Brisingr: The Inheritance Cycle, Book 3 (by Christopher Paolini)

Eragon and Saphira struggle to fulfill the promises they have made: to help Roran rescue Katrina from the Ra'zac, to keep the Varden united and obey Nasuada, to complete their training with the elves, to repair the Dwarves' star sapphire, to undo their spell on Elva, to support Orik, and to avenge Hrothgar, Garrow, and Kvistor.

Young author Christopher Paolini continues to grow as a writer, and his story has an ability to capture and hold his readers' attentions even over the far-too-long expanse of his longest novel yet. His characters, settings, and action set-pieces are vivid and continue to thrill, and there is no doubt that this third book in what is now planned to be a four-book series will sell well and please many of his fans.

But his decision, presumably approved by his editors, to extend the trilogy to four books has given his propensity for self-indulgence free rein. The actual plot here warrants perhaps 250-300 pages. The rest is spent in what can only be described as showing off. He loves flaunting his vocabulary in lengthy, unnecessary descriptions: in one scene, for instance, where a bunch of men are ringing bells, he divides them in two just so that he can describe half of them "producing a dolorous cacophony of notes" while the other half "cause iron tongues to crash against iron throats and emit a mournful clamor." He continues to include sophomoric bull-sessions that run to dozens of pages, and he seems incapable of doing a bit of research without foisting it all on the reader: for example, his description of the forging of a sword takes up an entire 16-page chapter. Paolini is a very good writer, and has the talent to be a great one -- all he needs is the discipline.