Eldest (The Inheritance Cycle) by Christopher Paolini
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Book Reviews of Eldest (The Inheritance Cycle)
Book Review: Eldest
Summary: 3 Stars
Eldest is the second book in the Eragon trilogy. As such, the first book should be read first as it cannot be read as a stand alone type novel. It borders on mediocre with several problems in the writing, but in all, was at least an easy enjoyable read. When last we left Eragon (Spoilers ahead!), he had discovered a dragon egg, became a dragon rider, and gallivanted through the land with Saphira (the dragon) trying to find his Uncle's killers and then joining up with the rebel Varden group who seeks to destroy the King (a really bad dude). The ending leaves off after the end of a huge battle in which Eragon slays a shade (mystical bad guy).
Now, he travels to the Elves' homeland to complete his training. Once there he is surprised to find another surviving dragon and rider. They are to be he and Saphira's teachers despite their maimed bodies and help them discover new uses of magic and flying techniques. They have to be ready in time for another battle for the Varden against King Galbatorix's army and a few new enemies they were unaware of. Meanwhile, Roran (Eragon's cousin) returns to their village to find who slayed his father and where Eragon has disappeared. But when he arrives, more of the evil King's troop comes for him and threatens the village when they won't give him up. They are forced to move over the mountains and seek refuge in Surda where they can help and be protected by the Varden.
The characters in this book are very unbelievable. Their motivations are not natural and actions are often very awkward to read. The dialogue between them is also horrendous. Mere farmers are made out to sound like high nobles in speech and accent which proves to be very unrealistic. They also use a lot of description in speech that goes far beyond the normal in everyday conversation.
The writing too is very descriptive. This tends to bog down the story at parts and bore the reader. For example, the training for Eragon and Saphira takes up quite a bit of the book and got very tedious at times to where I started wanting to skim (but stopped myself). Quite a bit could have been cut out and it wouldn't have hurt the book at all. Aside from that, it is an easy read and although there's violence; there's not too much to make in inappropriate for younger readers.
Overall its a fun story to read although not in the least original. I can see it appealing to younger reader's because it is a reader-friendly format compared to a great portion of regular fantasy novels. I'd like to see how the story ends, so I do plan on reading Brisingr.
Eldest
Copyright 2005
999 pages
Review by M. Reynard 2011
Book Review: Eldest Review
Summary: 3 Stars
Eldest (Inheritance)
Over all, I really liked The Inheritance trilogy and Eragon was a great book. The problem is that after Eragon, most of Eldest was a let down and I really hope that the series comes back together in the 3rd book, Brisngr, if not, I bet Paolini will get much worse reviews on Amazon.com.
A lot of the writing could have been cut off though, like most of Eragon's lessons, and many of the long, unnecessary descriptions of random events. The part I hated most about the book, which is also the part that should have been totally scrapped, is the part when Eragon gets magically healed by a dragon tattoo. From then on, other than most of the Roran chapters, the whole book started getting very bad, ESPECIALLY THE PART THAT MAKES THE WHOLE INHERITANCE TRILOGY SEEM LIKE IT IS A TOTAL TAKE-OFF OF STAR WARS!!! I mean, Murtag randomly shows up in the middle of a war, fights Eragon, beats him, and decides to spare his life to tell him the Evil kings most faithful helper is his father, pretty much like the all famous scene in Star Wars:
Darth Vader: "Luke, I am your father!"
Luke: *screams:* *then starts crying like a baby"
This Eldest scene resembled Star Wars WAY TOO MUCH!!!
Paolini should just scrap all of Eragon's chapters from before the blood-oath ceremony to the end, and rewrite them, and after that, edit the book again and take out all of the boring unnecessary parts of the book including the descriptions.
I'm done explaining the bad stuff, and for the good things which is mostly just the overall story, well, all I have to say is I loved the Inheritance series so far, but I think Eragon was a much better book.
I REALLY REALLY hope that Brisingr is much better then Eldest, and proves all the negative Paolini reviews (sort of like most of my review) to a review dump somewhere on the Amazon website.
Book Review: not too great
Summary: 3 Stars
I LOVED Eragon. But Eldest got boring. There was a lot of information that the author could have left out.
A lot of the information about the training was good for the author to have in the back of his head when he was writing. But he needs to realize that just because he finds it interesting doesn't mean his readers will. In short, a lot of the information in this part of the book was unnecessary for the reader to know.
When I was in the middle of reading Eldest, I watched the last three episodes of Star Wars for the first time. If I had watched them earlier, I might of recognized the connection when I read Eragon. But you can't help but notice it in Eldest. I will not go into this in any detail, because others have done that already. But I will say this: it ruined the story for me. I now know what will happen in the last book.
I will also say the whole love story thing was sickening. But that's mostly because I don't like love stories.
I used to think Paloni was an amazing author. Now I find him to be disappointing. His work is no better than what most of us could do. He could not even create his own story line! Also, have you ever noticed the similarity between the names Aragorn and Eragon?
I think that Paloini has a chance at becoming a good author, if he stops being a copy cat. Until then, however, he has done a good job of teaching me how not to write a story.
Book Review: My Review of Eldest
Summary: 3 Stars
I just finished up reading the second book in the Inheritance Cycle. I found Eldest to be a lot like Eragon in that it was a very long book that too a very long time to get exciting. I was so bored with the book that I put it down for about 3 months and picked it back up a few weeks ago to finish it.
I am glad that I took a chance on picking it back up. The book dragged terribly for the first 500 pages (I guess I'm a stubborn reader for sticking with it that long) but the last 150ish pages made up for how slow it was.
Paolini does a great job of character and scene development. In fact, he almost does too good of a job on it as it takes up a majority of the book. He also does an amazing job of creating a vivid scene. There is a war at the end of the book and the imagery is so good that you feel like you are standing there on the field with everyone else during the war.
I would have to say that overall I am satisfied with this book. I wasn't blown out of the water by any stretch of the imagination but I was not overly disappointed in the book either.
My rating: 3.5/5
Recommendation: If you are a die hard fantasy novel reader it is worth the read. If you are just looking to start your journey in the fantasy realm I would say that there are better options out there for you to dabble with.
Book Review: It was ok...
Summary: 3 Stars
I gave this book three stars because, I did enjoy the story at some points, but many times I felt like the story was going to slow. The characters in Eldest were very flat and one-dimensional. Also, Eragon the character was just unreasonably fake in this story for a number of reasons. He learned like a billion things that would take normal people years to learn such as learning languages, magic, etc...
What made this book worth reading was that the author actually split the story into two perspectives which were Eragon and his cousin Roran. It just made you look forward to reading the parts about the minor characters for some reason.
One thing that I noticed while I was reading the second book was that Eldest seemed to me almost identical to the story lines of Lord of the Rings, Pern, and Star Wars. This was a major put down and you could easily guess what was going to happen next in the story. You could easily relate every single character in Eldest to a character in LOTR, or Star Wars.