Reviews - Eldest | The StoryGraph

4.07k reviews for:

Eldest

Christopher Paolini

3.85 AVERAGE

accurry's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous dark emotional inspiring sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book can be a bit of a chore to get through, sometimes. There’s very interesting and important things that happen here and there but, overall, it doesn’t feel like it advances the plot in most places. It feels like a lot of setup for advancing the plot. Don’t get me wrong, several things that happen needed to happen, but it was… well, most of the book is Eragon’s training arc, so it’s a several hundred page training montage with some drama and cool stuff interspersed.

I much preferred reading Roran’s POV chapters over Eragon’s. Eragon obviously grew quite a bit in a lot of ways but is still immature about a lot of things. Roran, on the other hand, becomes a real and dependable man. And he doesn’t have any powers. He’s just a badass on the merit of his own grit.

The end of the book was where it was really good and it set up a lot of exciting stuff for the next one

Content Warnings

nromano's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

beetroot_thommus's review against another edition

4.0

I keep thinking I'm going to get sick of the writing and give up on the story but Paolini always manages to hook me back in.

Story: I liked the second story with Roran. It was different to the standard "regular boy suddenly finds out he's the chosen one and must go on a quest" plot and gave me a break from Eragon (god he gets annoying sometimes). Plot definitely could've moved forward way faster, dude spends way too much time on describing boring fantasy shit like fancy helmets or buildings. Just get to the interesting shit and stop telling me about how intricately crafted everything is

Writing: man uses adjectives too much. There was a particular chapter towards the end where I swear he added an adjective to every second thing. I really hope the writing improves in the next book, which I'm fairly sure I will read (if I can find it second hand somewhere)

Was also really hoping for a tragic moment where Eragon kills Roran by accident but instead he went with the Murtagh reveal which felt pretty cliche