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that_boi_eliza's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Grief, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, Death, and Mental illness
Moderate: Blood, Confinement, Violence, and Self harm
Minor: Vomit and Gun violence
lymadebell's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
I loved this book! It was tense and dark and emotional. It was told partially through flashbacks to a previous time and present day events. I thought the crew that was listed in the book was diverse and interesting and sort of fully formed people. But mostly the ground crew that was on the strange planet was who you got to know and I felt like they were all very fully formed people and that's always great. The narration for this was really good. They had some music that was done and some sound effects that I think really added to the book. I was really happy about the constant building of tension throughout the book. I don't think this book really had an ending per se, more of a possible continuation. Although, that makes sense as this is technically a prequel to "to sleep in a sea of stars." So that does make more sense when you think of it that way. Either way, strong characters, really tense Interesting plot and an amazing narration and musical score. Musical score was unexpected but still very good.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Bullying and Medical trauma
herceia's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
The only reason I finished this was bc I love Paolini as an author. The Inheritance Cycle is my favorite series. However, I would have stopped at about a third of the way through if I didn't have this weird loyalty to him. I almost stopped anyway at several points beyond that. I gave it a 1 because the story was actually pretty interesting to me when the main character, Alex, wasn't in his woe-is-me mood (which was very often. Too often. Almost unbearably often.).
My main complaint with this book is how utterly upset and despondent Alex is for the entire book. We get it, your wife died and you're sad. You're really about to make your attitude everyone else's problem? I also have complaints about the character of the people he's traveling with. At this point, you think they'd send a better-vetted group out on missions like this.
The struggles in the book were very real, but I was almost too distracted by Alex's feelings to feel any compassion for any of their situations. That was frustrating during the read bc I really wanted to feel for them, but just couldn't.
This book is a close look at humans in extreme and unknown conditions, and for that, the book is a 2. I was missing anyone or any thing, thought, or feeling to root for. I could have had about fifty pages less of self-pity.
My main complaint with this book is how utterly upset and despondent Alex is for the entire book. We get it, your wife died and you're sad. You're really about to make your attitude everyone else's problem? I also have complaints about the character of the people he's traveling with. At this point, you think they'd send a better-vetted group out on missions like this.
The struggles in the book were very real, but I was almost too distracted by Alex's feelings to feel any compassion for any of their situations. That was frustrating during the read bc I really wanted to feel for them, but just couldn't.
This book is a close look at humans in extreme and unknown conditions, and for that, the book is a 2. I was missing anyone or any thing, thought, or feeling to root for. I could have had about fifty pages less of self-pity.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Grief
Moderate: Violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical trauma
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
ne0n_ange1's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, and Death
smoakwithwifi's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Grief
Moderate: Death, Murder, Violence, Blood, and Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Panic attacks/disorders
krysley's review
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for allowing me to listen to this digital audiobook in exchange for an honest, unbiased opinion.
While I thought the first book in the Christopher Paolini's Fractalverse, his foray into adult sci-fi, was too long, Fractal Noise ends up being too short. It's a journey novel, but nothing is resolved at the end or explained.
Things I did like:
The narrator, Jennifer Hale. While I questioned the reasoning behind having a female narrator for a book written entirely from the point of view of a man, I liked the continuity from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. Hale is an excellent narrator and performs great once again.
The thuds. I know other readers found these unnecessary and repetitive, but I loved the thuds interspersed throughout the story. Just when you forget about it - thump - its insidiousness is back. It makes you really think about how that sound/feeling could drive a person insane with it's constant repetition.
There are a few things that really work for me here, but, ultimately, most of it doesn't.
While I thought the first book in the Christopher Paolini's Fractalverse, his foray into adult sci-fi, was too long, Fractal Noise ends up being too short. It's a journey novel, but nothing is resolved at the end or explained.
Things I did like:
The narrator, Jennifer Hale. While I questioned the reasoning behind having a female narrator for a book written entirely from the point of view of a man, I liked the continuity from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. Hale is an excellent narrator and performs great once again.
The thuds. I know other readers found these unnecessary and repetitive, but I loved the thuds interspersed throughout the story. Just when you forget about it - thump - its insidiousness is back. It makes you really think about how that sound/feeling could drive a person insane with it's constant repetition.
There are a few things that really work for me here, but, ultimately, most of it doesn't.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder
Moderate: Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, and Grief
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
spec_tacles's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Grief, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content
Moderate: Murder, Suicidal thoughts, and Blood
heartbrekker's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
“Suffering was its own form of absolution.”
Not gonna lie—switching from an 880 page sci-fi epic to a 300ish grief journey, while traveling to a mysterious beacon hole on a new planet, was not the turn I expected for Paolini within the Fractalverse. Yet Fractal Noise is not about this weird hole; it's the journey to get to it, similar to Frodo's to Mount Doom. The journey wreaks havoc on the protagonist and his peers, but they were already broken before the trip began. Overall, FN is a relatively basic grief story, but once you throw in this planetary hole and possible aliens, the chaos starts to set in.
“What possible evidence do you have that this universe is anything but cruel and heartless?”
Alex Crichton is an interesting choice as a lead. His internal monologue is incredibly negative, and he’s constantly berating himself for his life changing mistakes. Plenty of readers will find him off-putting for those reasons. You would think a xenobiologist would be the strictest scientist on an expedition to find alien evidence, but we see pretty early on that his grief has made his work subpar. It’s hard to root for him, and if this book had been any longer, I probably would have begun disliking him. Alex doesn’t realize it at the time, but this trip will bring some version of healing—for better or for worse, you’ll have to read to find out. When leads are stripped to their very bones, physically and emotionally, I think their reactions and decisions are the most fascinating and that’s what we have here.
“It was unfair… that you no longer got to name your own discoveries. Not if you were working for a company or government, that was.”
Lastly, I want to touch on the physical formatting of this book. Paolini disrupts the flow of the book to not only physically jar our senses like the characters but also write a better story. You will notice very quickly the relevance of the “thud.” As you delve deeper, the thud's frequency increases, mocking not only the characters sanity but the readers too. You’ll be annoyed: why is this thud taking page space when I could be learning other things about the characters, the environment? The thud even cuts off characters/their thoughts mid-sentence to physically represent the disruption. In college, I lived near a military base that would do drills where we could feel the ground shake once every month or so, and that slight vibration of the ground immediately became my point of connection to the thud in Fractal Noise. It made me think of a metronome on steroids because it is not only affecting your ears but also the physicality of your body. When I mentioned the psychological changes to the characters earlier—the thud is the worst and biggest problem for the physical terrain because the repetition and intensity affect the characters.
“Alex thought he was beginning to understand why so many religions started in the desert. The emptiness of the land did something to a person’s brain, focused it on the strangeness of one’s inner life.”
I’m hoping someone can give a good breakdown between Fractal Noise and To Sleep in a Sea of Stars because I do not remember how these books connect. It’s been too long since I read the latter, so I essentially treated these books as separate entities. For time purposes, Alex’s experience takes place in 2234 whereas Kira’s is twenty-three years in the future in 2257. I assume the alien relic in TSIASOS is from the same civilization that brought us this giant hole that is sending a message out into space, but again, my memory is not the best for this series. That’s the closest I can come up with in terms of how they connect. Also, I want to know if Alex or any of his experiences/crew members are ever mentioned in TSIASOS. I’ll probably have to comb through my copy for their possible names, but I’d LOVE for someone to find the answer for me haha.
“Everyone’s life is on the line… Do you know what will happen if they attack us? We’ll lose. Humanity will lose. All gone. Dead. Planets blasted bare. Men, women, children, and the screaming, the screaming.”
Now I have plenty of spoilery thoughts to include in this review, so I’ll be posting those here after its release date.
“It’s all so beautiful.”
Thank you to Tor Books for sending me a review copy! All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Not gonna lie—switching from an 880 page sci-fi epic to a 300ish grief journey, while traveling to a mysterious beacon hole on a new planet, was not the turn I expected for Paolini within the Fractalverse. Yet Fractal Noise is not about this weird hole; it's the journey to get to it, similar to Frodo's to Mount Doom. The journey wreaks havoc on the protagonist and his peers, but they were already broken before the trip began. Overall, FN is a relatively basic grief story, but once you throw in this planetary hole and possible aliens, the chaos starts to set in.
“What possible evidence do you have that this universe is anything but cruel and heartless?”
Alex Crichton is an interesting choice as a lead. His internal monologue is incredibly negative, and he’s constantly berating himself for his life changing mistakes. Plenty of readers will find him off-putting for those reasons. You would think a xenobiologist would be the strictest scientist on an expedition to find alien evidence, but we see pretty early on that his grief has made his work subpar. It’s hard to root for him, and if this book had been any longer, I probably would have begun disliking him. Alex doesn’t realize it at the time, but this trip will bring some version of healing—for better or for worse, you’ll have to read to find out. When leads are stripped to their very bones, physically and emotionally, I think their reactions and decisions are the most fascinating and that’s what we have here.
“It was unfair… that you no longer got to name your own discoveries. Not if you were working for a company or government, that was.”
Lastly, I want to touch on the physical formatting of this book. Paolini disrupts the flow of the book to not only physically jar our senses like the characters but also write a better story. You will notice very quickly the relevance of the “thud.” As you delve deeper, the thud's frequency increases, mocking not only the characters sanity but the readers too. You’ll be annoyed: why is this thud taking page space when I could be learning other things about the characters, the environment? The thud even cuts off characters/their thoughts mid-sentence to physically represent the disruption. In college, I lived near a military base that would do drills where we could feel the ground shake once every month or so, and that slight vibration of the ground immediately became my point of connection to the thud in Fractal Noise. It made me think of a metronome on steroids because it is not only affecting your ears but also the physicality of your body. When I mentioned the psychological changes to the characters earlier—the thud is the worst and biggest problem for the physical terrain because the repetition and intensity affect the characters.
“Alex thought he was beginning to understand why so many religions started in the desert. The emptiness of the land did something to a person’s brain, focused it on the strangeness of one’s inner life.”
I’m hoping someone can give a good breakdown between Fractal Noise and To Sleep in a Sea of Stars because I do not remember how these books connect. It’s been too long since I read the latter, so I essentially treated these books as separate entities. For time purposes, Alex’s experience takes place in 2234 whereas Kira’s is twenty-three years in the future in 2257. I assume the alien relic in TSIASOS is from the same civilization that brought us this giant hole that is sending a message out into space, but again, my memory is not the best for this series. That’s the closest I can come up with in terms of how they connect. Also, I want to know if Alex or any of his experiences/crew members are ever mentioned in TSIASOS. I’ll probably have to comb through my copy for their possible names, but I’d LOVE for someone to find the answer for me haha.
“Everyone’s life is on the line… Do you know what will happen if they attack us? We’ll lose. Humanity will lose. All gone. Dead. Planets blasted bare. Men, women, children, and the screaming, the screaming.”
Now I have plenty of spoilery thoughts to include in this review, so I’ll be posting those here after its release date.
“It’s all so beautiful.”
Thank you to Tor Books for sending me a review copy! All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Violence, and Mental illness
Moderate: Drug use, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Cursing, Vomit, Gun violence, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Medical content, Gore, Gaslighting, and Body horror
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