να προχωρήσει η ιστορία, οι ήρωες, και πολλές φορές έρχονταν out of the blue που λένε και στο χωριό μου, χωρίς πολλές φορές να δίνεται κάποια εξήγηση γι' αυτό.
Η αρχή (βασικά οι πρώτες 260 σελίδες) ήταν κυρίως στρατηγική, συμβούλια, πολιορκίες και η ιστορία κυλούσε κάπως αργά.
Από ένα σημείο και μετά πήρε σιγά σιγά μπρος μέχρι το τέλος.
Και όπως με κάθε τέλος μια σειράς που διαρκεί αρκετό καιρό ένιωσα μια πίκρα αποχωρισμού όταν τέλειωσε το βιβλίο αλλά και ανακούφισης που πλέον δεν είναι πια αδιάβαστο στο ράφι σαν γεροντοκόρη.
Σίγουρα υπήρξε βελτίωση στη γραφή του Παολίνι, ειδικά από το πρώτο και δεύτερο βιβλίο αλλά δεν παύει να στολίζει τις προτάσεις με αμέτρητα επίθετα, επιρρήματα, μετοχές, αξιόγραφα, λες κι οι προτάσεις είναι χριστουγεννιάτικα δέντρα.
Ένα άλλο μικρό αρνητικούλι που είχε αυτή η τέταρτη και τελευταία ανάγνωση ήταν ότι τα προηγούμενα τρία βιβλία τα διάβασα στα ελληνικά και αυτό το τέταρτο στα αγγλικά, διότι ήταν δώρο. Δυσκολεύτηκα έτσι να συσχετίσω ποιος ήταν ποιος διότι ο τρόπος γραφής των ονομάτων, τοπωνυμίων, και των φράσεων διέφερε αρκετά από τα πιο 'straightforward' ελληνικά:
Γκλέιντερ = Glaedr
Ουρουμπέιν = Urû'baen
Κάρβαχολ = Carvahall
Και αρκετές αμετάφραστες φράσεις στην γλώσσα των ξωτικών των νάνων κλπ που με έκαναν να πηγαινοέρχομαι μπρος πίσω λες και διάβαζα το Κονφιτέορ από τις εκδόσεις Πόλις.
Αλλά όπως είπα η ιστορία με απορρόφησε τόσο πολύ που δεν πρόσεξα τα αρνητικά που υπήρχαν, σχεδόν καθόλου.
Διαβάστε τη συνέχεια στο βιβλιομπλόγκ μου ΒιβλιοΑλχημείες
September 9, 2020
Man, I was so addicted when I read the first and second books of this series! I remember pre-ordering the third and being bitterly disappointed with it. But I still held hope that it would end on a high note with this book.
Tragically, not so.
I barely remember anything beyond the second book these days. I feel like there was so much fun and adventure and creativity in the first two books but then he just didn't know where to go from there.
This conclusion left an emptiness in my heart. From what I recall, it was a total cop out of an ending. Very little drama. I think it was originally supposed to be a trilogy and honestly I wish it had stayed that way.
Murtagh was always my fave so clearly he was not nearly impressive enough to save this series in my memory.
Tragically, not so.
I barely remember anything beyond the second book these days. I feel like there was so much fun and adventure and creativity in the first two books but then he just didn't know where to go from there.
This conclusion left an emptiness in my heart. From what I recall, it was a total cop out of an ending. Very little drama. I think it was originally supposed to be a trilogy and honestly I wish it had stayed that way.
Murtagh was always my fave so clearly he was not nearly impressive enough to save this series in my memory.
January 11, 2022
Il tetto perde acqua
L'abborracciata conclusione della saga è, né più né meno, una pietra tombale che polverizza definitivamente l'intelaiatura imbastita da Paolini nei primi tre libri.
Esaurite completamente le idee - molte delle quali attinte da opere di ben altro calibro -, la risoluzione finale dei conflitti in Alagaësia è un delirante guazzabuglio di cliché, alcuni dei quali ampiamente prevedibili già da un paio di volumi addietro (Vroengard, tanto per dirne uno).
Troppo banale per poter intrattenere; ingiustificatamente prolisso per il contenuto; incredibilmente viscido per la nonchalance nello sfoggiare topoi già adeguatamente sfruttati in saghe dal respiro più ampio.
L'abborracciata conclusione della saga è, né più né meno, una pietra tombale che polverizza definitivamente l'intelaiatura imbastita da Paolini nei primi tre libri.
Esaurite completamente le idee - molte delle quali attinte da opere di ben altro calibro -, la risoluzione finale dei conflitti in Alagaësia è un delirante guazzabuglio di cliché, alcuni dei quali ampiamente prevedibili già da un paio di volumi addietro (Vroengard, tanto per dirne uno).
Troppo banale per poter intrattenere; ingiustificatamente prolisso per il contenuto; incredibilmente viscido per la nonchalance nello sfoggiare topoi già adeguatamente sfruttati in saghe dal respiro più ampio.
didnt-finish
May 17, 2013What the hell is taking so long? Wasn't this gonna be part of the third book anyway?
All his die-hard 5th grade fans will have grown up and hate reading by the time this is released.
All his die-hard 5th grade fans will have grown up and hate reading by the time this is released.
September 8, 2015
Ένα τέλος αντάξιο της τετραλογίας. Δεν περίμενα τίποτα λιγότερο και τίποτα περίσσότερο. Καταπληκτική σειρά.
July 30, 2015
This book is an unholy mess of contradictions and swirling tide pools of unnecessary words.
So, there are one of two ways this review could go: 1) I think of every single criticism I can that bothered me while reading this book and I write them all down until the review balloons up to the size of a small baby elephant (which is a pretty big size for a review), also including the things I think it did right as well; or 2) I take the lazy way out (which may also be the more pleasant to read, depending on your preferences) and summarize a bunch of shit and just generally disappoint the part of myself that would like all of my Paolini-related feelings set down in writing for posterity, because I’m vain like that.
I’m pretty sure which way I’m leaning right now, and I can tell you right now it’s probably not the way that involves more work. In a different world, one in which I’m not perpetually ten reviews behind and don’t have a 9-5 office job that wastes all my prime review-writing time, I would do this book justice. This is not that world.
I actually bought a hardcover copy of Inheritance on its release date over four years ago. I optimistically believed I would read it within the next couple of weeks, minimum. Four years later, I finally picked it up out of shame and then spent two months forcing myself through it. This is mostly because the first half of the book is too long, badly written for the most part, over-indulgent uselessness. But it’s also because the second two books in this series used up nearly all my good will. I read the first book in this series back when it was first widely published thirteen years ago. I was a weensy freshman in college back then, and it hit all my buttons (later I would realize this is because the stories it copies are also stories that hit all my buttons). But even on re-reads, I still found the story charming, and I was impressed that a fifteen year old boy could write something like that. The second two books though, they were too long, boring, full of mostly unimportant things. In other words, exactly the kind of thing you’d expect a young author with a runaway bestseller on his hands and editors unwilling to give his writing the kind of bushwhacking it needed.
The first half of this book only confirmed my theory. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that you could LITERALLY rip out at least a quarter of the pages in this book and the story would not suffer. And what’s worse, a lot of the unnecessary scenes aren’t even that exciting. There are a couple of exceptions to this, of course, mainly the hundred or so pages where Both of these (exciting, pretty well-written sequences) lend almost nothing to the overall story. In a shorter story, these would have been great sequences, but in this bloated book, they were barely tolerable, particularly because they were stuck in between bouts of mind-numbing boringness.
Another problem that I’ve noticed with Paolini is that his instincts are all wrong. The things that he should cut short, he writes hundreds of pages about (for example, a scene where he heals a newborn baby with a cleft palate also has many, many useless pages in front of it where he talks in nauseating detail about the birth and the people waiting for the birth. Just don’t write that part! Skip to the interesting bits where the baby is already born and he has to heal it! It’s not that hard!). And the things that should actually be detailed, like important conversations between Arya and Eragon where they are forming real emotional bonds with one another for the first time, or the first speech Eragon gives the Varden, are summarized. Paolini just waves his hand, “THEN THIS THING HAPPENED THAT WAS TOTALLY INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT AND LIFE-CHANGING”, and then moves on to writing more boring, useless crap. It’s like he gets overwhelmed and doesn’t know how to convey something, so he just skips it altogether.
He also completely wastes prime storytelling opportunities, and deflates conflict and tension most of the time that he could use to make his story more compelling. For example, there’s this scene where Eragon and the Varden are taking a city (Dras Leona, I think?) and there is this absolute throwaway moment where Eragon has to use all the energy saved up inside his father Brom’s old ring. This ring is very important to Eragon, since Brom is dead, and it’s one of the few things he has of his father’s. It’s also important because the energy inside was mostly put there by Brom himself, over years and years and years (kinetic movement of his arms and such, stored magically for later use). The narration tells us just before Eragon uses it that he had been planning on saving that energy for a special time, and then he uses it, and the scene is over. What a complete waste. That ring could have been introduced hundreds of pages earlier, its emotional significance subtly built up, so that when we got to the part where Eragon had no choice but to use it before he wanted to, we as readers would have FELT why that was important instead of being like, “MEH, it’s gone now? Oh well?” It’s the difference between a writer telling you THIS IS IMPORTANT and you feeling its importance for yourself without having to be told.
Almost the whole book is like that.
To my surprise, though, as it neared the end, I found myself hooked again by the story. In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been surprising. The series was originally only supposed to be three books. Paolini should have stuck to the original plan. He could have cut books one and two in half and stuck them together, then chopped out the useless stuff in this and BAM: goodness. It turned the corner when, surprise surprise, stuff actually started to happen. Galbatorix was okay. He would have been more affective if he’d been introduced earlier in the series than the last half of the last act. The stuff with Eragon and the dragons was good as well, if a bit over-complicated. The final confrontation between all of them was as good as it could be, considering its build up. I was actually surprised and moved in parts, which is good.
And unlike a lot of people who made it to the end of this series, I am a fan of the ending. I like that everything wasn’t all Happily Ever After. This might be yet another case where Paolini is taking his cues from Tolkien, but it works anyway. The story isn’t over just because the bad guy was defeated. He allows time for his characters to re-situate, for things to be put back together and decisions made. And the ending is hopeful, yet bittersweet.
All in all, this has been an interesting reading experience. It was entertaining in parts, and education in others (i.e. “Don’t do this in your own writing”). My hope for Paolini in the future is that he writes something that is more original, that he doesn’t get bogged down in his worldbuilding, and that he learns to kill his darlings. He also needs some serious practice on the more technical aspect of the writing, so he can more affectively present his stories. He’s working on a sci-fi series right now, and I will probably* read it, because I’m a curious bastard.
*I will definitely read it.
Unless you’re a curious bastard like me, I’d stay away from this series. It doesn’t add anything interesting to the genre, and it’s too unwieldy to be a fun brain-candy read (the first book still qualifies). Unless some enterprising soul on the internet has created some kind of alternative reading order that cuts out all the superfluous bits, this series is more hassle than its worth.
[2.5 stars, rounded up for the good ending]
So, there are one of two ways this review could go: 1) I think of every single criticism I can that bothered me while reading this book and I write them all down until the review balloons up to the size of a small baby elephant (which is a pretty big size for a review), also including the things I think it did right as well; or 2) I take the lazy way out (which may also be the more pleasant to read, depending on your preferences) and summarize a bunch of shit and just generally disappoint the part of myself that would like all of my Paolini-related feelings set down in writing for posterity, because I’m vain like that.
I’m pretty sure which way I’m leaning right now, and I can tell you right now it’s probably not the way that involves more work. In a different world, one in which I’m not perpetually ten reviews behind and don’t have a 9-5 office job that wastes all my prime review-writing time, I would do this book justice. This is not that world.
I actually bought a hardcover copy of Inheritance on its release date over four years ago. I optimistically believed I would read it within the next couple of weeks, minimum. Four years later, I finally picked it up out of shame and then spent two months forcing myself through it. This is mostly because the first half of the book is too long, badly written for the most part, over-indulgent uselessness. But it’s also because the second two books in this series used up nearly all my good will. I read the first book in this series back when it was first widely published thirteen years ago. I was a weensy freshman in college back then, and it hit all my buttons (later I would realize this is because the stories it copies are also stories that hit all my buttons). But even on re-reads, I still found the story charming, and I was impressed that a fifteen year old boy could write something like that. The second two books though, they were too long, boring, full of mostly unimportant things. In other words, exactly the kind of thing you’d expect a young author with a runaway bestseller on his hands and editors unwilling to give his writing the kind of bushwhacking it needed.
The first half of this book only confirmed my theory. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that you could LITERALLY rip out at least a quarter of the pages in this book and the story would not suffer. And what’s worse, a lot of the unnecessary scenes aren’t even that exciting. There are a couple of exceptions to this, of course, mainly the hundred or so pages where Both of these (exciting, pretty well-written sequences) lend almost nothing to the overall story. In a shorter story, these would have been great sequences, but in this bloated book, they were barely tolerable, particularly because they were stuck in between bouts of mind-numbing boringness.
Another problem that I’ve noticed with Paolini is that his instincts are all wrong. The things that he should cut short, he writes hundreds of pages about (for example, a scene where he heals a newborn baby with a cleft palate also has many, many useless pages in front of it where he talks in nauseating detail about the birth and the people waiting for the birth. Just don’t write that part! Skip to the interesting bits where the baby is already born and he has to heal it! It’s not that hard!). And the things that should actually be detailed, like important conversations between Arya and Eragon where they are forming real emotional bonds with one another for the first time, or the first speech Eragon gives the Varden, are summarized. Paolini just waves his hand, “THEN THIS THING HAPPENED THAT WAS TOTALLY INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT AND LIFE-CHANGING”, and then moves on to writing more boring, useless crap. It’s like he gets overwhelmed and doesn’t know how to convey something, so he just skips it altogether.
He also completely wastes prime storytelling opportunities, and deflates conflict and tension most of the time that he could use to make his story more compelling. For example, there’s this scene where Eragon and the Varden are taking a city (Dras Leona, I think?) and there is this absolute throwaway moment where Eragon has to use all the energy saved up inside his father Brom’s old ring. This ring is very important to Eragon, since Brom is dead, and it’s one of the few things he has of his father’s. It’s also important because the energy inside was mostly put there by Brom himself, over years and years and years (kinetic movement of his arms and such, stored magically for later use). The narration tells us just before Eragon uses it that he had been planning on saving that energy for a special time, and then he uses it, and the scene is over. What a complete waste. That ring could have been introduced hundreds of pages earlier, its emotional significance subtly built up, so that when we got to the part where Eragon had no choice but to use it before he wanted to, we as readers would have FELT why that was important instead of being like, “MEH, it’s gone now? Oh well?” It’s the difference between a writer telling you THIS IS IMPORTANT and you feeling its importance for yourself without having to be told.
Almost the whole book is like that.
To my surprise, though, as it neared the end, I found myself hooked again by the story. In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been surprising. The series was originally only supposed to be three books. Paolini should have stuck to the original plan. He could have cut books one and two in half and stuck them together, then chopped out the useless stuff in this and BAM: goodness. It turned the corner when, surprise surprise, stuff actually started to happen. Galbatorix was okay. He would have been more affective if he’d been introduced earlier in the series than the last half of the last act. The stuff with Eragon and the dragons was good as well, if a bit over-complicated. The final confrontation between all of them was as good as it could be, considering its build up. I was actually surprised and moved in parts, which is good.
And unlike a lot of people who made it to the end of this series, I am a fan of the ending. I like that everything wasn’t all Happily Ever After. This might be yet another case where Paolini is taking his cues from Tolkien, but it works anyway. The story isn’t over just because the bad guy was defeated. He allows time for his characters to re-situate, for things to be put back together and decisions made. And the ending is hopeful, yet bittersweet.
All in all, this has been an interesting reading experience. It was entertaining in parts, and education in others (i.e. “Don’t do this in your own writing”). My hope for Paolini in the future is that he writes something that is more original, that he doesn’t get bogged down in his worldbuilding, and that he learns to kill his darlings. He also needs some serious practice on the more technical aspect of the writing, so he can more affectively present his stories. He’s working on a sci-fi series right now, and I will probably* read it, because I’m a curious bastard.
*I will definitely read it.
Unless you’re a curious bastard like me, I’d stay away from this series. It doesn’t add anything interesting to the genre, and it’s too unwieldy to be a fun brain-candy read (the first book still qualifies). Unless some enterprising soul on the internet has created some kind of alternative reading order that cuts out all the superfluous bits, this series is more hassle than its worth.
[2.5 stars, rounded up for the good ending]
December 30, 2020
Been waiting a long time for the completion of Eragon's story. Four books almost 3,000 pages. Inheritance did not let me down. It was a great conclusion to the series!
All your favorite characters Eragon, Roran, Arya the elf, Katrina, Elva (not an elf), Murtagh, Queen Nasuada, Blödhgarm, King Orick the dwarf (personal favorite), Angela the Herbalist and her werecat Solembaum. but that's not all, enter this world ultimate bad guy the evil king Galbatorix. who i was actually a bit disappointed with more on that later. Paolini gave me what I've was begging for in the middle two books. more action, less politics, and more dragons! Telling you how many more dragons would be a spoiler ;) Almost half the book is battles with the Virden finally starting to defeat and take the cities of the empire. I'll admit it Paolini is good at character development and has expanded a character in each entry of the series. A bit like Brandon Sanderson does in the Stromlight chronicles. In inheritance it's Queen Nasuada's turn and if you did not respect her before, you will now. She is taken prisoner and brought before Galbatorix. So after my unofficial count of 2500 page the menacingly evil king controlling everything finally makes an appearance. All i can do is shrug. yeah he's powerful, demented, and has the biggest dragon ever! but also inactive and talks a lot plus his dragon is crazy as well and hates him! he's a plotter who likes explaining his plans. The easiest type of Villain to defeat! in a word a blowhard! I will rate him as a 3 out of 10 on the bad guy scale. Eragon kind of defeats him pretty easily come to think of it. to easy! Anyway Nasuada is kidnaped and her character and that of Murtagh are both developed because of the interaction. two for one. There are a few more surprises and subplots but i won't go into them here. Can't take away all your fun! But as i said Galbatorix is defeated a bit easily for my liking and when i looked i still had 100 page or so left. i could only groan! Although i do enjoy dragon mating rituals (that's a tease) as much as the next reader. I could have gone without the unnecessarily lengthily rap up. Just seemed Paolini could not let go! He felt the need to rehash the whole Sloan subplot that tanked Brisingr. just leave it be!
All in all Paolini really impressed me with Inheritance. After almost ditching the series I'm glad i stuck with it. He tied up all the lose ends even some that i did not realize were lose!
All your favorite characters Eragon, Roran, Arya the elf, Katrina, Elva (not an elf), Murtagh, Queen Nasuada, Blödhgarm, King Orick the dwarf (personal favorite), Angela the Herbalist and her werecat Solembaum. but that's not all, enter this world ultimate bad guy the evil king Galbatorix. who i was actually a bit disappointed with more on that later. Paolini gave me what I've was begging for in the middle two books. more action, less politics, and more dragons! Telling you how many more dragons would be a spoiler ;) Almost half the book is battles with the Virden finally starting to defeat and take the cities of the empire. I'll admit it Paolini is good at character development and has expanded a character in each entry of the series. A bit like Brandon Sanderson does in the Stromlight chronicles. In inheritance it's Queen Nasuada's turn and if you did not respect her before, you will now. She is taken prisoner and brought before Galbatorix. So after my unofficial count of 2500 page the menacingly evil king controlling everything finally makes an appearance. All i can do is shrug. yeah he's powerful, demented, and has the biggest dragon ever! but also inactive and talks a lot plus his dragon is crazy as well and hates him! he's a plotter who likes explaining his plans. The easiest type of Villain to defeat! in a word a blowhard! I will rate him as a 3 out of 10 on the bad guy scale. Eragon kind of defeats him pretty easily come to think of it. to easy! Anyway Nasuada is kidnaped and her character and that of Murtagh are both developed because of the interaction. two for one. There are a few more surprises and subplots but i won't go into them here. Can't take away all your fun! But as i said Galbatorix is defeated a bit easily for my liking and when i looked i still had 100 page or so left. i could only groan! Although i do enjoy dragon mating rituals (that's a tease) as much as the next reader. I could have gone without the unnecessarily lengthily rap up. Just seemed Paolini could not let go! He felt the need to rehash the whole Sloan subplot that tanked Brisingr. just leave it be!
All in all Paolini really impressed me with Inheritance. After almost ditching the series I'm glad i stuck with it. He tied up all the lose ends even some that i did not realize were lose!
November 28, 2011
Final Review: I think out of all four books, I did like this one perhaps the most. It had less of Eragon moaning and complaining and more of him thinking for himself. I guess that shows he has matured? I will say that I really don't like reading about Roran. I think any plot line that contained Roran was wasted space. Sure, he is smart at war strategy, but we didn't need to read about it and it took up a large chunk in the last 3 books that really weren't necessary. And finally,
Overall a decent book, but I was disappointed by the ending. I think Paolini thought to copy Tolkien a little too much and did not have a strong point to back up his ending.
Initial Speculation: Okay, does it really say the title is Shur'tugal and that it will come out in 2011? I don't even remember if that is a word in the book and at this point I don't think I'm going to be rushing out to read it. It's been a huge wait for a story that I think is too long and full of unnecessary fillers. I am curious to see how Paolini will wrap this all up, though. I'm sad to say I will be glad to be done with it. Is that terrible of me or what?
UPDATE from speculation:
So I'm glad to see the title is Inheritance and it will come out this November! I guess the wait will soon be over.
Overall a decent book, but I was disappointed by the ending. I think Paolini thought to copy Tolkien a little too much and did not have a strong point to back up his ending.
Initial Speculation: Okay, does it really say the title is Shur'tugal and that it will come out in 2011? I don't even remember if that is a word in the book and at this point I don't think I'm going to be rushing out to read it. It's been a huge wait for a story that I think is too long and full of unnecessary fillers. I am curious to see how Paolini will wrap this all up, though. I'm sad to say I will be glad to be done with it. Is that terrible of me or what?
UPDATE from speculation:
So I'm glad to see the title is Inheritance and it will come out this November! I guess the wait will soon be over.
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