To Sleep In A Sea Of Stars by Christopher Paolini

Format: Audio (BorrowBox)
Read: January 2025

I picked this audiobook because it’s read by Jennifer Hale, the incredible voice actress behind Bastilla in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and the female Shepherd in Mass Effect. Two of my favourite videogames of all time! I have very fond memories of both characters, but I’ve played the Mass Effect trilogy at least 6 times the whole way through and I’m FemShep every time, she’s a part of my subconscious at this point!

Jennifer Hale is the G.O.A.T.

I was aware of Christopher Paolini’s very popular children’s book Eragon but I’ve never read it, all I really know about it is it’s about dragons and it’s very long for a children/teen’s book! To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is science fiction, so a departure in genre but it’s also very long at 880 pages, or 22.5 audiobook hours.

Too fucking long. Readers of my reviews will know how I feel about books over 400 pages (it’s almost always unnecessary!).

I got 10 hours into this, about 45% and I’ve had to give up. Jennifer Hale does an amazing job (I love having a story read to me by Shephard!) but even her talent can’t save this book, and that is very sad to me! I realised I was becoming reluctant to listen and I just didn’t care about anything that was happening, which means it’s time to write it off as a DNF.

I was initially very excited about the potential of this book, not just because of Jennifer Hale. I enjoyed the beginning and the setting up of Kira’s relationship with Alan, I related to her feelings over finally finding someone thoughtful and supportive, of the excitement over taking the next big step together. Alan reminded me of my fiancé! I had a feeling he was going to die (nobody gets away with being this happy in a relationship at the start of an 880 page novel!), and assumed the rest of the book would deal with the grief of losing a great love before they could really build a life together… Plus cool space shit.

But that isn’t what happened, and this illustrates a big fault for me in this book. Kira doesn’t feel like a real person, her behaviour and personality are never consistent. Alan dies, along with all her friends, in the most horrifyingly traumatic way and she barely has an emotional reaction. Yes, a lot of other stuff was also going on – first contact with hostile aliens, and she has mysterious sentient alien armour grafted to her skin – but also if all this crazy shit was happening that would surely be when you’d really miss your best friend and support?! She hardly spares a thought for him, or her other teammates. When she does it always feels like Paolini suddenly remembered how he wrote the start of the book and it has the feeling of a token acknowledgement, devoid of real emotion.

I don’t understand who she is. The beginning highlights her insecurities over feeling an outsider, then that’s never explored or presents an issue again. She is afraid of the Xeno for about 10 minutes, quite quickly learns to work with it then never worries about it accidentally everyone around her again. There was not enough struggle with it to be satisfying, suddenly it’s like she had a super power and is essentially invulnerable. I would say she reminds me of a lower-tier YA novel protagonist.

I listened to 10 hours and it felt like the plot barely moved. Yes things happened, big action things, but the story didn’t advance. I felt no closer to understanding the soft blade, the aliens, or how Kira’s was going to meet her goals.

It actually reminded me a lot of a videogame, not just because of Jennifer Hale’s voice! Chapters often felt like levels, particularly with the action sections, and the other characters were all two-dimensional stereotypes. And then of course Kira’s xeno and the new powers she kept unlocking!

There is so much telling and no showing. Each new character on the Wallfish was introduced by Kira making a load of assumptions about them pretty much just based on just looking at them, and given the quality of writing by the 45% mark I have doubts about whether any of that is challenged. It’s just think its a really uninteresting way to introduce characters. Really that sums up being in Kira’s POV for me, it’s boring to read.

That could have worked, it could have been fun if I’d had any emotional investment or liked any of the characters. I just found it empty. I enjoy science-fiction most when it’s used to explore something about humanity –  our relationships to technology, each other or alien entities – something. This an 880 page that book seemed to have nothing to say, it’s just a collection of cool sci-fi tropes from movies and videogames.

I am really disappointed. Doubly so because it seems this series of books are the only audiobooks Jennifer Hale has narrated! I sincerely hope she does more!