Book Review: “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars” by Christopher Paolini

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini

I haven’t read much of Paolini’s work, and I gather that this book is a departure from his earlier stories. I can’t say how this new book would satisfy fans of his earlier stories.

This is full blown space opera, interstellar war and all. And a pretty good one.

As humans are stowing expanding to nearby star systems, a routine survey stumbles upon an alien artefact only the second ever found.  Exobiologist Kira accidently triggers what turns out to be some kind of intelligent nano swarm, that surrounds and melds with her body.  We should note that this contamination is about as bad a job as an exobiologist can possibly do.  Major professional FU!

Worse, awakening the swarm triggers a sudden violent attack from previously unnoticed aliens.  Oops!

Stuff happens.  Lots of shooting, lots of star travel, lots of politics, within and across species. 

The war soon becomes a three way, and the third gang turns out to be a nasty, borgish, variation on ‘gray goo’—a nanotech enabled swarm that assimilates every lifeform it encounters. Uh-oh!

Kira must struggle to deal with her symbiote, to try unravel it’s nature and history.   This becomes even more urgent as it becomes clear that Kira + symbiote are at the center of the war, and may well have triggered the war.

So she must figure it all out for her own survival, for the survival of her friends and family, the survival of humanity, and to end the interstellar war before all the participants are wiped out.

It’s a huge canvas for a story, and there could be sequels.

Paolini has put a lot of effort into the technology, exobiology, and future societies, so there is a lot of satisfactory SF thrill here.  Weapons and battles. But also cool starships, intelligences, and civilizations. And some neat aliens.

Furthermore, the plot is intricate, but moves along.  He fleshes out the characters pretty well, even the aliens.  (OK, maybe there’s a tad more chit-chat than needed in some places. But how else can he build the characters?)

There’s a lot of fighting ship-to-ship and hand-to-hand.  It is easy to see the influence of video games on these scenes.  A lot of running and gunning, with new threats popping up as the last is defeated.  This kind of writing is not necessarily all that interesting, though Paolini does a pretty good job, even if the battles do tend to run on.

Overall, this is a fine space opera, well worth the long read.  And I will certainly look forward to any sequels.

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1. Christopher Paolini, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, New York, TOR, 2020.

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