The universe is huge, and if certain physicists are correct, the multiverse is even bigger than that. In all that space up there, the likelihood that life exists seems statistically unavoidable. What will that life look like, though? Who knows. What complicates this question is the technological capability of that life. Humans don’t live off-planet, but we’ve begun to modify our bodies in many ways. As technology and life outside a gravity well progress, what changes will we see? Will that life be recognizable? These are the questions that an excerpt of Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars left me pondering.
Disclaimer: I was provided a free, partial advanced reading copy of To Sleep in a Sea of Star in exchange for an honest review.
TL;DR
From the Publisher
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is a brand new epic novel from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Paolini.
Exploring new worlds is all Kira Navarez ever dreamed of doing. But now she has found her nightmare.
On a distant planet ripe for a colony, she has discovered a relic previously unseen by human eyes.
It will transform her entirely and forever.
Humanity will face annihilation.
She is alone. We are not.
There is no going back.
Review: To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Kira Navarez is a biologist in a surveying team, exploring a world in preparation for colonists to settle. The team’s activities are coming to a finish. Near the end of her time on the planet, Kira goes out to look for a lost drone. Instead, she falls down a hole into an alien artifact. Her life is forever changed. The reader follows Kira through this fall to recovering on the corporation’s ship in orbit to confinement in a military lab.
In the partial ARC I was given, it’s a first contact story. Aliens, yes, plural, exist in Kira’s universe, but until now, no humans had contact with any. Lucky Kira gets to be the first. Or maybe she’s just the first that survived. For the excerpt I read, there was a lot of world building, which I liked. This led to a feeling of slowness in the beginning, but soon the pace picked up.
Following Kira’s story after it gets off the ground (pun intended) was fun, and I enjoyed watching her adapt to her new life. For now, she’s the only character that really had an impact on me. But few of the other characters survived the excerpt. It makes me wonder if she’ll be alone for the whole book. Or can she even go home again? I’ll have to wait until September to find out.
Politics
Will I Finish To Sleep in a Sea of Stars?
Yes. I want to see where this goes. In the partial ARC that I got, enough ideas are presented to hook me. While I got to know Kira a little, I want to know more. How will she deal with all the loss of life surrounding her? And, reader, there are a lot of deaths. For the small amount of story, this excerpt was brutal. So many changes happen in Kira’s life, but she spends only a little time contemplating that her old life, the comforting, bland one, is over. I’d like to see how that plays out. Self-reflection exists in the story, but it’s cursory at best. She hasn’t really dealt with the loss of her friends or being a military lab rat. She hasn’t grieved for her old life. I hope to see more of this as the novel progresses. Not only do I want the answer to what life has in store for Kira Navarez, but I want to know how it affects and changes her. Because how she reacts leads into the bigger question that I don’t have an answer to: Is Kira still human?
Conclusion
Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars starts off well with big ideas and enough action to draw me in. My excerpt ended with Kira flying back to human civilization, and I’m interested in seeing what adventures lie ahead for her.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini is being released by Tor Books on September 15th, 2020.