To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini

Amy   
Lynnie

science fiction, action-suspense

Kira is a scientist about to embark on a future in which she is more in control of her destiny when she stumbles upon an incredible discovery and her life changes forever. She must move forward with care since the balance of the world is in her hands.

Amy's Review

This is a completely different type of novel for Christopher Paolini, the genius behind the Eragon series. Although, upon a little more thought, the adventures of both Eragon and this novel begin when an innocent person stumbles upon an extraordinary life form. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars takes place in space in the distant future.  After a brief introduction which is engaging but painfully obvious in its impending tragedy, the pace is suddenly thrust forward at warp speed and doesn’t let go. 

Paolini does an incredible job explaining action-filled, otherworldly scenes. However, he does not get into female characters’ heads very well. Kira, the main character, never felt believable. In fact, she experienced trauma after trauma and handled most of it like a stoic.  This from a person who went on too long about her romantic relationship at the beginning of the book as if she was a person with too many feelings rather than not enough.

About halfway through this very long novel (almost 900 pages), it was beginning to lose momentum for me. I mean, there was still plenty of (too much?!) action but, in addition to not buying in to Kira’s character, it got a bit convoluted and complicated. And a particular scene written in all italics did a lousy job of explaining the existence of a type of alien. Rather, it was bizarre and too lengthy. After I’d read a bit further and Kira’s interpretation was revealed, I had to go back and re-read that section to try to make sense of it. That definitely helped. But I thought that, for such a pivotal moment in the story, it should have been written much more clearly.

I decided to go with it but by about the 75% mark, I was honestly ready to quit the novel. It started feeling silly.  Silly conversations. Silly situations. Everything had become so unbelievable and far-fetched that it had lost me.  Alas, after investing this much time in it, I was curious to see how the author would wrap everything up.  And then around the 90% mark it started getting completely ridiculous.  I started skimming pages because all the detail was not necessary and it was obviously going to be a very long “fight”. I really only needed the highlights and the outcome.  It was just too unbelievable for me to truly enjoy. 

Finally, the end of the novel was really good (after the long fight was over) and actually touching.  But I think I would’ve liked this novel more if it were about 1/3 shorter. It was simply too much. And then I barely had the desire to glimpse the addendum at the end. I wasn’t interested in learning how the author could defend the science and it was very dry material.  In my opinion, fictional novels should not require glossaries or detailed background data.  Any information needed should be shared in the story itself.  If I ever DO feel the need to refer to reference material, I’m not enjoying the novel enough for it to matter.

Lynnie's Review

This book took forever for me to read, partly because it was long, but mostly because I was rarely inspired to pick it up. Honestly, I should have abandoned this book about 25% in, but it’s the end of the year & I felt like I had time to meander in a book for a while.

For a book that was literally filled with action, it was weirdly dull & predictable. Aliens, military, rogue civilians, fight... regroup... repeat. Also, in Paolini's world, it's not enough to have multiple types of aliens; within each type (family?) of alien, there are multiple varieties- it’s like Paolini could not decide what he wanted so he added every single idea that came into his mind. It was distracting & the minutiae of his details ended up taking away from the actual story.

Paolini also did not do a great job of writing a female lead character- at no time did she seem believable & at one point in the story he spent nearly an entire chapter dealing with a subplot of her period in the most ridiculous way. It felt very much like he was saying, “look at me, I can write about a woman & her body” even though it leant absolutely NOTHING to the plot & was just... odd. I liked several characters throughout, but it wasn’t enough to make up for the plot.

Overall, I could see what Paolini was trying to do with this story, but in the end I didn’t care.