To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
I really wanted to stop reading a quarter of the way in, but how could I give such a high profile author a negative review without sticking it through? And the ending easily saved this novel from being a fire starter in the fireplace. I can, also, honestly now say that it took way too long to get to the conclusion.
A patron at my library said if he doesn't enjoy a book by the third chapter, he just goes straight to the end to read the last chapter and call it quits. I so should have done that with this book; it would have sated my curiosity without the pain and frustration of taking a month to read something. Then maybe it could have been more than a 2 star book. (One of those stars comes from the ending alone.)
This was a time where Sci-Fi kicked my butt. It was the kind of Sci-Fi I just do not enjoy. I appreciated the scientific approach (and details, surprisingly) of the space travel. The addition of alien races were promising. It was the intergalactic warfare that just isn't my cup of tea.
As for story devices, the cyclical climaxes made it feel like the story should have ended half a dozen times but instead just kept going. Kira's character growth also left a lot to be desired. Actually, all the characters felt just shy of being fully baked. So many pages and nothing ever seemed to be concluded to its potential.
I read the author's acknowledgements and was a little disheartened to read that he had been working on To Sleep in a Sea of Stars for over a decade. I feel bad giving such a poor review to something that has been clearly been given a lot of the author's soul. On the flip side however, I feel that sometimes a book that has been brewing for so long while life moves forward just ends up suffering from too much writing and change.
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