28. Inheritance, by Christopher Paolini
If you're not familiar with the Inheritance cycle, it's about a poor farmer boy named Eragon living in the land of Alagaesia. He finds a huge blue stone in the mountain range near his village, The Spine, which turns out to be a dragon egg that hatches into his dragon, Saphira. From that point, he has to battle the evil forces of the land, namely the evil King Galbatorix, who has controlled the land ever since he overthrew the Dragon Riders, nearly causing the Dragons themselves to go extinct, over 100 years ago. So, in this last book of the cycle, Eragon and Saphira are travelling with the army of the Varden, which is marching toward the capital of Uru Baen in order to attempt to kill Galbatorix and restore the land to its previous state of freedom.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. I waited this long in the hope that I'd have time to reread the first three books first, but that was never going to happen, and there was a summary of them at the beginning, so it wasn't too bad. One thing that did surprise me was that the climax of the book came so early. I mean, it wasn't at the very beginning or anything, but there were over 100 pages left to the deneoument, leaving me a little confused at first. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised- Paolini tends to be exceedingly detailed. I mean, I was 200 pages in and there had only been a couple of battles and some training. But anyway, it was an interesting end to the series, and I was surprised by a lot of it. That may be due to my not having read the prequels very recently, but anyway, that's 28 down!
If you're not familiar with the Inheritance cycle, it's about a poor farmer boy named Eragon living in the land of Alagaesia. He finds a huge blue stone in the mountain range near his village, The Spine, which turns out to be a dragon egg that hatches into his dragon, Saphira. From that point, he has to battle the evil forces of the land, namely the evil King Galbatorix, who has controlled the land ever since he overthrew the Dragon Riders, nearly causing the Dragons themselves to go extinct, over 100 years ago. So, in this last book of the cycle, Eragon and Saphira are travelling with the army of the Varden, which is marching toward the capital of Uru Baen in order to attempt to kill Galbatorix and restore the land to its previous state of freedom.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. I waited this long in the hope that I'd have time to reread the first three books first, but that was never going to happen, and there was a summary of them at the beginning, so it wasn't too bad. One thing that did surprise me was that the climax of the book came so early. I mean, it wasn't at the very beginning or anything, but there were over 100 pages left to the deneoument, leaving me a little confused at first. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised- Paolini tends to be exceedingly detailed. I mean, I was 200 pages in and there had only been a couple of battles and some training. But anyway, it was an interesting end to the series, and I was surprised by a lot of it. That may be due to my not having read the prequels very recently, but anyway, that's 28 down!