To Sleep in a Sea of Stars review: Brilliant sci-fi from Eragon author

Christopher Paolini’s epic new novel, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, is an hallucinatory space opera, perfect reading to help us ride out the current storms

16 September 2020

By Sally Adee

Matjaz Slanic/Getty Images

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Christopher Paolini

Tor

THE first 50 pages of Christopher Paolini’s new blockbuster, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, are standard-issue space opera. Kira Navarez is a xenobiologist in a skeleton crew surveying a barren planet for colonisation. On the last day of the mission, she investigates an unexpected sign of life and does her job a bit too well. Soon enough, a xenomorph is clawing its way out of her innards.

Yet the moment you think, “wait a second, isn’t this kind of familiar?”, Paolini is right there ahead …