Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

What readers think of Eldest, plus links to write your own review.

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Eldest by Christopher Paolini

Eldest

Inheritance, Book II

by Christopher Paolini
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • Readers' Rating (59):
  • First Published:
  • Aug 1, 2005, 704 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2007, 704 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

Page 8 of 8
There are currently 59 reader reviews for Eldest
Order Reviews by:

Write your own review!

Rae

Eldest
No better than Eragon.
I hoped to get a point of view of things from Saphira, as she had been dreadfully ignored in the first book. Instead, we get stuck with Roran and Nasuada, whose sidetracking stories don't REALLY matter.Only Paolini thought they would make good angst opprotunities. Like we don't already have enough of that with Eragon's scar.
Our hero does not seen to have a single flaw, apart from the scar, which doesn't count because it ended up making him cooler in the end.
And for the fans who will go, "he worte it when he wuz 15, dont h8." : He actually finished Eragon at 19. And he was about 22 when Eldest was released. In any case, age shouldn't matter in a really god book. I would've been much more impressed if Paolini had published Eragon at 29 then 19, if it meant that the writing was better. Age counts for nothing, because I have read horrible book written by adults.
Drew

Horrible!
Honestly, I cannot begin to explain how awful this book is. I couldn't bare reading any further from about half way through. As a writer, it is often common to find yourself repeating ideas, lines, or similar motifs from previously read novels. It is a struggle to retain complete originality when writing; that is why if I am writing something, and I find myself pulling ideas from other novels, I will stop writing that peice completely, so that I may retain originality. What bothers me the most about Eragon and Eldest, is that they by no means deserve to have been published. There are many day to day writers who struggle with finding a publisher, that are much more talented writers. Eldest is in every form plagerism.
Aeon Siadrill

Disgrace
My dears, some of you, who have rated this beer bogie pretending to be a so called 'book' (and we're not being jealous or intentionally insulting or just saying this because of lack of knowledge about books) with any grade above 'poor' have probably never heard of things like 'literature' or 'creative' writing', not even to mention 'aesthetics' or 'good taste'.
The basic idea and everything connected to it is disgracefully stolen from Tolkien, for instance - the elves and their culture, is not only copied, but is also a great insult with its simplifying and changing some details just to make it look like it's different. Plus, you might have noticed that there is a book called The Lord of the Rings, in which you will find a certain mine called Moria, very similar to the one described in Eragon. The whole structure, which is based on the story of a boy who just lived and then he encountered something priceless and went on a long lasting journey, full of fun adventures, is a copy of the Hobbit, the idea of him being special, a savior of the world and connected to some sort of prophecy, implies to stealing basic ideas from Harry Potter. So, to sum it up, Paolini has no possible future as a writer, he obviously got published mainly because of his parents who by the way OWN a publishing company and because of his young age. This should not be a reason to tolerate bad books. It's not fair to younger readers that they are manipulated to read books just because of the publicity and because they're not old enough to read the fantasy classics. It is known that Paolini got famous by presenting his book in many elementary schools.
We should raise the level of reading with interesting, yet quality books, not with low-quality books that just sum up all that has been written in the fantasy genre so far.

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

A library is thought in cold storage

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.