I'm gonna level with you: I am not a fan of The Inheritance Cycle. In fact, I'm the opposite: an anti-fan, and an old one at that. I was even a member of the original Anti-Shurtugal community, back in its days as a mirror forum to Shurtugal.com
, as well as A-S's successor forums, Dog-Eared and Deus Ex Machina, where I was known as Shinobaka.
I first picked up the Inheritance Cycle when I was 17, and it was still the Inheritance Trilogy. Today, I am 25, and the final book of the series is resting at hand. For eight years this series has haunted my own literary aspirations, both due to the work itself, and its author, with whom I have several uncanny similarities. Besides both being fantasy writers of similar age (only three years apart), we share a first name, dark hair and glasses, siblings (only a younger sister), birth month (our birthdays are separated by less than two weeks), and my mother is even originally from a town only a stone's throw away from the Paolinis' Montana home.
Creepy, right? Now you get what I mean by being haunted by this guy. I'd like to think that he's the evil one, but there are times that I fear our uncanny commonalities extend to the quality of our writing.
-shudder-
With all that being said, I am going to do my best to give this book a chance. Despite my long history of hate for these books, I can freely admit that ''Eragon'' was actually kind of fun. If Paolini had improved from there, Inheritance could be a good series. However, the series instead went downhill. Has Inheritance continued this decline, or is the final novel of the series truly its crowning jewel? Well, that's what we're here to find out. So grab a snack, queue up some tunes, and cover your desk in fluffy pillows, because we're going to be sporking Inheritance. You have been warned.
