Helpful Score: 2
Well, at least it's finally over. I was not a huge fan of the previous books, but once involved in a series I like to see it through to the end. You know...to see how it all wraps up, to gain that sense of closure, to follow an adventure through to its completion.
My spoiler-free assessment of Inheritance is this: YOU. MUST. BE. KIDDING. What a depressing, poorly executed, hope draining, soul sucking, ill-fitting ending. Loose ends are everywhere. There is no real sense of closure, no feeling of peace, no contentment for any of the major characters, no true resolution. The entire ending left me with this weird feeling for days after I finished it. I don't know how to explain it, other than to say that I felt cheated. This series was not stellar, but the good that Paolini did have going was completely destroyed by the ridiculous ending. He took a mediocre series and literally ruined it all in just a few pages.
I really don't know what he was trying to accomplish...to be profound, to be ambiguous, to communicate some deeper message about the price of sacrifice? I honestly have no idea. The ending was cruel and pointless, both to the characters and the readers. The book itself was overly long by a good 250 pages as well.
Kudos to you, Paolini, for doing what you did at such a young age. I certainly couldn't have done it. But I can still be mad at you for being a total punk to your characters in the end, for being inconsistent with yourself (Eragon was a staunch vegetarian - did you forget that when you made him a meat eater again?) and for trying to make your ending look like Lord of the Rings. You might have been going for a story of epic transcendence, but it ended up a tragedy, in every single sense of the word.
My spoiler-free assessment of Inheritance is this: YOU. MUST. BE. KIDDING. What a depressing, poorly executed, hope draining, soul sucking, ill-fitting ending. Loose ends are everywhere. There is no real sense of closure, no feeling of peace, no contentment for any of the major characters, no true resolution. The entire ending left me with this weird feeling for days after I finished it. I don't know how to explain it, other than to say that I felt cheated. This series was not stellar, but the good that Paolini did have going was completely destroyed by the ridiculous ending. He took a mediocre series and literally ruined it all in just a few pages.
I really don't know what he was trying to accomplish...to be profound, to be ambiguous, to communicate some deeper message about the price of sacrifice? I honestly have no idea. The ending was cruel and pointless, both to the characters and the readers. The book itself was overly long by a good 250 pages as well.
Kudos to you, Paolini, for doing what you did at such a young age. I certainly couldn't have done it. But I can still be mad at you for being a total punk to your characters in the end, for being inconsistent with yourself (Eragon was a staunch vegetarian - did you forget that when you made him a meat eater again?) and for trying to make your ending look like Lord of the Rings. You might have been going for a story of epic transcendence, but it ended up a tragedy, in every single sense of the word.
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