Inheritance

Inheritance is a fantasy novel by Christopher Paolini, published in 2011 as the fourth and final book of The Inheritance Cycle. The sequence had been planned as a trilogy, but the third volume grew long enough that Paolini split it in two, so this book carries the ending that had been intended for the third.

The novel follows Eragon, Saphira and their companions into the last campaign against the ruler of the empire. Much of it is the work of assembling an army: a siege to be broken, an alliance to be argued for, a city to be taken, and a long stretch of training and preparation in which Eragon has to decide what he is willing to do to end the war.

Paolini was a teenager when the first book appeared, and this last volume is the longest of the four, written with a large cast of dragons, elves and soldiers. Its final confrontation turns on the mechanics of magic the series had established from the beginning, in which knowing the true name of a person or a thing gives power over it.