Blog Post Book 3

                When someone mentions science fiction, most people think of something along the lines of Star Wars, Star Trek, or Lord of the Rings. Not like Inheritance or any of its three sister books would be among those great giants, but in my opinion, it would be up there. The thing with the Inheritance Cycle is that it bears a striking resemblance to that of a combination of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. What, with the elves, dwarves, and dragons from LOTR and the ancient order destroyed from Star Wars along with the ability to use a special force(magic is used and pun intended) to do almost anything at will. The list continues.

                The author, Christopher Paolini has the right approach. He took the most decorated stories ever and combined them to make a hybrid. Though it is not as easy as you might think, he had to make a perfect combination of them, he had to choose which detail of which story might fit the best. Paolini decided that he wanted to have dwarves and elves instead of wookies and ewok’s. He decided to have an old order instead of a grouping of wizards. He decided to have an evil king instead of an empire that was very powerful with no really specific leader.

                The characters in Inheritance are for the most part, fully formed. When Eragon (the character the story is centered around) said to Angela, “Mooneater? What a strange name. How did you come by it?” he is expressing confusion about some of Angela’s past, which in the series as a whole, is a complete mystery. Angela is among a few characters who are flat, and have no background whatsoever. There is one example, however, of a character going through a massive change. As thought by Nasuada, the leader of the varden, “In the short while since the Varden and the Surdans had launched their attack against the Empire, Nasuada had watched Orrin grow ever more serious, his original enthusiasm and eccentricities vanishing beneath a grim exterior.”

                The writing style is only partially identifiable when Paolini has parts where the character that is in first person in that chapter has a thought and that thought is in italics. An example of this would be on page 285 when Eragon and the elf, Arya, are captured and gagged. He thinks, “Why hasn’t she escaped already? He wondered. Then: What happened? His thoughts felt thick and slow, as if he were drunk with exhaustion.” This perfectly models Paolini’s style of writing when his characters think in 3^rd person. There is not any other identifying factors that might separate his writing from another author. This means that if you read a piece of his work that had no title, you would not immediately tell just by the style that you are reading one of Paolini’s works.

                The theme of big and long stories is not usually apparent. This series spans over 2000 pages and is so big that there could be an infinite amount of stories that could branch out of it. That means that if you ask for the theme of this book, I would ask, “What part of the story are you talking about?”. The variety in themes in this book really makes it a good work for young adults who might need to learn a lesson or two.

                All in all I would give this book a DO on the DOINK rating system. (DO means do read, OINK means it was not that good, DOINK means it was absolutely terrible and I almost ripped it in half except I’m not strong enough to rip a book that thick in half) On a serious note, this book was a legit good read.