Blurb:

Just came out yesterday. I've been looking forward to it for a while. 1/3rd of the way into the audiobook (hey there femshep) and it's really pretty gripping as sci-fi goes.

Kira is a tad bland, but I'm enjoying the expanse-y setting and plot devices, and I'm thankful that the prose is vastly superior to anything Daniel Abraham and his co-writer buddy have put out. The pacing needs a little work, but Paolini's style has really improved since his Eragon days.

I'll post a full review when I've finished it.

 

Huh, I didn't realise that Paolini had published something new. Definitely will have to look at picking it up, I know a lot of folk shit on Eragon and its sequels but I remember enjoying them when I was in school.

 

Same here. Thanks for the heads up regarding this @KHAAAAAAAN!!

 

Gonna spoil a few minor plot points in my review so here goes:

Spoiler

When I heard that Paolini had released a new book, I was excited beyond measure. Eragon had talking dragons and haughty elves! Paolini is brilliant! I need to get this.

Unfortunately, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is not quite the phenomenon I wanted it to be. Unlike most other reviews of this book I've come across, this one is going to be fairly negative. I disliked this book. I'm not going to go far enough to use the word "hate", but I will admit that reading this book the first time was a chore, to say the least. The main character is Kira, a xenobiologist. She's the star of the show. She's the one we're supposed to get behind. She's the child of destiny, so as to speak. Unfortunately, she's also a pretty one-dimensional character.

The problem with this book is that things just keep happening for no good reason. Good things happen to Kira: she doesn't need to fight for them. She gets mysterious advice from a woman with a cat (Angela and Solembum anyone?), she makes friends with a grumpy computer, she convinces a captain of a military ship that her dreams are the hope to all of humanity, people tell her she's the reason they survived despite her being the reason they were in the situation in the first place, ad infinitum.

That in of itself is a problem. But the second problem is that I am completely unable to identify with Kira the protagonist. She seems oddly flat to me. Her reactions to events are muted, her entire character seems like a way for the reader to find out more about the world. Her feelings, her ideas just don't seem to matter. She's the only one who can read and understand an alien script and people just believe her. There's absolutely no skepticism worth a damn. The ships she travels with have no dissenters. No one tries to talk her out of doing what she is. She trains for a few days and is able to satisfy people who've served in the military for years. She's, almost quite literally, encased with plot armour. It's unreal.

And then of course one gets to the very idea behind the "staff of blue". Sure, it's important. But Kira does the same thing as Eragon: she says it's important, people believe her. Like, it made sense for Eragon because magic and the lore of the dragon riders. But over here Kira is no one important. She's encased in an alien organism which no one has ever heard of. It sends her visions. Everyone agrees those visions are important. Everyone does what she asks them to do. Why is she Space-Jesus? What made her that? Why can I practically taste the plot armour?

Finally, I somehow doubt that Paolini had very good copy-editors. Not only is the verbiage unnecessary, reading a novel full of ellipses is not fun. I kept skimming across sections because I just couldn't find it within myself to give a damn. The writing is not industrial like Sanderson, it's not poetry like Rothfuss. It's just uninspired and bland.

I'm not going to give it a 1/5 because it's not trash-tier. But I think it deserves no more than 2/5 in its current state. If this is the best Paolini could come up with in 10 years, I don't think it's really worth reading his books from now on.

Spoiler-free TL;DR: No, it's not a great book. There's issues with the writing and the plot, the characters aren't done up properly, and the plot armour brings back my disbelief. Had this been a fanfic DLP would be debating between awarding a 1/5 or a 2/5 with a few people going for 3/5.