Eldest

Why is this book so long?? The first one was already slow-paced at 500 pages, this one adds 200 additional pages of useless fluff, coating even the most action-packed scenes with a thick viscous layer of molasses.
The first 1/3 of the book can literally be summed up in a single sentence: "Eragon leaves the dwarves and travels to the elves, and meanwhile his brother/cousin returns home."
Overall the book is not quite boring, but quite tedious and dreary.

To make things worse, the writing style is humourless and overwrought. Even the most basic occurrence is described in such overly dramatic language to the point of cheesy melodrama, with no high fantasy cliché left unuttered. The characters are also unappealing and unsympathetic and show more mostly forgettable.

I wanted to stop reading a few times, only the allure of the Star Wars meets LotR mash-up kept me motivated to stick with it, but I think I would have been better off to DNF. show less

I first read this when I was around 16 or 17. I loved it back then. I was meh about book 3 and found book 4 dull as dishwater at best.

It’s no longer 2005. It’s a bad book. Or at least the first 34% of it is. Maybe it improves in the last 2/3rds of the story. It takes far too long to read so I’ve given up. I took a break to read a book by a different author during lunch, and realized after I stopped, "Books... can be good?" And that is the mindset I have going into this novel.

The writing is simultaneously better than “Eragon” because it is more consistent, while also being worse because the writing is still bad, but it’s just bad in a way that is stylistically consistent. And it buckles down on Paolini’s bad quirks, one of show more which was the weird way he tries to do pseudo-fantasy dialogue. Like… imagine the weird way Saphira talks in book 1, but that’s the entire novel. I also don’t know what it is about weather or landscapes that brings out the worst in Paolini’s writing, but boy does he know how to make neat things like storms, rivers, and bodies of water sound grotesque or utterly stupid.

The kind of prose you can expect in this novel: “Each was more fair and noble than any human Eragon had seen, albeit in a rarefied, exotic manner.”

The same problems “Eragon” has are still present: wordiness, weird metaphors and similes, wonky description, bizarre characterization, awkward and cringe-worthy dialogue… Eragon is still an arrogant asshole, he’s just also nihilistic. And then he’s forced to become vegetarian lol. Saphira is still an arrogant asshole deux ex machina who now also slut-shames women.

But this novel we get the second worst character in the story: Roran, whom I’ve hated since the book first released. (Remember, Roran is only SECOND-worst because Eragon exists; actually I can’t decide which of them is worse, that’s a difficult competition). He’s grumpy, boring, rude, arrogant, and stupid. His entire plotline drags and grinds the story to a halt. He’s not a compelling character and you’re left wondering for every section he has “why… is this a thing?” What does he add to the story? This isn’t “what if Boromir lived”. This is “I’m very bored with the central premise of my story so I’m going to take a break so we can focus on this angry miller who’s just… frustrated by being poor”, which could be fascinating! If written by any other author!

I mean he hates Eragon, so I guess we can agree on something. But he hates Eragon for kind of silly reasons.

I honestly feel bad for Katrina, who’s been brainwashed by her father and patriarchal society in general to feel like a heifer being sold to the highest bidder. She has no personality. She is simply Roran’s love interest and goal. In some stories, the characters just like… like each other. Particularly when everyone could die. In this book, we are very worried about all the material goods Katrina has or does not have.

Orik and the other dwarves went from being vaguely interesting to bouncy fantasy characters who are overly hyper and too wordy and way too respectful of a literal 16-year-old and baby dragon who are both way too arrogant and dumb for the respect they’re given. Literally, the entire story is “and why were these two not packed up and shipped off to Ellesmera? Seriously? They’re causing so much damage? What little political pull they might have is not outweighed by how dangerous they are???”

And Nasuada. One of the worst-written characters in the story. Where the bad writing truly shines at its ugliest. She’s not a reprehensible character. She’s just stupid and talks nonsense.

I also realized while reading this that a good chunk of Vrael’s backstory is just a ripoff of Valen’s backstory from “Babylon 5”. While on the PR tour for his recent SF novel, Paolini noted that Kosh and G’Kar were two of his favorite aliens, and listed BB5 as one of his influences. While that might mean he just watched it in the lead-up to writing that novel, I highly doubt that, given the blatant similarities between the two.

I simply cannot reread one of the dullest and worst written books I've read in a while. Not even Angela being excited to talk to Eragon about how awesome the word "flaccid" is can tempt me to finish. Goodbye and good riddance.

I wouldn't let the successively higher overall ratings on this quadrilogy fool you into thinking that Paolini improves as the series goes along. Ignore my criticisms if you want, and the apparently unchanged 2% of people who 1-stared books 3-4, but I think there's a different reason for why that rating goes up as you go along. “Eragon” has a 3.92, “Eldest” has a 3.99, “Brisingr” has a 4.05, and “Inheritance” has a 4.09. However, there’s an inverse correlation with how many people rated the books. 1.5 million people rated “Eragon”, 397,889 rated “Eldest”, 337,835 rated “Brisingr”, and 245,061 rated “Inheritance”. The percentage of low reviews drops by around 2% as you switch from “Eragon” to "Eldest" and the sequels (though it remains a steady 2% or roughly 6k for each sequel). And while you could theorize that a lot of people just rate the first novel in a series as their stand-in for the series, I hazard that a lot of people just don’t read the rest of the series, whether or not they liked it, and typically only people who like it already want to finish. Hence, why the ratings improve nearer the end of the series. By that point, most of those who are left are people who loved the series enough to stick around. That doesn’t mean Paolini improved - because he didn’t - that just means that the people who liked the story liked it enough to not care. To them, he didn’t need to improve. Or they didn't finish it, or didn't want to mar a series they otherwise liked with a low rating. If the same number of people who gave “Eragon” a 1 star rating did the same for “Inheritance”, that’d be a quarter of the book’s ratings. That’s how much fewer people read it by Goodreads’ numbers. That smaller number doesn't necessarily mean more people disliked books 2-4 than book 1, or fewer people read those entries in the series, but it does seem to indicate that far fewer people cared either way to rate those later entries.

Also interestingly: the sequel anthology has a 3.81 rating, which is lower even than “Eragon”, and only 17,661 ratings, despite releasing in 2018 for a series that is as popular as this purportedly is. While 1 star ratings are the lowest percentage on that book, 3 star ratings are the second highest, surpassing five star ratings. I don’t know what happened with the avid fans between 2011 and 2018, but it doesn’t look like it was enough to keep them invested. show less

I honestly kinda wish I'd given Eragon two stars, simply so I could give this book a lower rating, because it is SERIOUSLY worse than the first one. HOW!? If we're gonna excuse the bad writing in the first one with Paolini being young - what are we gonna excuse him with this time? Okay, Paolini was only 22 when this was released, which isn't that old tbh, but still ... the whole boy genious thing is way behind him.

This was book Empire Strikes Back and I honestly didn't see it coming. I knew the first one was Star Wars, I just didn't know it was gonna keep going. But no, most of this book Luke Eragon spends his time training with Yoda some wise elf dude but he has to cut his training short after seeing in a vision that his friends are in show more danger, so he goes off to rescue them and ends up in a fight with a superior foe who tells him that his father is actually Darth Vader Morzan and then it ends with him promising Leia Roran that they will go rescue his one true love Han Solo Katrina who has been kidnapped by the evil forces.

What should make the book better is that we have three main characters now, instead of just Eragon, but sadly it doesn't make it better because two out of three are honestly just bad people. Eragon and Roran kill people without mercy to get what they want and I might be wrong but I think the narrative is on their side, saying that they're justified in what they're doing. That's fucked up. Maybe it'll have a different pay-off later off, but I don't know.

Not gonna lie, at this point I'm mostly rooting for Galbatorix. Or I would, if his name wasn't so dumb. I guess who I'm actually rooting for is Murtagh, whose name is slightly less dumb. But he's a tortured bad boy with a dragon and presumably lots of angst, and who's not into that? I can change him, I know I can. Or I could join him and kill Eragon and Saphira, that might be even more satisfying.

And on top of everything else the elves are fucking furries. FURRIES. ELVES. I can't believe that fucking shit, why would you make me read that with my own two eyes, Paolini? Why? WhY???? Just because of that I'm gonna include this horrible pic of you in my review:



Put on that oufit, go sit in a corner AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE.

Am I gonna read the rest of the books? Yes. But I'm gonna need a break and read about Mount Everest for a bit. show less

Oh, dragons. My most recent reading of this book is so diminished by the vocal artist used in the audiobook version. His voice rendition of Saphira made me laugh the first time I heard it, but the more I hear it, the more I want to throw things. I hear all the endless questions asked by the main character - and they are worse in Eldest than any of the other books, I dare claim - and the only respite is when the perspective changes to his cousin, Roran, whom I find far less frustrating.

The addition of characters such as Nasuada and the use of Angela the Herbalist make this book more interesting than the first, but there is so much emphasis in information revealed through dialogue that I can't stand it.

Re-reading this book. it was far slower than I remembered, and I actually had to take a break half way through. All of the plot was necessary and there isn't really antyhing taht I would cut out but the first three quarters of the book are just a real slog. That last quarter thoguh picks up and makes you really excited for the next book again. Excited to continue my reread of this series considering everything i thought i remembered has already happened, but there's still two books left!

I decided to re-read The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini and I was pleased by how much I enjoyed it. I liked it more this time than I did the first time because I was able to skip some of the slower bits since I had read it before. I thoroughly enjoy the characters and I like how detailed a world Christopher Paolini has built but the story does definitely drag at points. I still loathe the way the series ends though.

Eldest is the second book in the Inheritance series. After ending Eragon in a way that, while it makes sense and you know it will be continued, seems a little anti-climactic, Eldest starts off a little slow, trying to pick up where Eragon left off and set things up for the rest of the book. The plot soon picks up, though. In this book, Eragon goes off to live with the elves and train to be a Dragon Rider. Meanwhile, soldiers as well as dangerous creatures called the Ra'zac have gone to Eragon's hometown, looking to capture his cousin Roran. Roran decides that he won't go willingly, and manages to inspire the town to stand behind him as they rebel. This side plot is used in an interesting way; although Eragon's training is interesting, show more it slows down the plot, and it is at those moments when more information about Roran's plight is inserted. Overall, it is another interesting book, with a 'plot twist' at the end (which most might see coming, but that's ok) that makes the reader interested in finding out what will happen to Eragon and his friends next. show less