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benjch 's review for:
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
by Christopher Paolini
Christopher Paolini has done it again!
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, on the surface, is absolutely nothing like the Eragon series, which I read and cherished as a kid. This was a drastic change from the high fantasy world Paolini built with Eragon, but it evokes the same sense of wonder, the same awe at the world as the former did. It is undeniably a Paolini book, but fresh and exciting.
As with Paolini's Inheritance Cycle books, this could easily have been broken up into two, or even three separate novels. There are even comfortable breakpoints in the story where it almost seems like this was the plan at the start. This is not a bad thing, by any means. The fact that this has the pacing of 3 books instead of one very long one, means that the story flows very well.
Kira is an excellent and well-written POV character. She feels real and human, and the book is long enough for her growth to feel organic. She continues to deal with the traumas of the early chapters through the end of the book, but her outlook and handling slowly evolves.
The crew of the Wallfish are diverse both in the classical sense, and in personality. In SciFi as a whole, starship crews are very often flat with one or two unique side characters. Every character on the ship is individual and complex, and their relationships with Kira are too. I think this is also a function of the length of the novel providing space for this complexity.
My biggest, and really only, complaint about the book is the "At the last second" syndrome. Many times, Kira or the crew of the Wallfish have found themselves in the midst of some inescapable chaos, and at the last possible second something unexpected happens and saves them all from dying. This happens at various points throughout the book, but in the climactic scene at the end, this happens four or five times in a row. This device can give a sense of urgency to a scene, or make you feel worried for the characters as they get out by the skin of their teeth, but it loses potency when it happens over and over and over again.
This is still a minor complaint, and it doesn't spoil the book by any means. I still loved this book and would definitely recommend it, especially if you enjoyed the Eragon books.
4/5
One audiobook-specific note here: The narrator reads the entire glossary at the end of the book, which takes over an hour... This definitely wasn't necessary lol
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, on the surface, is absolutely nothing like the Eragon series, which I read and cherished as a kid. This was a drastic change from the high fantasy world Paolini built with Eragon, but it evokes the same sense of wonder, the same awe at the world as the former did. It is undeniably a Paolini book, but fresh and exciting.
As with Paolini's Inheritance Cycle books, this could easily have been broken up into two, or even three separate novels. There are even comfortable breakpoints in the story where it almost seems like this was the plan at the start. This is not a bad thing, by any means. The fact that this has the pacing of 3 books instead of one very long one, means that the story flows very well.
Kira is an excellent and well-written POV character. She feels real and human, and the book is long enough for her growth to feel organic. She continues to deal with the traumas of the early chapters through the end of the book, but her outlook and handling slowly evolves.
The crew of the Wallfish are diverse both in the classical sense, and in personality. In SciFi as a whole, starship crews are very often flat with one or two unique side characters. Every character on the ship is individual and complex, and their relationships with Kira are too. I think this is also a function of the length of the novel providing space for this complexity.
My biggest, and really only, complaint about the book is the "At the last second" syndrome. Many times, Kira or the crew of the Wallfish have found themselves in the midst of some inescapable chaos, and at the last possible second something unexpected happens and saves them all from dying. This happens at various points throughout the book, but in the climactic scene at the end, this happens four or five times in a row. This device can give a sense of urgency to a scene, or make you feel worried for the characters as they get out by the skin of their teeth, but it loses potency when it happens over and over and over again.
This is still a minor complaint, and it doesn't spoil the book by any means. I still loved this book and would definitely recommend it, especially if you enjoyed the Eragon books.
4/5
One audiobook-specific note here: The narrator reads the entire glossary at the end of the book, which takes over an hour... This definitely wasn't necessary lol