It takes courage to write something like this and even more courage to read it.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini is a monumental space opera. It’s 1219 pages, printed in small letters, sprawling across planets, ships, battles, and alien diplomacy. The story meanders between strongly engaging, tolerable, and occasionally exhausting, but it never becomes boring.

Despite its weaker scenes, particularly the space battles, I think it’s an excellent novel. It’s very ambitious, brave, and enormous in scale. It’s not the kind of science fiction you see often.

The premise is fantastic. Kira discovers an alien parasite with great superpowers, reminding me of Venom. Their connection starts a series of catastrophic events that only she and the parasite can stop. From there, the novel launches into a difficult to explain interstellar war. Spaceships fly left and right through the void, missiles hit and miss, long battles, strange species. Nothing to win and everything to lose.

There’s plenty of action, though the book is also emotional and a little sentimental.

I liked it, but I may not try reading another 1200-page space opera any time soon. Kira and the parasite are cool. 5/5

This is row 1 of the Nebula series, Paolini’s book is #3 from the left. 12 down, 3 to go.