A review by gladiolus17
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini

adventurous emotional funny hopeful tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a ride from start to finish and I enjoyed every bit of it. Paolini really put his heart into this book.

I liked many things about this, so in no particular order:

(Sorry for any spelling mistakes, I listened on audiobook)

-Paolini may have used his creative license with the science, but I sure couldn’t have told where he used it. Kira sounded like a xenobiologist and a regular user of spaceships, and everything sciencey that happened was written with confidence and clarity.

-Sometimes you can tell when a woman was written by a man. In this case, I could not tell. I think Paolini wrote Kira with realism and sensitivity.

-BOB THE NUMENIST

-Related to the above, I was delighted with every humorous part of the book. Sometimes the story can get serious, but the humor catches you off guard in a good way.

-Fuckin loved Gregoravich the ship mind. Everything he said was so off-beat and delightful.

-I discovered I love aliens as a trope? I felt so sympathetic to the jellies, especially Itari.

With every book, there were some things that didn’t work for me, but it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the overall book. Here’s the things I thought could better suit my taste:

-The writing is great on a macro level, but it could be more specific and more trimmed on a sentence/paragraph level. This is in the instances of describing emotions and feelings mostly.

-I had mixed feelings on Alan. I could have used some specific instances of Kira and his relationship to make me sympathize with him more. He was described as wonderful, but I didn’t see much action or scenes that revealed this.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, and the audiobook was fantastic. The book has both character and plot, but I would say that this is more plot and world-building heavy. If you like sci-fi books heavy on detail and science, this is the book for you.
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