Eldest

Book 6 (2026)

We return to the world of Alagaësia in Christopher Paolini’s follow up to ‘Eragon’ with ‘Eldest’, a bold and ambitious sequel in the ‘Inheritance Cycle’.

In the aftermath of ‘Eragon’, Christopher Paolini slowly lays down the groundwork in his world building of Alagaësia, taking us from the underground dwarven cities to the lush elven forests - introducing a variety of characters and lore within this world. However, this time we follow multiple POVs as we jump from storyline to storyline in this bolstered size novel.

Eragon and his dragon Saphira survived and thwarted King Galbatroix’s forces in their attempt to eliminate the Varden - an alliance of free peoples - but only just. And now they must learn the way of the Riders by completing their training if they ever hope to bring down Galbatroix and his tyrannical regime.

The story in ‘Eldest’ is straightforward - train and learn the old ways to bring down the bad king - a figure we still have not yet seen, but who commands a lot of attention nonetheless. An acknowledgement to Christoper Paolini who wrote ‘Eragon’ at the age of 15 and ‘Eldest’ at the age of 21 - a feat in his imagination and writing.

Now back to the book. ‘Eldest’ runs where ‘Eragon’ walked. The novel in my opinion can be split into three parts, good, annoyingly slow, and great. It feels as though Christoper Paolini learnt and developed his writing from his debut novel, and so flexed, giving us both highs and lows as we learnt and grew with Eragon over the course of this sequel. At times frustrating with over detailed scenes that gave more than I welcomed, but a fine payoff in the back section of this tale.

A 4 ✨ read, even though that middle section had me contemplating why do I care. That aside, I look forward to Brisingr. 🫑