The Top 10 Reasons We're Glad the Eragon Series Is Finally Over

When we first read Eragon, we loved it (forgive our preteen ignorance). With Eldest, we were a tad bit disappointed. And when Brisingr came out, we almost died of boredom—and were a bit annoyed that Christopher Paolini decided to extend his trilogy into a four-book cycle. And now Inheritance, the fourth and final addition to the Inheritance Cycle, has finally been released. Honestly, we mostly feel a bit sad for the guy: his promising four-book series passed its prime somewhere between the first and second book, and it's taking a lot of effort to work up even a fraction of the excitement we saw when the final Harry Potter book came out.

We've generally decided that Paolini is like the boy version of Stephanie Meyer, complete with bad plot devices and terrible writing, but before we really let go of the Eragon series, we've got to really drive this point into the ground: Christopher Paolini is a bad writer. His writing is so bad, it makes us glad this series is finally over. Why? Don't worry, we're about to tell you:

1. The titles. We could forgive Paolini for naming his first book after the main character. Barely. After Eldest, we thought maybe he was going for an E-word-title-thing. But then he threw us off with that stupid made-up word, Brisingr, and we gave up. But now? Inheritance the book and Inheritance the series? Wow, Paolini, you just blew our minds with that stunning display of creativity. At least he didn't call them all Book.
2. The plot. We understand wanting to steal plot lines from LOTR and Star Wars; those series were amazing! But we could deal with an original thought now and then, and the Inheritance Cycle never really offered us one. It would've helped if we hadn't been able to predict the whole Murtagh-is-my-brother-and-Brom-is-my-father thing from the beginning.
3. The writing style. One of the main problems with the books is that he just doesn't write about interesting things. We get pages and pages and pages and pages of descriptions of random details, turning what could have been a 300-page book into an 800-page one. And don't even get us started on the plot off-shoots that seem to be going somewhere but aren't.
4. The movie. Somehow, Eragon the movie managed to be even worse than Eragon the book. We didn't think it was possible, but the movie managed to pick all the pieces of plot we actually like and turn them into anti-climactic radioactive waste. Thank you, Hollywood.
5. The time. It took Paolini THREE WHOLE YEARS to write each book. We think it really shouldn't take that long to copy-and-paste plot lines from every other Sci-Fi/Fantasy book in existence. If it took J. K. Rowling 10 years to write 7 awesome books, is it asking much to expect Paolini to write 4 terrible ones in less time? We're sorry, but we lost interest.
6. The characters. Do any of the characters actually develop? No. Except for maybe Murtagh (AKA the only cool character), who turned into an evil jerk. That was a fun transformation.
7. The editing. When your 15-year-old genius son writes a book and you happen to own a publishing company, of course you're going to publish it. But couldn't Paolini's parents have at least tried to edit the book before sticking on the shelf? All they would've had to do is take out the middle 400 pages or so.
8. The "mystery." We're sorry, but we knew that Arya was going to hatch the green dragon from the moment it was mentioned. Did he really need to build up six years of fake suspense? Because it didn't work.
9. The Elf language. When Tolkien did it, it was cool. But when Paolini tried to write his own Elf language, it just came off as kind of... dumb. Maybe it's cuz he can't even handle plain old English that well.
10. The Arya drama. Eragon, the chick just isn't into you. You're not even the same species! It shouldn't have been that hard for him to get over this by, say, book one, yet we're still dealing with it in book four. By now, all that angsty-longing makes us want to throw up a little.

Despite all of the above, we're still eagerly waiting for Inheritance to arrive in the mail. Don't look at us that way. WE STILL THINK HE'S A FLOP, OKAY?!

Are you going to read/mock/torture yourself with Inheritance?

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