![]() Her sight was more than human she could see lines of force radiating from the infinitely long border-flashes of electromagnetic energy that betrayed vast discharges of energy. The design was complicated beyond her ability to comprehend, and it shifted as she watched, the edges of the shapes shimmering as they changed, growing and evolving according to the precepts of some unknown logic. She floated before a fractal design, blue and dark and etched into the surface of a standing stone. The Soft Blade in particular, is an evocative and rich alien (or Xeno as Kira puts it), with a point of view we only discern through Kira’s growing awareness: I don’t want to give anything away, and this is a book where spoilers really matter, however, Paolini does a particularly good job in allowing the distinctive qualities of each of the aliens to remain mysterious and resists what would have been a natural desire to anthropomorphise. ![]() Paolini makes no secret of the influence, but Paolini’s Fractalverse is decidedly unique, and Kira makes for a deeply engaging protagonist whose narrative arc is extensive. A few that came to my mind while reading this include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dune, and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series. The book owes a big debt to the sci-fi canon. The consequences of this visit are more wide-reaching than anyone can fathom, and transform Kira in ways that are both devastating and transcendent. There’s just one small mission that Kira needs to do in order to investigate some unidentified organic material picked up by drone before they leave. The couple have been moving from one job to another and spending too much time apart, but they have just had 4 months together while studying Adrasteia, an uncolonised moon, and have decided to apply for a more stable life as colonists on one of the new colonies. Kira and her partner Alan have been working for the Lapsang Trading Corporation, an interstellar organisation that creates colonies on uninhabited worlds, and also seems to do a bit of mining. The book is focused around its protagonist, Kira Navárez, a young, smart xenobiologist. Around it glittered a field of stars, bright against the black of space, while beneath the goat’s lidless glare stretched a grey wasteland streaked with stone. ![]() The orange gas giant, Zeus, hung low above the horizon, huge and heavy and glowing with a ruddy half-light. The work displays a great deal of creative ingenuity, with well-developed and interesting aliens (who are neither like ET nor like super-humans), witty spacecraft banter, all sorts of fun technologies, a super fast-paced plot line that is deeply engaging-this is an easy-read- and description that is often poetic, charged by an obvious love of astronomy: ![]() Paolini has successfully crossed-over into the sci fi realm and it’s obvious he’s done his physics homework, utilising existing science and scientific theories in a way that would make Arthur C Clark proud. In this world, it’s possible to travel very long distances using Faster than Light (FTL) technology, brains can be expended, de-coupled from the body, and preserved as “ship minds”, humans can band together to form “hive minds”, limbs, organs and even bodies can be printed, messages are sent head to head without the need for a machine, and colonisation is taken to its extreme. The world of Alagaësia was detailed and rich, and the Fractalverse of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is even more encompassing: a future universe where very advanced science has led humans to inhabit outer space. What worked perfectly for me was the world creation. However, I feel the same way about the battle scenes in Lord of the Rings, so you can take that assessment with a grain of salt. To my mind, some of the battle scenes could have been tightened and shortened somewhat. In spite of its size, the book is as fast a read as any of the books in the Inheritance series – action oriented, with enough cliff-hangers to keep the forward momentum. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is Science Fiction rather than fantasy, and it’s 800+ pages. I haven’t read the series as many times as my daughter, but I was still very excited when Paolini’s book was released late last year, specifically for an adult audience. That didn’t work because whoever was reading couldn’t stop at the end of their chapter, but it was such a fast-paced read that everyone got their turn. The day that the final book in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance series arrived, my children went wild, arguing over who would read it first, and in the end the only thing that calmed everyone was a sharing arrangement with each person reading a chapter.
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