Christopher Paolini brings his fantasy series for young adults to an end with Inheritance, the fourth and final book in The Inheritance Cycle.
Eragon, Saphira, the Varden and their various allies including elves, dwarves and urgals, make their way to Uru-baen, the capital of the evil Galbatorix’s empire, in a thrilling set of battles that bring a conclusion to the struggle between the characters of this world.

If you’ve been following my reviews as I made my way through this series, you’ll note that this is the highest rating (four stars) I’ve given any of the books. I could tell that Paolini brought all of the skills that he learned in writing the first three books to this one.
The characters are well-developed as he’s had thousands of pages to make them that way. The battles are nail-bitingly awesome.
The fallout after the main confrontation is long enough to tie up loose ends, but not so long that I was tired of reading about the world.
And it is a fun world to visit. Paolini took his cues from the classics of fantasy to craft his own world so that it feels familiar in a comforting way to fans of fantasy fiction.

But that familiarity cuts both ways. Paolini doesn’t move far from the expected tropes in the creation of his story. There were a few large reveals in Inheritance that I wanted to be more imaginative than the twists that Paolini crafted.
That being said, I did enjoy this book more than all the others. Once I started the final hundred pages, I couldn’t put the book down.
I think this series could be a lot of fun for young readers. Despite its predictability, there is much to enjoy in The Inheritance Cycle. Older readers or the young at heart might want something that veers a little more off of the expected paths.
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