Speaking of pacing, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is way too repetitive. On the one hand, I can see the opportunity for character introspection– on the other, well, the book is just too damn long, and the winding-down to make FTL jumps just throws off the pacing. Except Kira’s symbiote prevents her from using a stasis chamber, so there are looooong stretches of the book where Kira is just sitting by herself, in a spaceship, just being retrospective and/or having vaguely prophetic dreams. And, part of it is that FTL travel takes months at a time, requiring crews to go into cryo-sleep. See, Paolini is really proud of all the homework he did making up the FTL system (two hours of appendixes, remember). ![]() The funny thing is, while To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is full of action scenes and chases and explosions, it’s also … really weirdly paced. There are plenty of greebly monsters for Kira to run away from– and then, later, to blow up in various creative ways. Like, there’s even the ‘find a pistol in a cutscene while the aliens attack your spaceship’ bit, which had me rolling my eyes. As once the book kicks off, things feel … really video-gamey. So, while To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is better than Eragon, that’s a something of a low bar. Soon, more aliens come chasing after Kira, trying to take the symbiote from her, and soon Kira is at the center of an intergalactic war. As, y’see, while off xenobiologist-ing, Kira finds herself bonded to an alien symbiote suit, which kicks off the plot. ![]() Or maybe the Guyver Suit from, er, Guyver, if Paolini is into 90’s anime. Or maybe Jamie Reyes’ Blue Beetle suit from DC comics. Or, specifically, the Venom symbiote suit from Marvel Comics. Really, though, one of the biggest things To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is inspired by is … Marvel Comics. If you just crib notes from one work, you’re a hack– but if you crib from a bunch of them, that just means you’re well-versed in the genre! Or something. Honestly, though, I didn’t mind the smorgasbord of other plot elements. Heck, Kira shares the same name as one of the core characters of Deep Space 9– which is the best Star Trek, but I digress. Just off the top of my head, I spotted references to Alien, the Culture, Halo, Firefly, Anne McCaffrey’s “ The Ship Who” series, Lovecraft, Mass Effect (Though that last one might just be ‘cause Jennifer Hale reads the audiobook, more on her later), and probably a bunch of other stuff I’m missing. In contrast, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars draws from … pretty much everything that isn’t Star Wars. Eragon steals from is inspired by Star Wars. The more grounded themes make the characters a bit more approachable, I guess? It’s honestly kind of refreshing to see this kind of stuff from Paolini– or even in a space opera book in general. Right off the bat, Kira has a grown-up relationship, and grown-up problems (namely, balancing a long distance relationship with having to travel across the galaxy due to work). Instead of being about Generic Fantasy Destiny Boy™, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars centers on Kira Navarez, a xenobiologist, off surveying some alien colony world. Not in a swearing and sex scenes sort of way (even though the book has both of those), but rather, the book comes from an older perspective. ![]() The first thing that struck me about To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is that it comes off as more an adult book. And so, I got curious– after all ths time, and with the opportunity to mess around in another genre, had Paolini matured as a writer? I even tried reading some of the sequels, way back when, but bailed about halfway through the third one.īut! The last of Paolini’s fantasy novels was released in 2011– and now, with To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, he decided to play around with science-fiction. Mostly because his debut, Eragon, is one of those books I can point to and say “I can do better than that!” Which, well, it may be a bit unfair to compare my own work to something Paolini wrote when he was a kid … but at the same time Eragon is pretty thoroughly terrible. Ooof.Ĭhristopher Paolini is an author I have … mixed opinions about. And that’s not counting the extra two hours of appendixes, which I didn’t even listen to. The book is 900 (!) pages long, and the audiobook (which is how I’ve been taking it in) is over 30 hours in length. Part of this is due to the expected apocalyptic pandemic malaise, and also part of it has been the fact that I’ve been trying to get through To Sleep in a Sea of Stars for literal months now. Book Review: To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, by Christopher PaoliniĪs you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting as many reviews as I used to in my prime.
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