isabelle_grey97 's review for:

Inheritance by Christopher Paolini

3.0

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So I'm here. I'm about to end my four book review series on Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle.

The first book, Eragon, was a fairly standard fantasy, of which nothing really new for the genre was offered. Entertaining but nothing special. In the second book, Eldest, I rated the novel a bit lower than the first, even though it did offer a great deal of well done world building, I had issues with the characters. Brisingr, I found a little bloated, but I liked the inclusion of the politics in the Varden.

And now I'm here, the last novel, and I'm not entirely sure what to say about it.



On the one hand, I give Paolini some credit. This book does tie up the final plot lines of the series and concludes without leaving too many lose ends. We get more of the world building, which I deem the author's strongest attributes and some hinted at plot points (even if they weren't so subtle)

Spoiler

the dragons' heart of hearts

come to fruition. We also get more of his well thought out world building which adds some depth to the story and the actions sequences are still good at getting your heart racing as you read. And we also get to the moment we've all been waiting for, the final confrontation with King Galbatorix.

However, there aren't many high points in this novel. Again, like with the first book, it's rather straight forward in terms of plot progression. The twists are not that surprising, the battle sequences are still well-written but sometimes bloated and drag on too long because they're not all necessary to the main story-line.

And the ending, the final confrontation, it let me down. It was a great deal like Luke's final battle with the Emperor and Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. A lot of talk, not a great deal of action. That let me down. I had hoped, since Paolini had gotten older and had more experience since writing the first novel, that he would be able to make this standout more and make it more his own rather than rehash familiar plotlines from previous stories. Now, I know that the concept of anything original is impossible, as humans have told stories far too long for anything to be new, but I think a good storyteller can at least make the familiar seem fresh by combining different elements together. Here, for this series, I think Paolini failed at that.

The issues I had with the characters in previous book still remain as well, I'm not going to repeat them here.

So overall, my consensus is the series is actually fairly enjoyable, but just don't come into it expecting anything stellar or otherwise refreshing for the genre. You'll be really disappointing then. Just prevaricate the series for what it is, a standard high fantasy story with above standard world-building. Do that, and you'll be fine.