The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini

The books in the Inheritance Cycle series are Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance.

Plot: A teenage boy named Eragon struggles to stay alive in a dangerous world with his young dragon Saphira. As the only surviving dragon Rider, this inexperienced boy faces deadly challenges and terrible enemies. Together with his beloved Saphira, Eragon meets dwarves, elves, and the Varden, an army dedicated to overthrowing the tyrant King Galbatorix. Fighting against all the odds, Eragon and Saphira continue down a treacherous road ultimately leading toward the impossibly powerful king.

Comments: The story weaved through the pages of these four fat books is incredibly complex and captivating. Each character breathes with such convincing life that you may lose yourself in their world, caught in the elaborate web of stories. There is fast-paced, heart-pounding action as well as poignant moments of love and loss. Many realities are entwined with the fictional events, and lessons are taught surreptitiously.

However, the complexity of these books works against the overall enjoyment as well. The sheer enormity of subplots and characters and places overwhelms the reader. The words in the ancient language, used in magic, are nigh impossible to pronounce and therefore must be skipped over when reading. Similarly, the names of places and characters contain too many apostrophes and other symbols to be easily understood. This is very annoying. On several occasions seemingly random events occurred which left me confused and wondering at the significance. These books were complicated to an extreme. I found myself ignoring most descriptions of battles and inventions simply because I could not follow what the author meant.

I loved the story in these books. That Eragon was not perfect helped me appreciate the story even more, though I still felt he was becoming a god far above anyone else. After a while, I learned to enjoy the story and ignore the complicated details that only slowed down my reading and comprehension. Furthermore, the plot was fairly predictable in its largest elements and I did not feel emotionally attached to any of the characters. Finally, Paolini ended the series with about one hundred pages of wrapping up loose ends, an anticlimatic finish to a dramatic book. I was rather disappointed with the ending; it left me unsatisfied.

Overall, the Inheritance Cycle was a fair series of books, but perhaps too long and not enjoyable enough to be worth reading in its entirety.

Rating: I rate the Inheritance Cycle a six out of ten.