The 30-year-old lawyer reads the fantasy series as a lighthearted escape from days spent reading contracts and regulations.
"Books such as this have brought reading science fiction and fantasy from the fringe into the mainstream," said Snow, who lives in Sandy. "That's a good thing because it provides creativity and the opportunity to sit back and enjoy a good story as a way of escaping the mundane and difficult things each of us faces every day."
Bringing author Christopher Paolini's world of elves, dragons and magicians to life is the aim of local booksellers, who are throwing midnight release parties tonight for Brisingr, the third book in the series.
"This is one of those books that gathers a cult following," said Jenn Northington, events and marketing manager for The King's English Bookshop. "There are a lot of fun tie-ins for this series."
The store invited members of such groups as the Renaissance Fair and the Society for Creative Anachronism to create a medieval atmosphere among the bookshelves, with swordplay demonstrations, a costume contest, trivia bowl and other book-related games.
"Readers live in that world when they read the books," Northington said. "How do you bring that world into the real world? This is how we do it."
The midnight release of Brisingr continues a trend launched by the successful late-night releases of Harry Potter books, followed by the midnight Aug. 1 release of Stephenie Meyer's vampire romance, Breaking Dawn.
"Obviously [a midnight release] has a lot to do with the excitement about a book," said Jessica Shank, sales manager at the Borders bookstore in Murray. "And this book has been a long time coming."
The gap in time from the 2003 release of the original book in the series, Eragon, has allowed readers to grow into adulthood with the series. A midnight release allows stores to capitalize on a wide demographic range among fans.
"It allows us to hold events that we wouldn't be able to hold in the middle of the day - for example, a fencing demonstration," said Lydia Martinez, community-relations manager at the Barnes and Noble in Sugar House.
Northington, at King's English, is looking forward to the midnight party.
"In the Inheritance Cycle, there's magic and dragons and great elements that make up a good story," she said. "But they're so far out of the ordinary that it's really exciting to bring it into the everyday."
