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astrangewind's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
After reading Fractal Noise, I was excited to read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. I'm not big into science fiction, but I loved how Paolini's universe came to life, human life, in Fractal Noise. So when I expected the same level of fiction in To Sleep, I was sorely disappointed.
Where Fractal Noise focuses on the fear of barren things, the unknown and unknowable, To Sleep focuses on... an alien spacesuit and intergalactic war. Really? I could read infinitely many other scifi books with an identical plot. That said, I know that there are many people out there who are into that kind of thing. I get that. But I feel like a lot of scifi authors tend to overdo their world-building; once you start describing the scary thing, it becomes worlds less scary. And having an alien supersuit that saves your life, stops you from feeling pain, heals people, grows plants, fixes machines, et cetera, becomes incredibly rote after the first dozen times it happens.
Speaking of rote, this book did not need to be 800+ pages. How many times do they scoot from one system to another, sometimes for no reason? How many times do the alien ships descend on them from "out of nowhere"? How many times is there an issue with the ship? a "serious" instance of cryo sickness? a life-threatening injury of one of the crew members that they "miraculously" live through? a member of the imperialist, beaurocracitc UMC acts like an imperialist beaurocrat until Kira expresses herself clearly and honestly, and then they throw all caution to the wind to believe her in total? (More than once, I'll tell you that much.) Paolini's editors needed to hit this one harder, I think.
Kira's relationships with others convinces me that Paolini has never been in love or had a sibling. Kira's sister doesn't come up often, but when she does, the interactions are stilted. (I have never once called my sister "sis." I do, however, call her "bro" roughly once per day.) Sibling dynamics aside, Kira's relationship with Alan is not well-defined and very awkward. (Who the hell uses "babe" as a term of endearment when you're both crying in a serious, terrifying moment? So weird.)It becomes even more weird given the frequency with which Alan and his death are mentioned in the remainder of the book, as though I cared about him from the start, or believed that they cared about each other. That relationship - and Kira's relationship with her family - feel so separated from her that I don't empathize when she talks about missing them. They never mattered that much to me as a reader.
In the first half of the book, I found it hard to understand why people trust Kira. She causes repeated problems- and it's not a secret that there's blood on her hands - yet the crew of the Wallfish continues to trust her with no second thought. To Paolini's credit, the second half of the book smooths this out a bit, but it doesn't mean that I ever found Kira particularly likable.
I'm for sure ragging on Paolini because I'm comparing this book against a more recent, obviously better book of his. His strengths do appear in this book, too. To Sleep ends in the only way it could have. He is not afraid of leaving questions unanswered.I did find the gift giving part a little bit silly, though. Things become much less interesting if you can solve any problem at the press of a button. And, like Angela in Inheritance, Gregorovich and Inare, both bizarre and cryptic, are a strength of Paolini's.
Ultimately, I don't regret reading this book, but the additional context did kind of ruin Fractal Noise for me, it should have been half as long, and it was generally mediocre.
Where Fractal Noise focuses on the fear of barren things, the unknown and unknowable, To Sleep focuses on... an alien spacesuit and intergalactic war. Really? I could read infinitely many other scifi books with an identical plot. That said, I know that there are many people out there who are into that kind of thing. I get that. But I feel like a lot of scifi authors tend to overdo their world-building; once you start describing the scary thing, it becomes worlds less scary. And having an alien supersuit that saves your life, stops you from feeling pain, heals people, grows plants, fixes machines, et cetera, becomes incredibly rote after the first dozen times it happens.
Speaking of rote, this book did not need to be 800+ pages. How many times do they scoot from one system to another, sometimes for no reason? How many times do the alien ships descend on them from "out of nowhere"? How many times is there an issue with the ship? a "serious" instance of cryo sickness? a life-threatening injury of one of the crew members that they "miraculously" live through? a member of the imperialist, beaurocracitc UMC acts like an imperialist beaurocrat until Kira expresses herself clearly and honestly, and then they throw all caution to the wind to believe her in total? (More than once, I'll tell you that much.) Paolini's editors needed to hit this one harder, I think.
Kira's relationships with others convinces me that Paolini has never been in love or had a sibling. Kira's sister doesn't come up often, but when she does, the interactions are stilted. (I have never once called my sister "sis." I do, however, call her "bro" roughly once per day.) Sibling dynamics aside, Kira's relationship with Alan is not well-defined and very awkward. (Who the hell uses "babe" as a term of endearment when you're both crying in a serious, terrifying moment? So weird.)
In the first half of the book, I found it hard to understand why people trust Kira. She causes repeated problems
I'm for sure ragging on Paolini because I'm comparing this book against a more recent, obviously better book of his. His strengths do appear in this book, too. To Sleep ends in the only way it could have. He is not afraid of leaving questions unanswered.
Ultimately, I don't regret reading this book, but the additional context did kind of ruin Fractal Noise for me, it should have been half as long, and it was generally mediocre.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, and War
Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Genocide, Gore, Torture, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, and Colonisation
Minor: Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Terminal illness, and Cannibalism
panickedhonking's review against another edition
Triggering content
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Physical abuse, Torture, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail
redbeanm0chi's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.25
To sleep in a sea of stars takes place a couple of hundred years into the future, where humanity has taken root out into the universe. We follow the story of xenobiologist Kira and her team as she makes first contact with a strange and mysterious alien artefact that thrusts her into an intergalactic war, pushing her to the limits of her identity and sanity. There’s awesome tech, found family, kinda living spaceships, space warfare, a beloved pig, a satisfying slow burn relationship, and discovery of really cool newfound alien powers.
Though there are on page descriptions of sexy times, it’s minimally graphic, so it gets a spicy score of 1.
This book really hit the sweet spot with realistic, descriptive science for me. There’s enough of it to be truly believable in the world without making the reading any kind of heavy (excluding the many pages long fictional science article at the end, goddamn Paolini).
I found the same balance between the dark, heavy scenes and the incredible humour that is reoccurring throughout all of the THIRTYTWO AND A HALV hours of this book.
There was some repetition of, among other things, Kira’s self pity and wallowing that did get a bit whiny and annoying to listen to, but over all it wasn’t impossible to get through. Like, that’s most of my criticism honestly.
“With no tongue to taste and no throat to sing, all names are equal.”
The book was effortlessly and refreshingly diverse and inclusive. The characters were above and beyond loveable and charming. The found family trope combined with the ragtag rogue group dynamics will always always steal my heart. The descriptions spanned from horrifying to hilarious, and descriptions of The Soft blade were especially lush and intriguing; every discovery about it was satisfying and giddy. And the slow build and exploration of Kira’s relationship with The Soft blade and with herself was so exciting all the way through.
“Miss Kira,” said Vishal, standing and joining them. “We know the risks and,” he bowed his head, his eyes soft and round, gentle. “We accept them with open hearts.”
“You shouldn’t have to though,” said Kira.
Vishal smiled and the pureness of his expression stopped her. “Of course not Miss Kira, but life is such, yes? And war is such.”
It’s impossible to not praise the audiobook narrator. I can’t help but be in AWE of Jennifer Hale and to find out this was her FIRST EVER AUDIOBOOK????? Getting a voice actor with experience with games and stuff was a power move. Her ACCENTS, her character work, her clarity and enunciation without sacrificing a shred of emotion and inflection- it’s masterfully done. It was so engaging and immersive to listen to her that the thirty-something hours honestly just flew by. I would recommend everyone, even those who’ve already read the physical copy, to listen to the audiobook just to be dazzled by the scope of Jennifer Hale’s voice.
The ending hit me somewhere soft behind my ribs. Hearing Christopher Paolini say he started with only the beginning and the end, and that every single word in between was written to end up where it did, made a lot of sense for me. It lost me a little bit at the end after the explosion. I’m not entirely sure why; it might have gotten a little too speculative after how grounded the rest of the book was in real life science, but it absolutely towed me mostly back at the very end. I’ll be thinking of it for a long time.
“The universe was so beautiful it hurt. So very very beautiful. And yet at the same time so full of ugliness. Some born of the inexorable demands of entropy. Some born of the cruelty that seemed innate to all sentient beings. And none of it made any sense. It was all glorious, horrible nonsense. Fit to inspire both despair and numinosity.”
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror and Torture
akfowly's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
This book made me feel emotions, i.e. I cried several times reading through. I cared about Kira by the end, though I'll admit to having been pretty ambivalent to her for most of the book. I do find Paolini's world building and alien-building to be fairly creative -- I definitely appreciate that the communication was not standard 'human-style', and there were some twists and turns along the way that I found compelling. I found the writing style to be kind of choppy/clunky and a bit of a drag for the first couple sections of the book, but found that after a certain point either I got used to it, or it made more sense. I'm willing to accept that this could be because I don't typically read science fiction these days, and might just be a feature of the genre.
In the end I think I might have enjoyed the book? I have some quibbles about Kira's fate. It felt almost a little like it leaned too hard into a few tropes about women, but it was still unexpected and creative. I read this as part of a christmas present for my mom, so it wasn't my first choice of a book, and if it hadn't been for that I probably would have stopped reading before part 1 ended. For an almost 900 page book, it lacks heavily in character development.
Also, I don't care for the world-building info-dump I discovered at the end of the book when I went back to check a couple things for this review -- if you want to tell me that a pepper was cultivated by someone before they won a 'tri-solar hot pepper bash', incorporate it in the text.
Important: I don't care for the way Paolini portrayed the non-white characters and women in this book, to be completely honest. There were definitely moments where Kira's perspective felt uncomfortable to read, and pulled me out of the flow as I was reminded that a man wrote her, especially as she was perceiving herself and some of the male characters. Also when she had 'emotions' she felt less believable/real than the (2/3 male-coded) maybe more robot-than-human ship minds. It felt a little like she spent the entire book (which covers maybe up to a couple years of time? Hard to follow the timeline between her dissociating and the cryo gaps, tbh) dissociating from shock, and viewing the world through a looking glass.
In general the romance aspects of this book felt clunky and unrealistic/lacked emotion**, and even as an avid romance reader, I could have done without it. On the note of Hwa Jung, I did not care for her portrayal - it felt at times like a series of microaggressions rather than a whole person. Kira's own heritage is only alluded to via her last name, so it felt a little bit checkboxy, i.e. they are not white because that's what's 'in' vs. creating full and complete intentional characters. Also felt pretty uncomfortable about the other two romances - Hwa Jung and Sparrow felt like another 'diversity' checkbox, and the Dr. who was being antagonized by the gal and then suddenly they were having sex and then engaged to be married felt...bizarre to say the least.
My other big quibble is that a huge twist in the book relies really heavily on unreliable narrator and hinges pretty heavily on something that in my opinion is actually a moment where he figured it out at the end and forgot to make sure the beginning still fit the timing right. Without giving spoilers, it has to do with the timing of Kira's first and subsequent contact experiences and the origin of something that I don't think quite fits with the explanation at the end.
In the end I think I might have enjoyed the book? I have some quibbles about Kira's fate. It felt almost a little like it leaned too hard into a few tropes about women, but it was still unexpected and creative. I read this as part of a christmas present for my mom, so it wasn't my first choice of a book, and if it hadn't been for that I probably would have stopped reading before part 1 ended. For an almost 900 page book, it lacks heavily in character development.
Also, I don't care for the world-building info-dump I discovered at the end of the book when I went back to check a couple things for this review -- if you want to tell me that a pepper was cultivated by someone before they won a 'tri-solar hot pepper bash', incorporate it in the text.
Important: I don't care for the way Paolini portrayed the non-white characters and women in this book, to be completely honest. There were definitely moments where Kira's perspective felt uncomfortable to read, and pulled me out of the flow as I was reminded that a man wrote her, especially as she was perceiving herself and some of the male characters. Also when she had 'emotions' she felt less believable/real than the (2/3 male-coded) maybe more robot-than-human ship minds. It felt a little like she spent the entire book (which covers maybe up to a couple years of time? Hard to follow the timeline between her dissociating and the cryo gaps, tbh) dissociating from shock, and viewing the world through a looking glass.
In general the romance aspects of this book felt clunky and unrealistic/lacked emotion**, and even as an avid romance reader, I could have done without it. On the note of Hwa Jung, I did not care for her portrayal - it felt at times like a series of microaggressions rather than a whole person. Kira's own heritage is only alluded to via her last name, so it felt a little bit checkboxy, i.e. they are not white because that's what's 'in' vs. creating full and complete intentional characters. Also felt pretty uncomfortable about the other two romances - Hwa Jung and Sparrow felt like another 'diversity' checkbox, and the Dr. who was being antagonized by the gal and then suddenly they were having sex and then engaged to be married felt...bizarre to say the least.
My other big quibble is that a huge twist in the book relies really heavily on unreliable narrator and hinges pretty heavily on something that in my opinion is actually a moment where he figured it out at the end and forgot to make sure the beginning still fit the timing right. Without giving spoilers, it has to do with the timing of Kira's first and subsequent contact experiences and the origin of something that I don't think quite fits with the explanation at the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body horror
Minor: Racism, Sexual content, Colonisation, and Dysphoria
sometimes_samantha_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
This book was a beast. It took a long time to finish but it was worth it! The fight scenes were wel-written, judt a bit overdone bu tue end I think. Otherwise, this is the best sci-fi I've read in years and I'm happy to know that a second book is in the works.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, War, and Injury/Injury detail
darkefyres's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Cursing, Sexual content, Vomit, and War
Minor: Medical content
mar's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
this book was a lot of fun!!! loved how it seemed like hard sci-fi and science fantasy simultaneously. but it did Not need to be 880 pages long. anyway gregorovich my beloved <3
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Grief, Medical trauma, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Sexual content, Torture, and Vomit
Minor: Body shaming, Child death, Pregnancy, and Fire/Fire injury
kateemily's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture
Minor: Death
whatswithrandy's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Violence, and War
Minor: Confinement, Sexual content, Torture, and Forced institutionalization
kfergey's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Gore, Violence, Xenophobia, Grief, and War
Minor: Infertility, Mental illness, Sexual content, and Torture