Eldest Book Review

by The Wanderer

Author: Christopher Paolini
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Genre: Epic Fantasy, Young Adult
Series: Inheritance Book Two
Pages: 668

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(Spoilers for Eragon below).

I didn’t care for Eragon when I read it, but I decided to give its sequel Eldest a run.

Why?

I thought maybe Eragon’s lack of originality was due to the author’s young age and that maybe he matured while he wrote the sequel.  I thought maybe the author would deviate from the Star Wars centric plot from Eragon.  I thought maybe I had been a little to hard on Eragon when I wrote my review.

All of these things inspired me to pick up Eldest, and give this series another shot.  I sorely regret that decision now.  Eldest in no way redeems the lack of originality found in Eragon, in fact it seems to take a step backwards.  The additional narrators don’t add much depth to the story, conflicts are quickly solved without the characters having to work their way through their problems, and the ending’s big revelation is a joke. Needless to say I don’t know if I will finish this cycle, but it will be awhile before I decide to pick up another one of these books.