Wonderfully fulfilling second entry in this series.

More information and some cool plot turns (which you could foresee from hints in the first book).

From my review of "Eragon" I will say it again ... I don't know HOW the movie company is going to convert the second book into movie form since they strayed so far from the first book's plot points. I am eagerly awaiting the second movie.

I devoured the third book ("Brisingr") in what seemed like seconds.

I have asked for notification from Amazon when the fourth (yes, fourth) book will be released - and I am very pleased CP had the thoughtfulness to expand the series rather than leave any good information out.

To the naysayers I say this:
Enjoy it for what it is - otherwise keep the negative reviews to yourself. BTW, MOST stories happen to parallel "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back". I'm a huge Star Wars fan (I saw it in the movie theater when it was FIRST released) and when I was reading Eldest I did NOT feel like it imitated that story line. It has its own persona.

It's exciting, curious, breath-holding fun.

CP - your second installment is a joy to read. I can't wait much longer for the fourth. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

My whole family like to listen to books on CD while in the car. This was a great book.

"Eldest," second in the "Inheritance Cycle," is nothing more than a glorified clone of the excellent author J.R.R. Tolkien, who actually wrote well for a change. Christopher Paolini is NOT a good author and he writes demonic books that seem okay on the outside but are dark with evil on the inside. Satan uses books like these to corrupt people, and especially children, and we should be wise enough to stay away from evil fare such as this. Beware--this book will bring harm to whoever reads it! Maybe not in ways you can tell, but certainly in eternal ways!

Pretty good buy,in condition as described,3 days after first day of estimated arrival date is when it arrived

If you like fantasy fiction, this is a great series, and Eldest is even better than Eragon. The story really pics up in this one. Of the three books so far, I liked this one the best.

I am absolutely surprised that the first three reviews seen are negative! I love the story that Paolini wrote. He may not be Tolkien or JK Rowling but he's still very young and quite talented.

Listen, I'm not trying to have a life-affirming epiphany here, I just want a good story and Paolini delivers. He may struggle with the language when trying to be prosaic, using obscure words when simple ones would do. However, it's a small thing and the story more than makes up for it. His writing is good enough to make me willingly suspend my disbelief and get lost in the story.

Paolini is a prodigy, no doubt, but he isn't a very gifted writer. Much of what he wrote in the first book was synthesized from other fantasy stories and from those elements he crafted a fairly interesting, albeit longwinded, tale. It's my opinion that his editors (if he has any) should've cut out at least one-third of Eragon.

With that said, reading Eldest was like slogging through mud. It was so incredibly convoluted and just plain dull that I gave up midway and have no desire to go back and find out what I missed. I couldn't care less.

I think his problem is that he and his parents are so impressed with whatever he writes that they don't suggest massive editing. If they do, then it doesn't show. Eragon was ok, Eldest was boring, and I'll skip Brisingr altogether.

This is a great book. I listen to it on my CD player on the way to work and on the way home. The descriptions are awesome...you can just imagine what the characters and locations look like. I would definitely recommend this book. I can't wait to read Brisinger!

I reallly, really, really wanted this book. However, all the Inheritance books in my town are always checked out, and so it was almost a month before I finally got Eldest.

This book was even better then I had hoped. Ajihad, Murtagh, and the Twin's 'deaths', Nasuada's appointing, Eragon's training, Glaedr, the grumpy golden dragon that Saphira humorously pursues, Oromis, the athiest elven teacher, Eragon's unhappy romance with the beautiful and haunted Arya, the revealing of another Dragon Rider, the hatching of one of the two remaining eggs, the concluding battle, and a starling revelation.

A thrilling adventure, well written, with honest mistakes and the acceptance of things out of your control. And the courage to fight, even when your cause seems hopeless.

Thumbs up Christopher Paolini!

Signed,
A average American teenager.

Left me wanting more, which fortunately I was able to get with Brisingr (which also left me wanting more).

Simply put, this is the most embarrasingly bad book that I have read in years. Eragon was a fun story, if a mediocre book. Eldest is completely devoid of story, and seems as if it were written by a seventh grader. I literally hate myself for plowing through 668 pages of this.

I've never been interested in watching Star Wars. I've never read Lord of the Rings. So I have no idea if this series is related to that or not. All I know is that I enjoyed the first two books very much, and when the third came out, I ordered it as soon as I had the money for it. Putting aside the biases of other reviewers and looking at this book as a blank slate without comparing it to other books or movies, I thought this was an excellent book.

Whit a history, from a time that`s are long gone. Where dragons almost are history, a world in war. Where we find a boy, who is more then a orphan child.

This book is a great fantasy book. I am sure that the writer, is going to have a bright future like a Fantasy arthur.

After all the buzz, I finally decided to give this series a try. It is shallow, linear, simplistic and boring. Don't buy this book if you are looking for something along the lines of Tolkien, LeGuin, or even Rowling. You will be sadly disappointed.

I gave this book three stars because, I did enjoy the story at some points, but many times I felt like the story was going to slow. The characters in Eldest were very flat and one-dimensional. Also, Eragon the character was just unreasonably fake in this story for a number of reasons. He learned like a billion things that would take normal people years to learn such as learning languages, magic, etc...
What made this book worth reading was that the author actually split the story into two perspectives which were Eragon and his cousin Roran. It just made you look forward to reading the parts about the minor characters for some reason.
One thing that I noticed while I was reading the second book was that Eldest seemed to me almost identical to the story lines of Lord of the Rings, Pern, and Star Wars. This was a major put down and you could easily guess what was going to happen next in the story. You could easily relate every single character in Eldest to a character in LOTR, or Star Wars.

When reading the other reviews on this site for this book, I was overwhelmed by the negative response.

It's not that bad.

That being said, there are many ways Paolini could have made this better. It just dragged on for way too long at parts. And worst of all, the ending was clearly forseeable.

Eldest provest to be a less linear, slightly more abstract sequel to Eragon, a very good debut for such a young rider.
Now, on to Brisingr,

Like the first in the series 'Eragon', I found Eldest to be very engaging and interesting. The plot was predictable, but it was predictable in good ways. I find this series very interesting and easy to read.

Looking forward to the third.

Eldest (Inheritance)

Over all, I really liked The Inheritance trilogy and Eragon was a great book. The problem is that after Eragon, most of Eldest was a let down and I really hope that the series comes back together in the 3rd book, Brisngr, if not, I bet Paolini will get much worse reviews on Amazon.com.
A lot of the writing could have been cut off though, like most of Eragon's lessons, and many of the long, unnecessary descriptions of random events. The part I hated most about the book, which is also the part that should have been totally scrapped, is the part when Eragon gets magically healed by a dragon tattoo. From then on, other than most of the Roran chapters, the whole book started getting very bad, ESPECIALLY THE PART THAT MAKES THE WHOLE INHERITANCE TRILOGY SEEM LIKE IT IS A TOTAL TAKE-OFF OF STAR WARS!!! I mean, Murtag randomly shows up in the middle of a war, fights Eragon, beats him, and decides to spare his life to tell him the Evil kings most faithful helper is his father, pretty much like the all famous scene in Star Wars:
Darth Vader: "Luke, I am your father!"
Luke: *screams:* "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" *then starts crying like a baby"
This Eldest scene resembled Star Wars WAY TOO MUCH!!!
Paolini should just scrap all of Eragon's chapters from before the blood-oath ceremony to the end, and rewrite them, and after that, edit the book again and take out all of the boring unnecessary parts of the book including the descriptions.
I'm done explaining the bad stuff, and for the good things which is mostly just the overall story, well, all I have to say is I loved the Inheritance series so far, but I think Eragon was a much better book.
I REALLY REALLY hope that Brisingr is much better then Eldest, and proves all the negative Paolini reviews (sort of like most of my review) to a review dump somewhere on the Amazon website.

Eldest, as a book, is a rip-off. Anyone who has glimpsed George Lucas' work or sampled Tolkien's eccentricities will agree that large parts of the plot are not as original as they may seem.

But so what?

In any genre, especially sci-fi/fantasy the influences of other authors, as well as movies, music, video games, and any other type of media, are often identifiable. Not even the great Harry Potter can be exempted from that. Modern literature is never completely unique to itself, so why worry?

I enjoyed Eragon and Eldest because I enjoyed Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, and most other teen/adult fantasy novels out there. So if you go into this book looking for a great literary masterpiece, you will be sadly disappointed. But if you come into the novel looking for a little adventure, a few good sections of action, a couple of pieces of dialogue worth reading, and dragons, then you have found your niche.

I'm very much looking forward to Brisingr as a little relief from my AP Literature course and I will happily take the mediocre bits if Paolini provides some nice twists along his journey.

I think I liked this one even better than the first one. Probably because I felt more of a kinship to the characters this far into the story. I've read other reviewers that have accused the writer of stealing the story from George Lucas... comparing it to the Star Wars series. I do not see this comparison. I understand better the comparison to the Lord of the Rings however, but besides there being some elves and dwarves, the comparison ends there. I also don't understand why these books are being accused of copying these other writers when many other books out there have the very same characters... as alot of fantasy writers do.

Anyway, after devouring this book I was left eager to read more. Well worth the read.