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A review by actuallyahorsereads
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
I have never felt so conflicted about giving a book a rating before. On the one hand, the themes and the overall message of this book were phenomenal. I loved the journey, I loved the ending, and the plot itself was actually incredible. The science was painstakingly researched and presented in highly believable ways and the nerd in me reveled in it.
On the other hand: this book was painfully long. I’ve read 800+ paged books many times and have never felt the weight of them so much as this one. The editing in this left something to be desired—there were a lot of redundant phrases and paragraphs, a lot of unneeded plots, and too much emphasis placed on things that ended up not being essential to the overall story. The characters and their development were sacrificed in a lot of ways that hindered my ability to care about any of them, and I honestly feel like they detracted from the story more than they added. And good fucking lord, none of those cringe sex scenes needed to be added. Plus the emotional weight of a lot of happened was never addressed and I think a lot of the book would have been vastly more powerful had that been explored more.
Last, but certainly not least in my critiques (and you will hear this from any self-aware person that understands the differences in how a woman thinks versus how a man thinks): Kira suffered quite a bit from being a woman written by a man. There have been men who have pulled off female characters so I’m not saying they never should...but there were a lot of word choices and a lot of scenes that were painful and it makes me wonder sometimes if the author has ever actually met a human woman before or not.
Did I enjoy this? In parts, yes. Will I read a sequel to this? Honestly, yes. There were a lot of threads and hints at a much larger universe at play and I would be interested in seeing how those were explored. Would I recommend this? Honestly.... probably not. There are better written, shorter, easier to get through books that cover similar topics, and I am not entirely sure this one is worth the slog to get through.
I think overall, had this book had an editor that was willing to go to bat against Paolini and push him further to be a better writer and not be afraid to delete shit out of here, this could have been a raging success. And it could have easily been a favorite. But this absolutely suffered in the editing department and that’s why I’m having such a hard time rating this. Because the potential is absolutely there to be brilliant. But it did fall a lot shorter than I was expecting in that potential.
My apologies if this review is a mess and way too long, though to be fair that is an apt representation of this book and my thoughts on it.
On the other hand: this book was painfully long. I’ve read 800+ paged books many times and have never felt the weight of them so much as this one. The editing in this left something to be desired—there were a lot of redundant phrases and paragraphs, a lot of unneeded plots, and too much emphasis placed on things that ended up not being essential to the overall story. The characters and their development were sacrificed in a lot of ways that hindered my ability to care about any of them, and I honestly feel like they detracted from the story more than they added. And good fucking lord, none of those cringe sex scenes needed to be added. Plus the emotional weight of a lot of happened was never addressed and I think a lot of the book would have been vastly more powerful had that been explored more.
Last, but certainly not least in my critiques (and you will hear this from any self-aware person that understands the differences in how a woman thinks versus how a man thinks): Kira suffered quite a bit from being a woman written by a man. There have been men who have pulled off female characters so I’m not saying they never should...but there were a lot of word choices and a lot of scenes that were painful and it makes me wonder sometimes if the author has ever actually met a human woman before or not.
Did I enjoy this? In parts, yes. Will I read a sequel to this? Honestly, yes. There were a lot of threads and hints at a much larger universe at play and I would be interested in seeing how those were explored. Would I recommend this? Honestly.... probably not. There are better written, shorter, easier to get through books that cover similar topics, and I am not entirely sure this one is worth the slog to get through.
I think overall, had this book had an editor that was willing to go to bat against Paolini and push him further to be a better writer and not be afraid to delete shit out of here, this could have been a raging success. And it could have easily been a favorite. But this absolutely suffered in the editing department and that’s why I’m having such a hard time rating this. Because the potential is absolutely there to be brilliant. But it did fall a lot shorter than I was expecting in that potential.
My apologies if this review is a mess and way too long, though to be fair that is an apt representation of this book and my thoughts on it.