By: Christopher Paolini
Blurb:
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 . . .”
Review:
I was not able to finish this book. I tried. I really did, but I could not do it. I read over two-hundred pages, which only put me over 25% of the way through, so I’m not going to leave a starred review.
I read Paolini’s Eragon book when I was in middle school and remembered enjoying it. I must have because I owned a copy at one point, but it’s not a book I’ve felt a desire to go back and reread. I haven’t even read the last book in the series. I picked up To Sleep because I enjoyed Eragon, though.
The beginning of the book was so heavy-handed with the foreshadowing that it might as well have been Walk Hard. I knew what was about to happen within the first ten to twenty pages, but he dragged it out.
There was a lot of world-building and tons of talking about science, but very little character development. Kira was not a compelling at all. She was boring, and a lot of the time, felt like she was just reacting to what was going on. When I finally gave up, she started to do more than react, but I didn’t care about her by then.
I can’t say I’m disappointed in the book because I went in with no expectations. I wanted to read something besides romance, and I thought trying a writer I was familiar with was a good idea.
Dynamite Review 