I’ve been a fan of Christopher Paolini and his books since pretty much the publication of Eragon in 2002. He did what pretty much every other fan of sci-fi/fantasy I’ve ever known dreams of doing; he wrote a good story at the age of 15 and managed to get it published.
Yeah, I know he was 19 by the time it was actually published, and the book had no doubt been re-written a few times in the interim, but still…
If you’ve read the Eragon books, you know that while that first book definitely shows some of the author’s own immaturities with its very YA tone, the story was still completely satisfactory. Over the years and sequels his writing only continued to improve with each book, and the series today is one of the best-selling of the fantasy genre.
Even more impressive, he managed to jump from Fantasy to Sci-Fi with his To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (2020) and deliver a story that was both engaging and scientifically speculative enough to be interesting without being boring.
Reading To Sleep in Sea of Stars, it felt very much like a one-off. A lovely story to be sure, but it has pretty definitive start and finish and so I thought that was it. Then I heard there was going to be a sequel I couldn’t wait.
Other than including a minor character who happens to be a shipmind, and belonging to the same genre, there is little if anything that connects Fractal Noise to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. The tone is different, the style is different, there aren’t any of the same characters. There aren’t any of the same major ideas. Worst of all its boring and depressing. Honestly,… if Fractal Noise hadn’t been such a short story, I wouldn’t have made it through. It was awful from beginning to end with few if any redeeming qualities.
The characters are woefully underdeveloped; barely more than cliched stereotype sketches. The main character is both completely unlikable and inconsistent. He seems to contradict himself from one moment to the next. The supporting characters are equally unlikeable and annoying. While they at least are more consistent, they are predictably flat.
So let’s qualify bad.
The story follows a character named Alex who is depressed. He’s joined what is effectively the interstellar Merchant Marines in an attempt to escape his troubles. He’s on a small ship with a group of people he doesn’t like, and who don’t like him (I don’t blame them). They find something mysterious and an away team that includes Alex is sent to survey.
From there you can guess the rest. I did. Alex stays depressed and tells a depressing and highly predictable story. As I was reading it I began to worry that the whole story was little more than a prolonged suicide note. If you’re into that kind voyeurism I won’t spoil it for you by letting know if I was right.
I’m not quite sure what happened to Paolini that inspired such a depressing grind of a story, but someone get the man a therapist and keep him away from Camus.
The whole thing is a very un-Paolini story in tone, quality, and content. So much so that you have to wonder if maybe Paolini decided to experiment with an AI ghostwriter he loaded with the following prompts;
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, existentialism, red-shirts, big hole, crap.
