I have this troublesome relationship with sci fi books where I find the beginnings very hard to trudge through but then comes a point where, for lack of a better term, shit hits the fan. If the story & characters are interesting enough, I stick around because the part that comes after is worth it.

I’d say TSIASOS is following that pattern. I find Kira somewhat annoying but she’s smart and so she’s grown on me. The xeno is definitely someone I look forward to meeting as the story goes on. Kira’s romance with Alan seems sort of cliche & was probably the least exciting part. I do understand the relationship, it’s just their interactions I found lack lustre. But in the second half of the galley, Paolini’s gift for prose and characterisation really starts to come across & the galley ends at the perfect spot to leave you wanting for more.

It’s a hard job when you’re a beloved writer with a beloved story and people expect everything you write after to be the next big thing as well. But I have utter faith in Paolini’s knack for writing and research so I‘ll happily read through the tough parts when this book comes out.

I knew when Christopher Pasolini was releasing a sci-fi book it was going to be amazing..
this definitely did not let me down. My only problem? Now I have to wait for the whole book to come out!!

I am so lucky and excited to have gotten the chance to read the first look of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. Then again, I now have to wait for the rest of the book, so maybe I'm not so lucky? All I can say is, this book has completely gotten into my head, and I am so unbelievably excited to see what happens next!

When I first heard that Christopher Paolini was writing a heavy science fiction novel, I was both curious and a bit concerned (being that he's most famous for his fantasy series). Having read the first look, I can honestly say that this was the right call for him. He's broken all of the expectations set on him by his early success and has taken some real risks here. They're already paying off, though perhaps I'm biased in saying so.

I'm already enchanted with this tale, and desperately want to see it's conclusion. Only a little bit longer now...

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Sneak Peek (ebook)
by Christopher Paolini
the young writer i grew up with has grown up literally. Christopher Paolini has produced another story that the avid fan can follow. This is a little darker than Eragon, and has more substance as well. The first extraterrestrial xeno contact with humanity, is just the tease. Horrific and heroically he portrays the events, where the reader is glued to the page trying to see if their character finds a solution to the mounting problems, and grief before her. His development of character, and plot twists is riveting. I found it hard to sleep trying to get through this tease of the book, I can not wait for the release and to finish the story.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini is exactly what I expected, maybe not on a content level but on a quality level. I wish this was a full galley so I could write a full review but the part that we did get to experience is on par with the books he has written before. The Inheritance Cycle was one of my favorite series growing up and rereading it has always been exciting to me even as an adult. I jumped at the chance to read this partial galley as soon as I saw his name pop up. I am NOT a fan of space adventures at all generally but somehow he still pulled me in and kept me interested the entire time. I cannot wait to get my hands on the full book.

Thank you netgalley for this advanced excerpt of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini.
I NEED MORE.
The story had me hooked and i totally forgot i wasn't going to be able to finish the book! Oh man the sci-fi aspect of it such a cool concept! It had me transported to the places they were at. I cannot WAIT to read the rest of this book!

As expected Paoini has some wonderful ideas and an interesting and exciting way of presenting them. I appreciate the world building and the depth of interaction with the protagonist and the symbiote. I do feel that the characters response was strong, but not in a way that was explained. I also feel that the story has been slow to build. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here.

I don’t usually enjoy science fiction books but I did enjoy this one. The author kept me intrigued enough to keep going back!

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars misses the mark. Kira, the main character comes off as needy and a bit entitled. The romance between her and Alan is paper thin and comes across as a cloudy holographic projection of love, rather than a real relationship. The coupling between Kira and Alan felt rushed to the point that I did not care about their love nor what became of it. The reader was left completely out of their love story, only catching glimpses of acts that bordered on childishly fairytale styled romantics. The problem was that there was too much ‘telling’ and not enough ‘showing.’ We were constantly told how much Kira cared for and wants to be with Alan, and that sentiment generally led into disjointed love scenes that began in a blur and ended in a disappointing fizzle. The plot itself is interesting but the implementation, poor. Too many characters are introduced in the beginning and the author does so in such a quick succession that everyone seems peripheral, including the protagonist. The opportunity to get to know the characters was never really given so I was not invested in their wellbeing. More horror that science fiction, when the bad things started to happen, I was left not caring what happened to whom and why. Suffering from surface writing that was unsuccessful in bringing the reader down into the flesh and marrow of the story, this novel failed to engross me not from a lack of premise, but from the implementation of it’s content.

I had high hopes going into this, because I was a huge fan of the Eragon series. Paolini did not disappoint! I cannot wait to finish this and get some closure, as the world he created is intoxicating.

I have been waiting eagerly for years to read this book and this partial galley has me got even more excited for the release!!!! Gahhh!!! Can’t wait to get my hands on this one

Paolini makes the transition from YA fantasy to adult science fiction is a seamless manner and in a way that readers who like his style will still love this book. I was hooked from early on and am anxiously awaiting the full book.

Having been a fan of this author's previous books, I was all in when this partial galley was being made available to read.

I started it this morning and finished it. Cannot wait for September! See publisher's and other reviewers for the tale's details. . . .this is my response to today's read:

So far, if you are looking for dragons, they are not here. This is SCI-FI, for sure, and although the older I get, the less I'm into sci-fi, this has my 110% attention. There's a girl and a boy on a spaceship, and when the heavy petting happens in the first chapters you know that's not a good thing (think red shirts). . . .I was concerned when all seemed lost in the next chapter and then *boom* the author blows your mind with a game changer, and I stayed in till the "to be continued, see you in Sept 2020" last line.

If you like your sci-fi off-planet, or The Martian or any of those other books where aliens possess humans, space vehicles get their own names (Dave, Ron, Sheila, Bishop, etc.) and converse freely. . . .yeah. You'll dig this.

5 stars, each wringing all 5 points as they wait for Sept 2020!

An enthusiastic thank you to Christopher Paolini, Tor Books and NetGalley for providing me an ARC to read and review.

If I were stranded on a desert Island this is one of the books I'd like to have with me. It is good from the very first chapter and the action doesn't stop. I love the premise of traveling to other planets and interacting with new life forms. Christopher Paolini has produced a book that is impossible to put down. I was only able to sample a portion of the book through NetGalley, but I will be downloading the Kindle version to finish the story on September 15th. Upon finishing this sample I was looking up other books that the author has written, and I'll definitely be adding those to my reading list as well.

A great look into what's coming! I've been a fan of Christopher Paolini since Eragon came out -- he puts a lot of thought into world building which is something I love. He's great at creating well-rounded characters, even if they die like 10 pages after you meet them, so I'm not quite sure who's going to be a main character, which isn't a bad thing? Just different and kinda fun to be kept guessing. I'm very interested to see him explore sci-fi and the many possibilities that offers!

This was my first time reading a book from the author who is famous for his Eragon series. The partial galley ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ by Christopher Paolini was offered to me on Netgalley via Macmillan Tor/Forge and caught my interest once the action started rolling.

The meat and potatoes of this story and how it hooked me to want to know more came during the last few chapters of the galley copy. The main character becomes more fleshed out and more dimensional once the shell of her former live starts to peel away. I wasn’t sure if the deeper relationships that were cemented in the first part of the story were even necessary for her to move forward. Perhaps that becomes clearer in the full version, so I’m looking forward to getting myself a copy because I do want to see how the story turns out. The world building was just starting to get interesting so I feel deprived.

Looking forward to finishing the adventure once it’s published in September.

Since this is only a partial arc, I can only review the sample portion. But let me give that an immediate 5 stars and pending as it was so good. Paolini is such an exciting author to me and this segment does not disappoint!

Like many people, I read Eragon as a kid so I was curious to see Paolini's venture into adult science fiction, so I was excited to get approved for this preview.

I am definitely hooked! It seems like it is going to be intriguing and action packed. I definitely wasn't expecting it to have more of a horror element, if you like spooky science fiction this will definitely be something for you to check out. The beginning was a bit hard to get into at first (mostly there was a lot of romance. Kira and Alan calling each other "babe" all of the time took me out of the book a bit as it made it feel more contemporary) but I was intrigued by the world right away. I feel like Paolini is definitely going to put his own spin on the whole sentient beings thing, and I was impressed at how scientific everything seemed.

I'm looking forward to being able to read the rest in September!

Huge thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to review this partial galley!

I’m still not really sure how to feel about the part of the story I’ve read so far. I was a huge fan of the Inheritance Cycle when I was younger and when I saw Paolini had not only written an entirely new book, but that it was sci-fi, I was very excited. However, reading the partial galley of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars left me unsure about whether I just have higher standards for sci-fi than I do fantasy because it’s my favourite genre, or if maybe I just had much lower standards for writing when I was younger. Either way, it fell a little flat for me. So for now my rating is a nice middle-of-the-road 3 stars and that will most likely change one way or the other when I get to read the rest.

Full (spoiler-y) review here: https://wmsreads.tumblr.com/post/618326875833499648

Kira is a xenobiologist, a scientist who seeks to study what hasn't been discovered yet, alien life; that which is fundamentally different from what we know about native living systems. This is the first book in what should be a series that will speculate about humanity's ability to confront, comprehend and survive once contact is made.

The narrative begins rather benignly as Kira is part of a unexceptional mission exploring a new planet. Romance dominates the first part of the book and she has accepted a proposal of marriage from a fellow scientist and has decided to cease planet hopping for domestic bliss. She is content.

In the final few hours before it will be time to wrap up her studies Kira is asked to go to the sight of a probe that has crashed to determine the cause. While there she spot's an interesting anomaly that doesn't fit with the surrounding area. While climbing around the curious structure she trips and falls into a hole. She is injured but is intrigued by what seems to be an artificial structure. She has an ominous feeling that she can't explain.

In short order she is rescued. Rescued from the hole but not from the danger. The pace of the novel explodes from this point. She has become infected and infested by alien nanotechnology which results in a physical transformation that is parasitic but in a way that makes her close to indestructible. But the infection has also resulted in the death of her fiancé and serious injuries to others in her party.

A chain of events has now been set off that sees her physical transformation, a brutal interrogation and testing by earth's military scientists. She and her party are now considered possessed by some alien virus to be confined to the military ship until the threat is assessed and understood.

Unbeknownst to them an alien species has been alerted to their situation by some signal that was sent when Kira was injured in her fall on the planet. Suddenly, and without warning an alien ship seems to come out of nowhere and attacks the military ship she is on. Vastly superior in technology that easily overcome the military craft but not before Kira escapes from the battle with the assistance of the nanotechnology that adapts to protect her.

By the end of this first book Kira, and a few survivors, are on the way to the closest human outpost, lightyears away. Will they make it? Is the parasitic suit a permanent part of her now? What aliens manufactured it? What of the other aliens who defeated a top of the line earth military vessel, what is their intent and when and where will they strike next?

Have to believe that answers will be contained in subsequent books in the series.