But there is a glitch in about the last minutes, they repeat the segment after the dwarfs meet them, hope this can be fixed, it mucks up the flow of the ending. The story is incredibly captivating, moving, exciting and exilerating.
The plot is incredibly well thought out and planned so that every part of the story starting from Eragon Book 1 Inheritance cycle up to the last one makes perfect sense and keeps on flowing into each other. I cannot compare the Inheritance work to any other fantasy work, because it is so much better than anything else that I have read.
Christopher Paolini has re-defined the magic fantasy category, and lifte the bar WAY high. I first read Inheritance years ago when it was first released. Listening back to it now brings back such a deep nostalgia that I know will resonate within me forever. I have no doubt that these books will stay with me for as long as I live and have shaped me to be the person I am today and continue to shape me and my choices. This reading was entertaining and added characteristics to the books where I might have overlooked.
Furthermore it was so gripping that I often found it hard to stop listening. Overall, it was a great listen and one I don't doubt that I shall come back to.
This was the best book ever and I loved how it was so long it almost didn't end!!!! Paolini has brought us a magical world, and Doyle has brought it to life. He has a good speaking voice and gives each of the characters individuality and strength however small their part. Brilliantly performed and narrated. The characters live even as some of them perish. I was engrossed throughout all of the books. The author has dragged the story out excruciatingly, and audible has exploited the fact that this is a long- awaited conclusion by charging 2 credits for it instead of the 1 it deserves, are we to start paying credits for half a book?
The audio quality is good, pleased to have 'Saphira's' voice back to the lovely growly sound it was in book one. I was enjoying the story keeping me awake whilst driving on a long journey - when the story just cut off mid book, with message saying thank you and hoped I enjoyed audible So Just a warning It would have 5 stars if it wasn't for this issue.
To start, the book is written well and the narration is good…but if you read this series you will be disappointed at the end. I got this book to get closure to the other three books I read. But the closure I got, makes you feel hollow, unsatisfied, frustrated and just annoyed! After four books, where the boy and girl are as close and two people can be, the boy does not get the girl and it makes no sense. I can only conclude that Elves do not care for relationships, the way humans do.
Still, so damm annoying the big baddie gets killed the land is safe and nobody hooks up to live happily after. They all just go to sleep alone with their pet dragons!
Lame lame lame. Also the book is too long for the story told and the audacity of splitting the book in two for the sake of getting more money just makes this series reek of corporate filthy greed. Second time ive gone through this book, it still remains awesome. Cannot wait for future books from this world. I just wish there was more to this. Please write another book.
I need to know what happens to everyone. I have thoroughly enjoyed all four parts of this story. Doyle has done a terrific job in voicing all the characters. I have seen the movie and that has helped my visualisation of certain parts of the story. I have read all the books. The only issue I had was how Mr. Doyle voiced Sapphira.
I guess being a female dragon I would have liked her to be voiced in a higher register, still gravelly, as all dragon voices were portrayed that way. I am also a little saddened by the firm stance Mr. Paolini has taken in not writing story 5 in this series. Maybe he might change his mind in a decade or so. This series is awesome, do yourself a favour and listen to all of them.
The narration is awesome once you get used to the dragon voice. I really enjoyed this series, the story is very interesting and real in the sense that while it's fantasy it's not fairy tale ending. The characters are very strong in their own right and different to each other. Did we really need this?
The ugly? 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.
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.
It needs to be cut. 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. Brisingr suffered from some of the same problems of irrelevance that Inheritance did. If everything I mentioned above was dropped from Inheritance, and the 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. 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 It's a crap transitional element that no one should ever use in any medium EVER.
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. That's just lazy, pointless, and annoying storytelling in the guise of trying to be clever. 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.
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. 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. I didn't completely hate it, but I wouldn't say I liked it either. Check out my other reviews.
May 31, Lauren Elena rated it it was amazing Shelves: fantasy , favorites , magic , dragons. 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 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.
And I'm not talking about his army. I want him to actually talk or do something. Everyone talks about his great evil, but I want to see him preform some. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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?
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? 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? I just realized something; I need to get a life. But where's the fun in that? Maybe it will be Arya? This hadn't occured to me. Some crazy obssesed book nerd I turned out to be. 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. After Reading: Wow. I very much doubt I could write a review that would do Inheritance justice. 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. 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. 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. How fickle I am. Read Inheritance. It will knock your socks off!
View all 37 comments. Nov 10, Mara rated it did not like it Shelves: fantasy. 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 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 y 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 page monstrosity.
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? 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. 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. 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 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!
Enter, Mr. 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 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 , 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. 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. 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. 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. 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! 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.
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. 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 th 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! View all 67 comments. Apr 26, Charlotte May rated it it was amazing Shelves: favourites , ya , epic-fantasy , page-plus.
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 I must admit this has been a tough series for me. 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. View all 23 comments. Nov 10, Swankivy rated it did not like it. 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. 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.
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. 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. A little of this is okay. 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. 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. 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? He's growling. And far from pleased. Because Arya is beating him at sword-fighting. 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? There's this thing called "As you know, Bob. 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. 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. Monty Python : Seriously, the insults still sound like the French Taunter. Predictable nonsense: The red herrings were painful.
It's glossed over, then denied outright, and then finally it of course turns out to be exactly what it seemed. It was also obvious, as soon as we found out that oaths can be broken if a true name changes, that Murtagh was going to escape Galbatorix's control by doing so. Even better: he did so through the power of looooove, like a Sailor Moon episode.
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 view spoiler [killing Galbatorix hide spoiler ]. 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 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.
He then proceeds to relent and let Eragon have a fair fight albeit with Murtagh. This "distraction" leads to a revelation that allows Eragon to mess with Galbatorix's head and he ends up destroying himself.
They leave out the werecats, even though werecats showed up as one of the forces to be reckoned with as a race in this book. Eragon can control reality at the end of the book because he knows the name of the ancient language.
He then proceeds to act as though he is powerless to change some things about his life and others' lives that really suck: Some aspects of Elva's situation he can't leave her with power but still take her pain? Oh please.
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. Characters are also tortured, one at length. Many of the main characters, including the hero, are able to kill hordes of enemies single-handedly, a fact they seldom seem to worry about or regret. There's also a bit of romantic tension and one scene in which two characters get quite drunk. Add your rating See all 9 parent reviews.
Add your rating See all 24 kid reviews. On the warpath with the Varden, determined to finally overthrow the evil King Galbatorix, Eragon and his bonded dragon, Saphira, find that they still have challenges to overcome before they'll get their chance to confront the powerful monarch. The most important may be solving the cryptic words of the werecat Solembum, which send the pair on a side quest to the Dragon Riders' ancestral and long-destroyed home after a strike at the heart of the Varden's leadership puts the whole army in jeopardy.
It will take all of Eragon's skills -- plus help from his many allies, including his cousin Roran, the elf maiden Arya, and the wise dragon Glaedr -- to succeed against Galbatorix and his chief henchman, Eragon's half-brother Murtagh. But that adventure is stretched out over more than pages, too many of which are spent inside Eragon's head as he mulls over some decision or another, practices his swordplay, or moons over Arya.
And at this point, Paolini has made Eragon so nearly perfect -- he's a killing machine, he's a powerful magician, he makes the right decisions in a crisis, and he doesn't even really need to sleep -- that he's a little bit boring; it's hard to be worried that he won't prevail in the end.
The more humanly flawed Roran and Murtagh are often more compelling. Inheritance has some very exciting set pieces, and it brings Paolini's Lord of the Rings -and- Star Wars -influenced saga to a mostly satisfying conclusion, but it also leaves some key questions and plot points unresolved -- which is frustrating after bearing with the story through four doorstopper-sized tomes.
But the book also leaves the door open for more adventures in Alagaesia, so perhaps we haven't quite seen the last of Eragon and Saphira after all Families can talk about how the book depicts duty and loyalty. Are they important motivators? Should they be the most important motivators? Is loyalty always freely given? Do you consider Eragon a role model? Are things too easy for him at this point in the story? Does he still have room to grow as a character?
How do you feel when a long fantasy series like this one comes to an end? Do you wish it would keep going? Is that always in readers' best interest? Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
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Inheritance: The Inheritance Cycle, Book 4. Parents recommend Popular with kids. Epic tale concludes in battle- and blood-filled saga. Christopher Paolini Fantasy Rate book.
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