Inheritance: The Inheritance Cycle, Book 4

Seriously! after reading the reviews of this last book I almost decided not to read it. It was just as good as the previous three.

However, I do believe I understand now why everyone seem to slam it with a disappointing review.

Here is why:
I am sure you all have read many books in the past, and when you finally finish the series you start to imagine what would happen afterwards. Well in this last book it has that information. The book actually ended (In my opinion) about 3 quarters (or more) of the way through the book. In this audio version... at what I would have called the end of the book there is an addition 4.5 hours left, all of it about what happens afterwards.

Simply put about one (or two) chapters after the war with Galbatorix is over that is what I would call "The End:". The rest of it should have been called something else. The intensity of everything that had just happened can not be matched with the piddly administrative stuff that happens afterwards. It was interesting, and I enjoyed reading it. However if the book would have ended where I think it should have, they my last impressions of the book would have been "OMG! Wowness! Group Hug!". But if you are like so many others who have left those comments that are less then amazing, it is because they are judging their whole experience on the way the feel at the end of the book. Which like I said tapers off to Not so Amazing. In fact it went from "Group Hug" to just "ug"... :(

But I didn't let that ruin it for me. Because like I said the bug ended for me with "OMG! Wowness! Group Hug!" the rest was just the administrative stuff that happened afterwards.

Advice read until you find what you feel was the end, then close the book and say "OMG! Wowness!" Gloat on it a bit then when you ready to read about the administrative stuff afterwards open it up again and finish it.

I hope this helps. Group Hug!

After waiting years for this conclusion to be published, it was a major disappointment. The only good thing to say about it was that the narrator did an outstanding job.

The story was horribly overblown. Paolini never missed a chance to use 100 words where 10 would have sufficed. But, the worst part was the incredibly disappointing ending. It is obvious that the author is young. He resorted to the prosaic comic book super hero ending where the super hero must sacrifice his own happiness for the good of all and give up any chance for love, family, friendship and a normal life.

As has been stated in other reviews, the ending also left a multitude of story threads dangling with no resolution. If this was merely a ploy to garner support for an outcry for a followup to resolve all these issues, he has lost me.

This was a weak and unnecessary ending to what could have been a powerful series.

Nice ending but Christopher still is learning. He is a great young writer and I hope to see many more novels and especially series from him. He may even consider a future version of this series but I wont hold my breath. I enjoyed the books but the movie sucked and ruined the story.
Great ideas and good follow through but I dot see a huge future. I see a one series wonder.

It makes me very sad to say so, but frankly this series just sputtered and died for me. I liked Paolini's 1st and 3rd books, and I thought the 2nd wasn't bad either. Book 4 was a huge.... huge... disappointment. And I was really looking forward to it! [FYI, this is coming from the girl who thought the scene where they pick Hrothgar for king was fascinating, lol!]

There are some high points. Like one... or maybe two. But lets put it this way: 8 hours of Eragon killing 5 thousand helpless soldiers with sorrow in his heart ...OR... Roran mooning about Katrina while slicing and dicing humans into convenient cubes. Then ohmygranniespanties the middle of the book happens (and it has trouble rivaling said item of riveting attire). Then 9 hours are spent tying up loose ends (un-imaginativly, incompletely, and unsatisfactorily). Then the end music plays... and I, at least, was left with the feeling you get on 4th of July when it rains. No fireworks this time around, folks!

I think this series had a lot of potential. Shame Paolini wrote a bit better at 14 than at 27.

Recommendations? Suzzane Collins' 'The Hunger Games', Rafael Sabatini's 'Captain Blood' or 'Scaramouche', Jonathan Stroud's 'Bartimaeus' Series. For more, see my reviews.

I can't believe that I am still listening to this series. I want it to end, but it just drones on and on and on..... Eragon, our

N

His voice range makes the book bearable.

Every other word. Detail is great, but this book makes me think that the author just needed a certain word count without regard to a good story.

It was a good book and enjoyable to listen to. Gerard Doyle gave his usual good performance though the book failed to tie up all of the loop holes and promises that had been set out in previous books. Overall a fair job at tying up the series.

The story went on and on in many places about nothing. Frankly, the author got too successful for his own good. An editor should've cut out a half of this book - at least, but since it's the eragon series, the editor probably was allowed to do little more than say whatever you think Chris. It's sad. There are elements that are entertaining, but only about one of every five minutes actually advanced the story.

He kept all the characters straight and remained true to their voices through out. The problem with this book is not the narrator.

It was the last book in the series... So if you've invested the time to red the first three, you pretty much have no choice but to finish the series. I wish I had better news about the quality of the experience though.

Very disappointed with the ending to this "cycle." It seemed as though the values of the people (Rider and Elves) changed for this book to have tragic ending.

I know it's popular to have unpredictabilty in a story, but it almost seemed as though it was forced that way and the decisions made would not be logical to the person that made them.

SPOILER ALERT!!! Really? Would Aria really have made he decision she did after the history of the Riders? The dragon she aquired needs formal training and so does Aria. Here's your dragon Aria, you can be the acception to rule that you need Rider training because you ae now the ruler of your people.

Aria finally cares for Eragon, but she will give that up as well to be the ruler of her people with an untrained dragon at her side.

I was really hoping that Glaida got Sephira pregnant during their last training session, which would have been logical being that they didn't remember about the remaining eggs. Okay, your race is about dead and you have the chance to increase the gene pool before you risk your life in battle, but you don't do it...why?

Anyway, no point to go on. Didn't make sense. I'm over it!

Well, the big battle scene with Roran was pretty good and the struggle against Galbatorix was okay. I was actually pretty excited for some good closure with this series given the fact that the book finds climax about 3/4 of the way through. Unfortunately, the story completely fell apart after that. What was Paolini thinking? Was it his goal for everybody to hate the ending? The last few hours of the audio book left me bewildered, angry, and yawning. Nothing happened in over 3 hours of audio. There is little chance I'll ever read a Christopher Paolini book again. If you read or listened to book 1 and book 2 you might as well finish but do not set your hopes very high or you will be also be disappointed.

The flow of this series has been very good until this book. I'm not sure what happened but it feels like the author lost inspiration. He tried to tie up story lines in a way that wasn't consistent with the world he had created. Other story lines he just left hanging. In my opinion an unfortunate ending to an otherwise enjoyable series.