To Sleep in a Sea of Stars – Christopher Paolini

Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds. Now she’s awakened a nightmare. During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human. 

While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity’s greatest and final hope…

I received an eARC in exchange for an honest review

My Rating: 3.75 Stars

Space Operas seem to be a hit or miss for me. Some of them are a bit too slow and a bit too technical for me, while others are exactly what I’m looking for and I find myself obsessively devouring them. TSIASOS somehow fell right in between the two. I loved the epic battle scenes, they were written so well and kept me absolutely hooked. This is also a book that had so much going on that I expect I’ll need to reread at some point to ensure that I catch all of the small details.

I generally don’t like traveling in books as I find that it can be tedious. There was a fair amount of space travel in this, and I did struggle with those chapters. That said, they were used for Kira’s character development, so I understood why they were important. It was an odd mix for me because I wanted to see Kira’s growth but I also wanted for the pacing to speed up again. Apparently I’m just a bloodthirsty reader. Who knew?

There were parts of the plot where the pacing slowed down and it fit and made total sense to me, and there were others that seemed completely unnecessary. Some chapters could’ve been lifted right out of the book and I feel as though it would’ve flowed better without changing the overall plot.