This book is an unholy mess of contradictions and swirling tide pools of unnecessary words.
So, there are one of two ways this review could go: 1) I think of every single criticism I can that bothered me while reading this book and I write them all down until the review balloons up to the size of a small baby elephant (which is a pretty big size for a review), also including the things I think it did right as well; or 2) I take the lazy way out (which may also be the more pleasant to read, depending on your preferences) and summarize a bunch of shit and just generally disappoint the part of myself that would like all of my Paolini-related feelings set down in writing for posterity, because I’m vain like that.
I’m pretty sure which way I’m leaning right now, and I can tell you right now it’s probably not the way that involves more work. In a different world, one in which I’m not perpetually ten reviews behind and don’t have a 9-5 office job that wastes all my prime review-writing time, I would do this book justice. This is not that world.
I actually bought a hardcover copy of Inheritance on its release date over four years ago. I optimistically believed I would read it within the next couple of weeks, minimum. Four years later, I finally picked it up out of shame and then spent two months forcing myself through it. This is mostly because the first half of the book is too long, badly written for the most part, over-indulgent uselessness. But it’s also because the second two books in this series used up nearly all my good will. I read the first book in this series back when it was first widely published thirteen years ago. I was a weensy freshman in college back then, and it hit all my buttons (later I would realize this is because the stories it copies are also stories that hit all my buttons). But even on re-reads, I still found the story charming, and I was impressed that a fifteen year old boy could write something like that. The second two books though, they were too long, boring, full of mostly unimportant things. In other words, exactly the kind of thing you’d expect a young author with a runaway bestseller on his hands and editors unwilling to give his writing the kind of bushwhacking it needed.
The first half of this book only confirmed my theory. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that you could LITERALLY rip out at least a quarter of the pages in this book and the story would not suffer. And what’s worse, a lot of the unnecessary scenes aren’t even that exciting. There are a couple of exceptions to this, of course, mainly the hundred or so pages where Eragon’s cousin Roran takes the city of Aroughs, and the parts where Eragon and his friends infiltrate Dras Leona and run into the Razac cult. Both of these (exciting, pretty well-written sequences) lend almost nothing to the overall story. In a shorter story, these would have been great sequences, but in this bloated book, they were barely tolerable, particularly because they were stuck in between bouts of mind-numbing boringness.
Another problem that I’ve noticed with Paolini is that his instincts are all wrong. The things that he should cut short, he writes hundreds of pages about (for example, a scene where he heals a newborn baby with a cleft palate also has many, many useless pages in front of it where he talks in nauseating detail about the birth and the people waiting for the birth. Just don’t write that part! Skip to the interesting bits where the baby is already born and he has to heal it! It’s not that hard!). And the things that should actually be detailed, like important conversations between Arya and Eragon where they are forming real emotional bonds with one another for the first time, or the first speech Eragon gives the Varden, are summarized. Paolini just waves his hand, “THEN THIS THING HAPPENED THAT WAS TOTALLY INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT AND LIFE-CHANGING”, and then moves on to writing more boring, useless crap. It’s like he gets overwhelmed and doesn’t know how to convey something, so he just skips it altogether.
He also completely wastes prime storytelling opportunities, and deflates conflict and tension most of the time that he could use to make his story more compelling. For example, there’s this scene where Eragon and the Varden are taking a city (Dras Leona, I think?) and there is this absolute throwaway moment where Eragon has to use all the energy saved up inside his father Brom’s old ring. This ring is very important to Eragon, since Brom is dead, and it’s one of the few things he has of his father’s. It’s also important because the energy inside was mostly put there by Brom himself, over years and years and years (kinetic movement of his arms and such, stored magically for later use). The narration tells us just before Eragon uses it that he had been planning on saving that energy for a special time, and then he uses it, and the scene is over. What a complete waste. That ring could have been introduced hundreds of pages earlier, its emotional significance subtly built up, so that when we got to the part where Eragon had no choice but to use it before he wanted to, we as readers would have FELT why that was important instead of being like, “MEH, it’s gone now? Oh well?” It’s the difference between a writer telling you THIS IS IMPORTANT and you feeling its importance for yourself without having to be told.
Almost the whole book is like that.
To my surprise, though, as it neared the end, I found myself hooked again by the story. In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been surprising. The series was originally only supposed to be three books. Paolini should have stuck to the original plan. He could have cut books one and two in half and stuck them together, then chopped out the useless stuff in this and BAM: goodness. It turned the corner when, surprise surprise, stuff actually started to happen. Nasuada was kidnapped by Galbatorix, Eragon heads to the ancestral home of the Dragon Riders, and the final battle begins. The writing was still problematic here, but it didn’t matter as much anymore because the story was actually interesting. The bits with Nasuada and Galbatorix and Murtagh were sort of riveting, particularly the twisted affection built up between Nasuada and Murtagh. Galbatorix was okay. He would have been more affective if he’d been introduced earlier in the series than the last half of the last act. The stuff with Eragon and the dragons was good as well, if a bit over-complicated. The final confrontation between all of them was as good as it could be, considering its build up. I was actually surprised and moved in parts, which is good.
And unlike a lot of people who made it to the end of this series, I am a fan of the ending. I like that everything wasn’t all Happily Ever After. This might be yet another case where Paolini is taking his cues from Tolkien, but it works anyway. The story isn’t over just because the bad guy was defeated. He allows time for his characters to re-situate, for things to be put back together and decisions made. And the ending is hopeful, yet bittersweet.
All in all, this has been an interesting reading experience. It was entertaining in parts, and education in others (i.e. “Don’t do this in your own writing”). My hope for Paolini in the future is that he writes something that is more original, that he doesn’t get bogged down in his worldbuilding, and that he learns to kill his darlings. He also needs some serious practice on the more technical aspect of the writing, so he can more affectively present his stories. He’s working on a sci-fi series right now, and I will probably* read it, because I’m a curious bastard.
*I will definitely read it.
Unless you’re a curious bastard like me, I’d stay away from this series. It doesn’t add anything interesting to the genre, and it’s too unwieldy to be a fun brain-candy read (the first book still qualifies). Unless some enterprising soul on the internet has created some kind of alternative reading order that cuts out all the superfluous bits, this series is more hassle than its worth.
[2.5 stars, rounded up for the good ending]
