Why split the book into two?

I enjoyed the book, but why split it into two? I have read plenty of books longer than this that are not split at a place where you have to buy the second half. Is this a money spinner audible?

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48 people found this helpful

Great start - shame they split the book in two !

Would you listen to Eragon: The Inheritance Cycle, Book 1 - Part 1 again? Why?

I think the story is engaging and it has elements that mean you could listen to it over and over.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Eragon the central character is growing and learning and does not get dull

What about Gerrard Doyle’s performance did you like?

Gerrad Doyle's performance overall is good; characters sound different and speech is clear.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

There is already a film to this book which I have seen before getting the audio book and so far they are very different, but I am enjoying it.

Any additional comments?

I don't like the fact the books are split into two parts! There are longer books un-split!

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19 people found this helpful

Buy the combined book

This book is amazing and if you like your fantasy adventure it will keep you listening.

Make sure you buy the combined book though not this which comes in two halves.

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16 people found this helpful

Great

Would be great to have a female voice for the dragon. but love it all the same. still great to listen to.

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12 people found this helpful

great story. hated the dragons voice

the voice for zafira was irritating to me, not sure why but lacked personality somewhat but that's the only downside I found everything else was fabulous.

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8 people found this helpful

Great but...

I really love this book. The story is told well but the voice used for the dragon is a bit obnoxious. It's all gurggly like someone who's smoked too much. I understand the perspective the narrator was going for and I can get over the annoying dragon voice because the story is just that wonderful. It's the kind of story you can really get wrapped up into and really makes you want to find out what happens next.

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7 people found this helpful

Eragon

Really great story, gripping and enjoyable. Shame that the voice of the dragon sounds more like a man than I think it should.

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5 people found this helpful

Great series!

This series is just over 100 hours long (not including the Fork, the Witch, and the Worm, although that isn't really part of the Inheritance Cycle), and Paolini has said that he might expand the series to a fifth book or even more, as well as more short stories. Now, this book, the first book, was written when he was a young teenager, but I don't think you'd suspect that if you weren't told that. While he makes improvements as he goes through the series, the general writing style remains the same all the way to the end, love it or hate it.

I avoid major spoilers about events in the series ahead but if you want to go in with no prior knowledge and just experience the series then stop reading here.

The worldbuilding is a little derivative of other fantasy novels. You've got the haughty elves in the forests; you've got the mead-drinking dwarves in the mountains; you've got the orcs (called Urgals here) who have a tribal, competitive society; you've got the humans who are... well, humans; and you've got dragons, who are vain and breathe fire. However, there are additions and meaningful changes to this formula. I can't really go into them here because they would be significant spoilers, but there are additional, albeit minor races and groups of beings that add more depth to the world. The Urgals are much more fleshed out in the later books to avoid the traditional idea of "These guys are the enemy and have no redeemable traits" like goblins or orcs traditionally are thought of, without losing their core identity as tribal and competitive. It's not just the characters that change and grow, as you would expect from even a bad author - the races themselves each develop over the course of the story, so that once you get to the end, you aren't thinking "...well, in the grand scheme of things, what's changed about this world?" that other series may fall fault to. All in all, I think Paolini does a fantastic job of making the world feel like his own.

The magic system in this series is honestly one of the best I've seen in any media.. Again, I can't go too much in detail for the sake of spoilers, but the idea is that there's a magical language that you can speak to do whatever you wish - for example, you could say "Light this tree on fire" in the language and that tree would light on fire. However, the main constraint is that to do that thing, it takes the same amount of energy as it would have taken to do it without the magic, and if you use all your energy doing something, you die (and you also can't raise the dead or other impossible things). Another constraint that the people actually living in the world face is that they don't know all the words in the language - it isn't taught to anybody except magicians, and even then, they might only know a few words. There are other things like wizard duels and sorcery that I won't explain because, again, it's too spoilery.

Paolini was certainly brave to add such a versatile magic system - perhaps one of the most versatile magic systems possible - to his world. The major benefit of it is that it allows tremendous amounts of creativity for the author, bounded only by language to describe what the characters will do with magic, with no need for deus ex machinas. The major drawback is that it adds so many possibilities that you have to be very intelligent and have a lot of foresight, or people will inevitably go "Why didn't Eragon just cast this spell? It would have immediately have solved this dilemma without all the strife he had to go through!", which is where the energy constraint and knowledge constraint come in. Even so, Paolini admits in an interview that sometimes he had to rewrite scenes because he realized that there was a much easier way to achieve the characters' goal. I think Paolini did a good job. There was never any point where I was shouting at the book/screen, going "Just do this instead!" Paolini's deep understanding of his characters makes it so he can always convincingly write what they'd do and say in any situation. Any "optimal" solution would either be too elaborate for the characters to reasonably think to do, or they wouldn't do it because of who they are as people.

The pacing of the series is... okay. There are some chapters that drag on for a while, but there's a healthy splattering of action throughout. I think Paolini might have realized after Book 1 that he was going to need to have some more, let's say, less action-packed scenes as a necessity for worldbuilding and to get his characters from A to B (both spatially and mentally) so they can go do the action, so he has two plotlines going at once between two different characters, where one is more exciting, and the other more cerebral. He uses this technique to good effect. There is very little teleporting of characters to get them from scene to scene - the length of traveling is well-considered and makes sense.

There are strong female characters. In fact, there's quite a selection, and each feels different. Paolini knows how to write women - that is, you write people, and then give them female names. There's miraculously little in the way of character description past the initial introduction, other than when the description is warranted. None of the characters feel (unintentionally) obnoxious.

There isn't really any plot armor. People die, and if they don't die, get very injured or worn down. It's not quite GoT levels of gratuitous death, but people die.

The series has a satisfying ending. It does kinda feel like Paolini wrote himself into a... I hesitate to say a hole... let's say, a divot. But most of the solution was prepared multiple books in advance, so it's not as if he just said "I'll figure out what to do about this situation when I get there." You almost certainly won't be annoyed by how the series ends, if that was a major consideration (as so, so many series fall prey to this that it can feel difficult to invest so much time into one if you're scared that the ending is gonna be terrible).

For the audiobook itself - Doyle's performance is pretty good on the whole. People have (rightfully, I think) criticized the dragon voices he does. It might have been better for there to have been a male and female voice actor, just because of all the characters in this series. And maybe a more technical solution to the dragon voice problem (or hell, maybe a third voice actor who can do dragon voices really well). But Doyle has a great range of voices, so I commend his performance.

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4 people found this helpful

An adventure with a dragon - who wouldn’t love it!

I really do enjoy Eragon. The story and pace a good, and it seems to keep me coming back to it even all these years later.
As an audiobook, it’s good. Obviously it’s unabridged which always makes it better in my opinion. The narration on the whole is good… I hate Saphira’s voice though, it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. There’s a little distracting music at the beginning and end which make it difficult to hear the narrator properly which is another reason the performance is only getting four stars. Overall it’s good.

MASSIVE SPOILERS:

Durza, a particularly nasty Shade, attempts to get the dragon egg held by the rebel Varden back by attacking the three elves who are travelling with it. He kills two and captures the third, though not before she sends the egg to somewhere safe.
Eragon is a simple fifteen year old farm boy. His mother left him to be raised by her brother and aunt when he was a baby and since finding out he feels a bit displaced.
When out hunting, a ‘strange blue stone’ appears scaring the deer Eragon had tracked and hoped to kill. He takes the stone out of the mountains and try’s to trade it for meat at the butchers. The butcher refuses so Eragon gets to keep the stone.
Eragon shows the stone to the blacksmith, his uncle, and his cousin. When the travelling traders arrive, Eragon and his uncle approach a jewel merchant to see if he’ll trade them for the stone. Again they’re refused.
Eragon is woken in the night and finds that the pretty, hollow stone is actually an egg and it’s hatching! Saphira bonds with Eragon, leaving a silver mark on his palm.
Eragon does all he can think of to keep Saphira safe and well fed.
Eragon approach’s Brom, the village storyteller, and asks him some questions about dragons and riders including names of the dragons of old.
Soon the Ra’zac start searching the village and meet the butcher who tells them of Eragons stone. They take an interest in Eragon and visit his Uncles farm.
Eragon wasn’t there, he had been taken for a ride by Saphira. Unhappy about the situation, Eragon finally goes home the next day to find the farm destroyed and his Uncle near death.
Eragon tries to save the only father he’s ever known, and between him and Saphira they get him to the village. The healer does all she can for both of them, but Garrow loses the battle.
The people in the village aren’t certain that Eragon has told the truth of what happened. There are foot prints of a giant monster around the farm and again down the road from the farm to the village. The footprints are where the first signs of Garrow being brought on the litter Eragon was pulling began… but there’s no signs of Eragon in the snow before there.
Eragon knows that he can’t answer those questions without revealing Saphira and he’s unwilling to do that, so steals some essentials and try’s to leave… but Brom stops him, then convinces him they should travel together.
Brom teaches Eragon a lot. He tells him of the dragon riders, he teaches him to fight with a sword, he teaches him magic… and eventually to read, as they hunt for the Ra’zac. It takes many leagues and a few surprises and stops (not all good) along the way for them to find them.
Captured by the Ra’zac, Brom and Eragon are saved by a man called Murtagh. But Brom was mortally wounded, and after their escape Brom speaks to Eragon before his strength completely leaves him.
Eragon and Saphira make a beautiful tomb for Brom, then travel with Murtagh to Gil’ead in search of a man who should be able to help them contact the Varden.
Eragon is captured outside the city and taken to the dungeons. There he sees the elf he has dreamed of being taken back to a cell. He realises his thoughts are fuzzy and there is a drug in his system preventing him from accessing his magic, speaking to Saphira, or even thinking right. He fasts and begins to feel better.
Durza attempts to discover Eragons ‘true name’ so he can control him. Eragon gives him a fake one, then later when he finds himself able to access his magic, he knows he has to leave before Durza tries anything.
Unknown to Eragon, Murtagh and Saphira are also trying to break him out. Luckily just as Eragon comes face to face with six guards, Murtagh appears and helps him defeat them. Murtagh wants to leave straight away but Eragon saves the Elf, then they make there way up to a banquet hall.
Murtagh leaves to collect Eragons sword and returns with the elf’s sword and bow too… but Durza catch’s them.
Eragon tried me to buy time by fighting Durza, but Murtagh shoots him with an arrow and they all escape on Saphira.
For days they don’t stop running, worrying all the time about the elf who had been badly tortured by Durza. Eragon speaks to her telepathically and discovers her name is Arya and where the Varden are.
As they make there way there Kull, an elite form of Urgal who stand over eight feet tall, chase them.
They are saved by the Varden and dwarves, many of whom welcome them. Arya is tended to by their healers, Eragon, with Saphira’s help, passes the test to game n access to the stronghold, but Murtagh refuses to allow another person into his mind. He ends up placed in a cell with no windows.
Eragon and Saphira find themselves asked many questions, tested, and put into meetings with influential people. Arya recovers enough to help them and pledges her sword to protect them.
The Urgals attack under the influence and orders of Durza and an almighty battle rages.
At the end, when the dust settles, Eragon resolves to go to the Elven city, Ellesméra.
We leave them all still with the Varden and dwarves, and look to the next instalment, Eldest, to travel to Ellesméra and discover more about the Elves.

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3 people found this helpful

Loved It

I have read the cycle before but really enjoyed listening to this whilst driving to work and back

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3 people found this helpful