“Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it's actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe.”

One of the things that I have enjoyed getting back into reading is covering series that I either missed out on or tried to get into and for some reason or another just did not. One of the biggest ones I had on my list was the Inheritance Cycle series by Christopher Paloni. Reading through the first book in the series, I can see why teenager me struggled with the initial attempt to read it. Even with it being presented as a Young Adult novel series, it has a lot of heavy lore, that can be deep to digest and tough to keep straight. Overall I think this is a good introduction to the world, with hoping that the next books in the series help resolve and smooth out some of the rougher edges.

One of the most impressive things is that Paloni was only fifteen when he first wrote this story. Even with some of my misgivings and critiques of it, that remains being the most impressive thing. The fact that he had such an imagination and breadth of knowledge to not only create this fantasy world, but to come up with language and history that feels lived in is incredible.

There is a lot of influence with popular media that he would have been reading and watching at that age. The main two that becomes very apparent as you read through is Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Brom is essentially Obi-Wan, even down to the hidden identity. Eragon is Luke, a farm boy who has hidden magic abilities. The Urgals are Orcs, even with how they are organized just like in LotR. While it is not a bad thing and even following the hero’s journey as much as he does, I do hope that later books start to establish their own identity more and rely on tropes from other media less.

One of those pillars that I think Eragon does a great job creating that could be used going forward on that path is the magic system. Having everything be language based and have those words mean so much is great. He does a fantastic job explaining why the “words of power” matter so much and stresses the importance early on. 

Overall I think this does a solid job of establishing what this world is, and really sets the stage for what could be an epic New Adult fantasy world if the right decisions are made.