Title: To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Author: Christopher Paolini

Pub. Date: September 15, 2020

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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 . . .

This will be a spoiler free review. I listened to the audiobook via Audible. Jennifer Hale did a wonderful job narrating the book and bringing it to life. You can check out my excerpt review of TSIASOS here.

You know when you read those books that you absolutely, 100% thoroughly enjoyed and they made you feel everything?

Yeah?

You know how those same books leave you utterly speechless, sitting in your own mess of emotions about the book?

Yeah?

Well, I don’t know how to review this book. To put my feelings into words. It’s been maybe…roughly two weeks since I finished this book – which by the way, had me in tears while at work – and I still don’t know what to say.

Well, I don’t know anything profound or beautifully meaningful to say.

I loved this book – that doesn’t even sound right. It doesn’t have the depth of what I truly feel, but I fucking loved this book. It was everything I could ever want in a SF novel, and now I’m terrified to work on my own SF novel.

I legit cannot think of a single thing that I had an issue with. I have no complaints. I enjoyed every single moment of this book – even the bittersweet ending.

I feel like I’m not doing a really good job at selling this book to y’all. There are just some books that I can’t review the way I normally do.

I’ve been sitting here for like 10 minutes trying to gather words, but I don’t have any. Anytime I think about this book I get so into my head about certain scenes, and characters and it’s like re-reading and re-living it all over again. Then I think about that last scene and I want to cry.

Paolini truly did a phenomenal job writing this book. For how long it is, it never feels long. It’s pretty fast paced, but in the Goldilocks just right kind of way. The characters are engaging, and you like them. The plot is fantastic and once again, Paolini has made me want to be a better writer. Shit, I can only hope I’m as good as he is.

I’m just going to leave you with this gif, because honestly, it sums up my feelings about this book.

If you’ve read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, either link me your reviews, or let me know in the comments what you thought! This is easily one of my top reads of 2020 and I’m really excited to see what Paolini does next. I wish I could put all my feelings into words, but I think I’d have to re-read it a few times before I could do that. This book blew me away and the wait was well worth it – no matter how painful it was. It made my SF loving heart so incredibly happy and I already know I’ll be re-reading it and pushing it onto friends and family to read.