On dropping out of FTL travel, there’s generally a very different landscape and at first it seems like things have escalated ridiculously quickly. As a result, while anyone else on the ship is on ice for the duration of an FTL (faster than light) trip, Kira spends much of her time training with the Xeno, gradually improving her control over it. The Xeno protects Kira, and as a side product of this, the usual cocktail of drugs for cryosleep won’t work on her any more. It’s not chest-bursting brutality here, but there is still a surprising savagery which made me re-evaluate my expectations of the book as a whole.įrom this point onwards, there’s a lot of travel through deep space, and a fair bit of battle. This really starts to kick off around that 65- to 70-page mark where we have an almost Alien-esque moment introducing us to the Xeno. My ratings breakdown for this book is as follows, and in the rest of this review I’ll touch on some of the broader points in more detail: PlotĪs the synopsis says, “war erupts among the stars and Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation,” and she “might be humanity’s greatest and final hope”. Kira spends the rest of the book coming to terms with her new situation and gaining the upper hand in the partnership, while also working to stop the war that has broken out between humans and aliens. This all happens while our POV character is out of contact, effectively in cryosleep, so it’s a bit of a surprise for the reader. Shortly after this key moment of first contact, aliens are brought into the story in a big way, and it’s not long before there’s all out war. She soon finds herself wrapped in a “skinsuit” – forming a symbiotic partnership with what she first thinks of as “the Xeno”. While investigating a strange signal, just as her team is packing up to leave at the end of the mission, Kira is exposed to an alien substance. Kira Navárez is a xenobiologist on a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet. I feel like this is the key element of the novel as a whole, and if you’ve read or seen any other reviews for this book, chances are you will already be aware of this. This will be in the following paragraph, but will be referred to throughout this review. The dust jacket / back of book blurb is quite vague, even as blurbs go, and to properly review this novel, I feel a mild spoiler from around the 65- to 70-page mark is required. From an early point the book surprised me – I went into it mostly blind, having read the synopsis some months before picking up the book, but then again, the synopsis doesn’t really give much away anyway. I don’t read a lot of sci-fi, so I’m not the best authority on this, but I thought it was a pretty good offering. ![]() There are also a handful of full-page illustrations and star charts that take up some of that space.įor the most part, I really enjoyed this book. ![]() It’s a hefty book, weighing in at just under 900 pages, however the final 50 or so make up appendices, a glossary, and a couple of addendums to the main story (snippets of background info, but in a story-type format). To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is the first foray into science fiction for Christopher Paolini, author of the YA fantasy series the Inheritance Cycle. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Fractalverse #1, by Christopher Paolini
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