Author: Christopher Paolini
Total Pages: 850
Total approximate words: 300,000
Last couple of weeks have been pretty interesting. I was going through the stacks of my many books (not trying to show off), and decided to start the row that I haven’t touched since they got a cosy space in my bookshelf. Through the course, I read THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir (OMG what a terrific read it was!), THE DA VINCI CODE by Dan Brown (wasn’t disappointed), ONE PART WOMAN by Perumal Murrugan, and INHERITANCE by Christopher Paolini. I kept putting these books on the side, because honestly they looked intimidating, majorly because of their sheer size, except the Tamil translated in English ONE PART WOMAN (because I was getting carried away by books written by more famous authors; kind of shallow of me, I now understand). Another thing that intimidated me was the font size. The smaller the font, and the thicker the book, my mind perceived it something of a ‘boring book’; the same stood true for too big fonts too (who would have thought that there were wierdos out there choosing their next read based on the size of its font right!). Once I got tired of chasing the high of reading books written by authors whose work I was more familiar with (Amish Tripathi’s books for instance; I love them by the way), I finally took a deep breath and decided to venture into the unknown. And then finally, after the writing wizards Andy Weir, and Dan Brown wiped my inhibitions of indulging in the unknown, I picked INHERITANCE. And oh, sweet mother of God what a ride and read it turned out to be! I didn’t just have had to finish a 300,000 words book, but it also needed to be finished before 2021 ended. That was 850 pages in twelve days. And that is exactly what happened.
INHERITANCE is the fourth and final part of the four series books by Christopher Paolini. I haven’t read the first three parts, however, Paolini gives a brief of the books in the first few pages (which was helpful actually). The story revolves around the protagonist Eragon, a dragon Rider in his quest to save the empire from Galbatorix, the evil king. He is joined by the elves, the dwarves, the last remaining dragons, humans, and other magical creatures in defeating Galbatorix. After a series of unsurmountable challenges, loss of many lives, the evil king is finally slayed by Eragon, of course with everyone else’s help.
The story is extremely elaborated, with details of the many fights and wars that happen throughout the book. An entirely different world is created with numerous different species, and hundreds of different characters in those species. Each character has been described justifiably, so have been every small incident in details. The plot is small, but the world created around the plot is humongous. Despite Eragon being the lead character of the story, the author beautifully and diligently puts the lime light on other (supporting) characters from time to time, which gives the reader the space to choose a favourite character (Roran, in my case), other than the protagonist. If you are into epic stories like LORD OF THE RINGS, then this book (in fact, the whole series) would be a no brainer for you.
Despite being such an elaborate novel, and my first time in reading such a book, I would surely read this epic book at least once again, if not more.
I would rate this fat gorgeous book a 9/10.
Disclaimer: This review is based on my personal reading and understanding of the book with my own limited experiences and knowledge. It doesn’t guarantee the same level of satisfaction/ dissatisfaction to other readers and the reviews could vary from individual to individual.
Nevertheless, happy reading!