Brisingr (Inheritance, Book 3) – Christopher Paolini

Title: Brisingr

Series: Inheritance, Book 3

Author: Christopher Paolini

Genre: Fantasy

Paolini continues his Inhertiance saga with Brisingr. Originally, I understand he intended it to just be a trilogy, but I think he’s been having so much fun developing his world and characters, as well as the story, that the story is just getting longer and longer. For some authors, that would be a bad thing, but for Paolini it is just giving him more room to develop and flex his fantastical and creative muscles.

This is definitely not the book to start the Inheritance books with, so if you haven’t read Eragon and Eldest, do yourself a favor and get your hands on them as well.

The book starts with a summary of the last two books, which you can definitely skip if you’ve recently finished reading the first two books of the series, but, if you’re like me and it had been a bit, the quick rehash was a nice reminder of what had gone on before. There are little to no gaps between the events in the books of the series, each one picking up very shortly (as in days after) the last events of the previous book. This book is no exception, and you are thrown headlong into Eragon and Roran’s fight to rescue Katrina, Roran’s betrothed.

To me the book kept a very lively pace. Paolini has become very adept at balancing the action with the more narrative sections of his stories. That said, when I came to the end, I really felt I had just read the next step in Eragon’s journey. Just as in Eldest, this book moves along through the story of Eragon, but it would have a hard time standing on its own – in fact, when removed from the series, it is rather anti-climatic. There is really only one conflict that is resolved in this book (revealed in its name), and that conflict seems almost secondary when compared against the other conflicts of the story.

In the end,  I highly recommend the Inheritance saga to any and all fans of the fantasy genre. It is in the vein of Tolkien and maybe even Robert Jordan (the latter being one who has indulged in the epitomy of the unending saga). But don’t read this book without having first read Eragon and then Eldest, you would only be doing yourself a disservice.

Worldview: overall, secular, though slightly theistic in places, and pantheistic in others.

Age Recommendation: Fine for High School age children, and probably Middle School age as well – though the violence rather well-described.