Inheritance has how many pages

Galbatorix has the ultimate power. Murtagh helps them. That's all I can give up. Sorry if the after review wasn't as amusing as my pre-review, but I'm currently in just-finished-reading-an-amazing-book shock. Christopher Paolini did say that he will write more books in the world of Alegaesia in the future.

I just lived through these torturous past months waiting for Inheritance to come out and now you're telling me that I have to wait some more? He even goes so far as to say it could be 5 years before he writes it! That's it. I'm not reading his books anymore. Until I learn the title of his next one. Then I will become re-obsessed. How fickle I am. Read Inheritance. It will knock your socks off!

View all 37 comments. Nov 10, Mara rated it did not like it Shelves: fantasy. I am desperately trying to think of one concise word which sums up the sheer misery of the last five and a half days, in which I had to slog my painful way through this page monstrosity. The horrors of Inheritance are so vast and so many that I am unable to; instead, I find my mind reliving the pain, the awefulness, and the absolute boredom of this book.

So maybe I should give up trying to express my feelings in one word - since it apparently cannot effectively be done - and just relate to y I am desperately trying to think of one concise word which sums up the sheer misery of the last five and a half days, in which I had to slog my painful way through this page monstrosity.

So maybe I should give up trying to express my feelings in one word - since it apparently cannot effectively be done - and just relate to you the attrocities which face any Reader brave enough - or dumb enough, depending on what led to such an unforunate circumstance I was being paid - to pick Inheritance up.

One thing I will say to my fellow critics - especially those being hired to read this book: you should demand hazard payment! Whatever small hopes I might have expressed in my review of Brisingr, they were all crushed.

Character development? Plot twists? Dream on. Deepening of character relationships? If you even wanted that, then you are already way too much into this series and will probably stone me for this review. Character deaths? My mind is drawing a blank. Paolini promised surprises and unexpectedness of all kinds; the only thing that surprised me was that I managed to finish this fourth - and blessedly last - book in this torturous four-volume collection as quickly as I did.

Every single thing that happens is predictable, - no psychics needed - right down to the end. But don't despair - there are some. Let's start with the worst of it, shall we? Now, I have often commented about the wrongness that prevades these books - in descriptions, word choice, and events.

In Eldest, we were presented with a bathing scene where our oh-so-lovable hero shamelessly eyes his now-naked teacher who is male, by the way from head to toe, and the Author finds it necessary to inform us helpless Readers that Oromis has absolutely no hair on any of his person.

I didn't think things could get much worse than that, and it doesn't, but my goodness, does it come close. Muscleman is as wooly as a baboon. Descriptions only get worse. In the same chapter, Roran is attacked by an assassin, and they fall into a heap at one point, trapped under a now-collapsed tent.

Rather than expressing this in somesuch words as "Roran and the assassin fell atop each other in a tangle of limbs," he instead chooses the phrase and I quote directly : "Roran continued to hold him as the life drained out of him, their embrace as intimate as any lovers. I can't tell you how much I squirmed in my chair and made faces; I even got a bad taste in my mouth and shrieked out loud in horror.

However, among all of the chaos of just plain badly-written battle scenes where Paolini attempts to be like Michael Cadnum and throws in gore, which doesn't succeed; there is a proper way to write gory scenes, and he didn't do it , looonngggg nightly character routines we get to read about Eragon's regular spelling sessions!

Enter, Mr. This part, by far, outweighed even The Chest Hair Chapter when it came to over-the-top unnecessary and ultimately vomit-enducing descriptions though the number of flared nostrils nearly did me in. Page is entirely devoted to describing, in microscopic detail, the clean and cultivated - yes, cultivated - fingernails of a character whose name you never even find out. And I hate to say it, but those fingernails were the only thing in that entire book which had even a smidgen of personality.

By the end of page , I knew those fingernails so well that I was inclined to give them names, and the description is so in-your-face thorough that whenever the owner of the nails walked through the door, I no longer pictured a man, but a giant fingernail with googly eyes. And if that isn't scary enough, Inheritance abounds with monsters fit for your worst nightmares. Imagine, if you are brave enough, being attacked by.

No joke! Eragon is attacked by a giant snail, like the sort you find in your garden, which proves, once and for all, that Eragon really is a vegetable. If the Author inserted these snails for comic relief, it is a joke which falls flat and wastes time. It is plain stupid and adds to the length of an already-lengthy novel. But apparently Paolini has some fear of insects, because before the giant snails, he introduces us to maggots called - again, I am not joking - burrow grubs with "obscene little mouths.

Or even beetles, because there are actual existing beetles which are poisonous. But maggots?! The rest of the book is just disappointing - even for an anti-fan like myself. Anyone who was anticipating an even halfway decent stand-off between Galbatorix and Eragon will be really disappointed.

Also not surprising, Murtagh has a "change of heart" and does something that helps Eragon kill Galbatorix. I thought I would never say this, but for once I would have rather had a cliche hero-kills-villain death, as opposed to how Galbatorix really dies.

I am sorry if I an spoiling the book for anyone, but presumebly if you're reading this, you either don't care or you've already read the book. Rather than a sword through the heart or a fireball to the head, Eragon and his accomanying Power Jellybeans kindly show Galbatorix the error in his ways, from when he stole a candycane from his baby sister at Christmas, to his tempting people to join his side with their favorite cookies.

In the words of the book, Eragon "makes him understand. What do I need to add to this? What's wrong with this picture, people?! The villain - the evilest person in the book - is killed with sad memories!!!!! That brings up another point that plagued me throughout the book, and that is Galbatorix's supposed badness. When a country is controlled by a tyrant, there are signs of it: soldiers in cities, secret police, crushing taxes, executions, people dragged from their homes at night, furtive glances over one's shoulder, starving peasants, closed borders - just to name a few.

If I walked through Alagaesia and a random citizen came up to me and said, "Hey, our king is a tyrant! Every once in a while, the Author kind of mentions a few high taxes, just in passing, but there has never been any real indication of a controlling king. Heck, Eragon and Brom traveled the entire country in the first book with no Imperial soldiers stopping or attacking them!

No bands of knights or whatever pillaging. And I failed to see his massive evilness in Inheritance when he had occasion to talk with other characters. He, in fact, seems no more evil than the average evil person. He sits in his tower all day, twiddling his thumbs, admiring his riches, eating cookies, making the occasional threat, and watching instructional videos on his plasma-screen TV.

Explain to me how that makes him the Big Cheese out of the evil people in the kingdom. All in all, Inheritance was as I anticipated - aweful, painful, and boring. If you wanted an effective way of torturing people - well, this would be it! No one could recover from the giant snails, maggots, fingernails, and chest hair - or the fact that the book ends a good seven times. And I feel for anyone who had to suffer as I did through it.

Thumbs up to you critics who bulldozed your way to the th page, and didn't cringe too badly at the ending so obvioulsy stolen from The Lord of the Rings!

I take my hat off to you! View all 67 comments. Apr 26, Charlotte May rated it it was amazing Shelves: epic-fantasy , page-plus , ya , favourites. I must admit this has been a tough series for me. I had to really push myself through them when I started out. But I am so glad I did as this final instalment was incredible! Paolini creates a deeply intricate fantasy world filled with its own politics, magic and villainy.

I loved the deeper focus on all the separate characters rather than just Eragon and to see the way in which the war against tyranny affected so many others. I actually felt melancholy when I reached the end. I loved this world I must admit this has been a tough series for me. I loved this world and everything in it - from the majestic dragons, mysterious elves, aggressive Urgals and tough dwarves.

Also Nasuada is my favourite! There were views from the different tribes that I didn't understand and almost disliked but that just reinforced the idea that it is a broad world, like our own but also nothing like it.

I will definitely be re reading them again at some point as some of the information was so dense that I may have missed it the first time round. Overall a beautiful, well constructed fantasy world that I am sad to leave behind. View all 23 comments. Nov 10, Swankivy rated it did not like it. Read the really long version here. So let's break format and start with what I liked. This was my favorite of the Inheritance series. It was enough less of a chore to read than Brisingr that I very nearly considered rating this two stars out of five.

But then I realized I was thinking that way based on hating it less rather than liking it more, and figured that objectively I'm afraid it still deserves a bottom-of-the-barrel rating. Sorry, fans. First off, Paolini corrected a number of things that he's had trouble with in previous volumes. He introduced horses that actually get tired. He introduced characters who dislike the protagonists and don't automatically get written as evil or get punished for it.

He acknowledged that the elf Arya would be a better fighter than plucky farm boy Eragon owing to over a century of practice. He wrote a couple of conversations that felt like conversations. There was no Super Special explanation for why Cousin Roran was such a badass. Nobody got brought back to life in a cheesy touching resurrection. I felt less like I was being fed lines and more like what the characters experienced was actually born from their situations combined with their mindsets.

There was some decent human emotion describing Eragon's self-doubt, inner conflicts, sorrow, and crushing fear under his great responsibility.

Roran's protectiveness and savagery as a man of war worked for me too when it wasn't weird or over the top. Paolini regularly tried way too hard and forced the emotions until they turned into cloying thesaurus poop, but sometimes he did okay. There were also certain bits that I realized I felt the way I did because of my personal experiences; in other words, at times I brought my own emotions to the table instead of actually being affected by the words, much like a fanboy loves a dragon no matter how poorly it's written.

I'm a sucker for that, because I'm a huge nostalgic hippie. Eragon's philosophizing moments and contradictory feelings were sometimes organic and they worked. It mostly just made me sad that this happened so rarely in the book. This kinda made it seem like he has the capability to. The thing he really needs to learn is how and when to back off. Emotional evocation is easy. Humans do it eagerly when they read. Just get out of the way, Paolini. Get out of the way of yourself. But let's get on to why you guys actually want to read my essays.

All the stuff I hate! The biggest problem is still the obnoxious decoration. Sentences aren't Christmas trees. Stop decorating them. Even at this late stage, Paolini hasn't improved his tone-deaf prose or his tendency to decorate awkward sentences instead of pruning them. We still constantly encounter overdescription--and not just of weapons and clothes and faces and courtyards, but unneeded comparisons of perfectly good images to other things in a ham-fisted attempt to enhance them.

We can picture post-battle smoke as viewed from the sky just fine without being told that it "hung over Belatona like a blanket of hurt, anger, and sorrow," and it would actually be more poignant if he would stop forcing these associations onto every image.

Let us feel it ourselves. Stop telling us what every cloud of smoke "means. A little of this is okay. Having no natural understanding of voice and tone and no knack for writing character cannot be amended or hidden through excessive adjective insertion. Whenever I read a Paolini book, I feel like I was promised a comfortable shirt and was given an ill-fitting, scratchy garment whose tailor elected to "fix" its flaws with a frigging Bedazzler.

It consistently interrupts the action, resulting in situations like having a man running toward Eragon urgently, only to pause for two paragraphs while the man, his family, their history, and philosophy surrounding these folks is imparted to us in indulgent narration.

There's also an annoying pattern Paolini had in just under half the chapters: Some sort of action opens the chapter, and then we get at least a paragraph of description of the surroundings. If that didn't happen, more often than not we got a flashback that led up to whatever the current situation was.

It got very repetitive. And speaking of repetitive, Paolini has been doing this thing where he latches onto a certain phrase and keeps using it. Add that to all the metaphors of leaves getting swept away in a storm of some sort, and this book just starts getting silly to read. Other overused words include "crimson" nearly 50 times and "growled" regularly overused as a speech tag. At one point Eragon says "How is it you keep besting me? He's growling. And far from pleased. Because Arya is beating him at sword-fighting.

And just in case you were wondering, we get a paragraph of detail on Eragon's thumbs. Is your life complete now? Narrating the sacred Paolini spends far too long on an irrelevant scene in which Saphira flies them through a storm for no real good reason, and we're treated to several "poetic" pages full of descriptions of the beautiful post-storm night sky.

The serenity and power of his observations is yanked away immediately as Paolini begins to narrate to us what exactly this is supposed to "mean" to Eragon. He babbles on for a while and then hands down a trite little revelation about how people probably wouldn't fight each other anymore if they could see what he's seen. It cheapens it so much. You know what would have driven home the majesty and beauty he was going for?

Some freakin' silence. Don't narrate the sacred, okay? Just invoking an image and then leaving us to marinate in that would have actually been good storytelling--a good character-building lesson in perspective for Eragon. Instead, we get a litany of hollow platitudes yammered into our ears, rambling about how small he'd once thought the world was and how big it seemed now, and specific ways in which he "was once an ant is now an eagle" or some crap, and on and on about how he's reorienting his life because of this perspective shift.

Bad Dialogue: "And to what do we owe the unexpected pleasure of this visit, Your Highness? Werecats have always been noted for their secrecy and their solitude, and for remaining apart from the conflicts of the age, especially since the fall of the Riders. One might even say that your kind has become more myth than fact over the past century. Why, then, do you now choose to reveal yourselves? There's this thing called "As you know, Bob.

It is so written that it's insulting. Silly dialogue is also frequently praised by other characters, proving once again that even Paolini's characters love Paolini. Here are a few lines of dialogue I thought were ridiculous: "These are customs older than time itself.

There is a line of Gollum dialogue. Dune : I still think Elva is inspired by Alia. But the jig was up on Paolini cribbing from Herbert when he named a dragon "Bid'Daum. Monty Python : Seriously, the insults still sound like the French Taunter. Predictable nonsense: The red herrings were painful. It's glossed over, then denied outright, and then finally it of course turns out to be exactly what it seemed. It was also obvious, as soon as we found out that oaths can be broken if a true name changes, that Murtagh was going to escape Galbatorix's control by doing so.

Even better: he did so through the power of looooove, like a Sailor Moon episode. Brace yourselves. During a cheeky "history" ramble at the beginning, Paolini retells the events of his previous three books and promptly makes several misleading explanations which suggest he hasn't read his own books.

Katrina's pregnant at the start of the book and was already showing in the previous book. The baby isn't born until well after a huge denouement, before which occurred the planning, attack, and defeat of the dark lord, followed by rebuilding and a few uprisings. Apparently all this happened in seven months. A newborn baby "smiles" at Eragon. Sorry, dude. Babies that young can't smile. That was gas. Healing a baby's face takes longer than view spoiler [killing Galbatorix hide spoiler ].

Post-baby-face-healing, the elves praise Eragon and say that his amazing feat in doing so was far beyond anything any of their spellcasters could have achieved. Eragon starts eating meat again, displaying no recognition that he decided earlier that eating meat was excusable only if other food sources were unavailable or if he thought it'd be too rude to refuse. Paolini has stated in interviews as well as in his ancient language rules that the suffix "ya" makes stuff plural.

He proceeds to break that rule about times in this book. Elva gets shamed and manipulated by Eragon in a horribly offensive way. She refuses to come on a mission.

Someone dies. Eragon blames her, threatens her, makes her cry, forces her to apologize, and shames her into helping him next time. When confronting Galbatorix, he points out how weak it is to bring a child in, and he claims she came of her own free will. He then proceeds to relent and let Eragon have a fair fight albeit with Murtagh.

This "distraction" leads to a revelation that allows Eragon to mess with Galbatorix's head and he ends up destroying himself. They leave out the werecats, even though werecats showed up as one of the forces to be reckoned with as a race in this book. Eragon can control reality at the end of the book because he knows the name of the ancient language. He then proceeds to act as though he is powerless to change some things about his life and others' lives that really suck: Some aspects of Elva's situation he can't leave her with power but still take her pain?

Oh please. A special spear that was thought lost to the ages is recovered in the first chapter when someone tries to kill Saphira with it. It's a lance designed specifically to kill dragons. And then, despite having struck home on both Saphira and Thorn, it doesn't actually kill any dragons until view spoiler [they try to use it on Galbatorix's dragon.

Then it works fine! It depended on such dumb chance events that I couldn't swallow it. Especially when an enemy soldier who's suspicious of Roran is totally willing to just take a sip of his alcoholic beverage.

Sounds totally like what military dudes would do before retreating! Sometimes, using the ancient language makes something become true like saying "fire" and suddenly there is fire.

Other times, it's suggested you can't possibly say something in the ancient language unless it already is true, so it's a litmus test for lies. That doesn't make sense. A cartoon villain scene occurs when Eragon and Arya are left chained up while a monster hatches from an egg. Once it hatches, it will eat them. Oh no! But of course, the culprits from a gore-obsessed religion don't stay to watch them get eaten alive.

They stick around long enough to laugh at their plight, then leave the room. Which of course leads to them being able to escape in time. Why is the video game boss so surprised when they emerge alive? It knows it signed up to be a Bond villain.

When Eragon is directionless and doesn't know how to lead the Varden to victory, a prophecy is invoked, which leads him directly to a giant deus ex machina. He goes on the prophesied quest, finds exactly what he needs, and also finds out that view spoiler [deceased dragons have been watching over him since before he became a Rider.

It was they who manipulated reality and his life to make everything improbable happen all along. Yes, Dragon Guardian Angels. Explains everything! Plus they find secret dragon eggs and therefore the dragons won't go extinct after all! When people keep asking him why he has to go and "never return," he invokes a prophecy Angela made. Angela also prophesied that he would have an epic romance.

That said, even though he and Arya do not have sex or even kiss , they exchange true names, which is much more intimate and suggests handing over ultimate control of each other. It's suggested strongly that they decide not to get together because of conflicting circumstances, not because of lack of feeling. Eragon clearly won the girl over by the end, even if it didn't pan out for him. His dragon got laid, though! Saphira lost her virginity to Arya's dragon! Roran is the only one who survives because he happened to be underneath some kind of support thing when it fell.

It doesn't fool us into thinking your main characters are actually in mortal danger. A character like Roran could only die in self-sacrifice because there was no other way, or in a prophesied scenario, or, I don't know, saving a disabled child who's holding a puppy or something. Paolini doesn't trust his audience.

He thinks we're kinda thick. And I guess we are, if we're still reading these books expecting to get some kind of pleasure out of the experience. I've noticed it's very common for him to say something that we can completely understand, but then just in case we're extraordinarily thick, he'll have an ignorant character show up and ask questions so he can explain stuff to us that was usually pretty obvious.

Roran acts sexist, especially when he's doing so while pretending to give the finger to gender roles. And Chris still hasn't figured out the difference between writing a strong hero and writing an antisocial bastard.

Paolini's narration also suggests disabled people would be better off born dead, repeatedly compares people bending over to "like a cripple" or "like an old man with rheumatism," and advocates animal cruelty by having no one object to the werecats compelling regular cats to kill themselves in battle.

There is too much torture--with details that involve the famous geological comparisons--and sometimes he includes so many details that it sounds like he's trying to prove he did the research this time. And finally. Are you sure Eragon isn't you, Paolini? Quote: Wherever he looked, he saw an overwhelming amount of detail, but he was convinced there was even more that he was not perceptive enough to notice.

I found this sentence kind of ironic. However, very much like his author, Eragon doesn't understand that detail is NOT what you need in order to fully and properly understand something. I'd like Paolini to stop fixating on details and understand essence. View all 46 comments. Sep 23, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it Shelves: literature , 21th-century , fiction , fantasy , young-adult , united-states. Inheritance The Inheritance Cycle 4 , Christopher Paolini The Inheritance Cycle was originally intended to be a trilogy, but Paolini has stated that during writing, the length of Brisingr grew, and the book was split into two parts to be published separately.

Because of this, many plot elements originally intended for Brisingr are in Inheritance. Inheritance is a novel written by American author Christopher Paolini. It is the fourth novel in The Inheritance Cycle. Inheritance starts when t Inheritance The Inheritance Cycle 4 , Christopher Paolini The Inheritance Cycle was originally intended to be a trilogy, but Paolini has stated that during writing, the length of Brisingr grew, and the book was split into two parts to be published separately.

Inheritance starts when the Varden attack Belatona, a city of the Empire. In the battle, Saphira, Eragon's dragon, is nearly killed by a Dauthdaert death spear called Niernen —a spear from the Dragon Wars intended to destroy magical wards and kill dragons. Belatona is soon captured by the Varden, and an alliance is later formed between the Varden and the werecats. View 1 comment.

Jun 24, Trina Between Chapters rated it really liked it Shelves: , young-adult , favorites , fantasy , audiobooks. Everything felt well deserved, and there was plenty of closure. The climax came about in a unique and fascinating way. BUT, the first half of this book dragged on longer than it needed to in my opinion. This is a truly epic series.

If you love heroic quests with amazing dragons, interesting magic systems, and little romance, this is definitely one to check out! View 2 comments. May 20, Drakonflight rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. It took me forever to read this book it's over pages but I am finally done and ready to write a review. Obviously, this book is the end of the Inheritance cycle. You have no idea how profoundly sad that makes me.

I love this series, and some of my all-time favorite book moments occur during it. I shall never forget you. Despite, how long it is, you don't really notice. Riordan paced the book perfectly, so it never feels like some new, completely unfeasible stretch is being made to end t It took me forever to read this book it's over pages but I am finally done and ready to write a review. Riordan paced the book perfectly, so it never feels like some new, completely unfeasible stretch is being made to end the series.

Believe me, nothing outlandish like, oh, say, coming back to life after being hit by a death spell happens to force an end to the series. The end comes naturally, and you can see it coming. Inheritance reminds me of another, lasting pillar in the fantasy community; The Return of the King from the Lord of the Rings.

Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if thirty or so years from now, this cycle is held in the same sort of esteem. I believe this series shall endure for a long time. And don't forget, Paolini still has years of writing ahead of him, and in the acknowledgments he mentioned possibly returning to Alagaesia. If he does, I doubt Eragon and Saphira shall play any role, but there are so many other characters he could turn to, Roran and Thorn especially. I feel their story is only beginning.

Of course, even if the characters we love are never mentioned, I would still eagerly embark on any new tale Paolini presents. With Inheritance, he has proved himself a truly amazing author, and concluded a riveting tale begun so many years ago.

View all 22 comments. Nov 09, Saga rated it did not like it. The dreaded Green Brick's actually lurking out there now. And some incredibly masochistic part of myself desires to find out whether it's as horrible as the prequels. Oh Paolini, why do you have to insist on being the Stephanie Meyer of "high fantasy"? View all 8 comments. Jan 09, Lazaros rated it really liked it Shelves: high-fantasy , magic , fantasy , adventure , young-adult , tear-jerkers , dragons , boy-power.

My feelings right now: Coming to its end, this series was overall amazing and made me feel so cozy and at home that I won't ever be able to part with it. I cannot begin to describe my love for the protagonist, Eragon, who is by far my favorite male lead character. Paolini created a character and managed to make us grasp Eragon's entity. He is not just a fictional character to me, he is more, he is real and if you try to contradict me I will hurt you. This series had so many aspects to the things My feelings right now: Coming to its end, this series was overall amazing and made me feel so cozy and at home that I won't ever be able to part with it.

This series had so many aspects to the things and it may have sometimes grown boring but that doesn't make it any less perfect. I got to know to many characters, I grew to love many characters and in each of them I find a little bit of myself and for that I'm grateful to Paolini.

I am pretty happy with the way the series came to end and I full understand why the author chose to do it this way.. What I'm not content with is the way Eragon and Arya parted. He loves her so much and I'm not sure he will ever be able to forget his feelings about her and I'm also sure that she is every bit in love with him as he is with her and I would have liked, at least, a kiss before they parted. Not words. Just a kiss in order to hold on to the thought that in some AU Arya joins Eragon in the unknown and have many babies.

I'm so helplessly cheesy, I know. Lastly, this book has wrecked me for life. This entire world. I love it. It's a part of me. View all 5 comments. Apr 05, Jerecho rated it really liked it Shelves: anything-with-dragons , fantasy , fiction , epic-fantasy. The last book of the inheritance cycle Blah Frustrated waiting for a sale for this one, because no matter how I count, my money is not enough Then one day, I passby our local bookstore, and the sales lady named Jessica called me up and says the book you want is half the price.

I immediately went to the display book in order to get this book But someone is holding it the last stock The last book of the inheritance cycle But someone is holding it the last stock in sale Letting my finger cross, and saying in my head please don't buy it Luckily, she just put it down and go somewhere else And I say a loud YES in my head Then I got to buy the book Inheritance, I got you Its the ending I guess I like Brisgr more than this one, but I will always treasure the book because it reminds of patience and luck sometimes join forces in order for me to have a smile.

Jan 24, Heidi The Reader rated it really liked it Shelves: young-adult , the-numinous-book-club , fantasy-and-sci-fi , fiction. 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 th Christopher Paolini brings his fantasy series for young adults to an end with Inheritance , the fourth and final book in The Inheritance Cycle. 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.

Identity is frail business, and in her searing story, Dani Shapiro makes the most disquieting discovery: that everything, from her lineage, to her father, down to her very own sense of self is an astounding error. How do we live with ourselves after finding we are not who we thought we were?

The answer is not disquieting. It is beautiful. With unflinching curiosity and candor, Dani Shapiro explores the mystery of her own lineage as she questions the notion of lineage itself: What makes a father a father? And how are we shaped by our family lore? There is no easy answer here; as in the best writing on the self, the point is the integrity of her search. The better the writer, the more unassailable the identity. She has an intimate, ruminating style, leaping associatively through time, addressing the reader not as an audience, or voyeur, but more as an interlocutor, thoughtfully answering the questions she thinks someone might ask, if they lived in her head.

As compulsively readable as a mystery novel, while exploring the deeper mysteries of identity and family and truth itself… a story told with great insight and honesty and heart.

The writing is that of a true storyteller who will not stop until she has bored down to the bottom of where she came from, and in this she is at her narrative best. Inheritance zooms in on the blind spots that result when reproductive technology outpaces an understanding of its consequences. In viewing this important and timely topic through a highly personal lens, Inheritance succeeds admirably. Written with generosity and honesty, Inheritance takes the modern phenomenon of casual DNA testing and builds a deeply personal narrative around it.

The result is a vital, necessary read from a talented author. And it essentially asks the question: What makes us who we are? Fascinating… Shapiro writes with poetic precision… and she knows how to tell a story. There is true narrative momentum to this tale. Thoughtful and gripping… [Shapiro] absorbs each new fact with empathy and grace.

A fascinating read by a gifted writer. Inheritance is so much more than a memoir. In telling the story of her paternity, Shapiro combines elements of a mystery with a philosophical inquiry into the deepest nature of identity. Curated Bundles. Children's Gifts. Stocking Fillers. Penguin Tote Bags. Isokon Penguin Donkey.

Home Children's The Inheritance Games. See inside. Paperback Ebook Audio Download. View more editions. Buy from. Read more. Share at. More in this Series. About the Author. Jennifer Lynn Barnes Jennifer Lynn Barnes has written more than a dozen acclaimed young adult novels. Readers' picks: your favourite books of Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more. Please enter an email. Please enter a valid email address.

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