It was ok. Which is disappointing.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
by Christopher Paolini (Goodreads Author),  Jennifer Hale (Narrator) 

A brand new space opera on an epic scale from the New York Times bestselling author of a beloved YA fantasy series.

From the book blurb

I read the first three books of The Inheritance Cycle and liked them well enough. The movie, well… By the time the fourth book was published, I had started to actively avoid YA. So I never picked it up. 

So, the much hyped adult SF novel by Paolini… All my reading buddies seemed to get a copy and those that read it were full of praise. I wasn‘t really all that interested, but I had that pesky Audible credit I wanted to get rid of. Two hours into the audio the references were strong, namely Alien (Weyland, Henriksen, Bishop, Giger) and most prominently Prometheus. And other beloved SF fare. Transparent aluminum!

Paolini seems to like plot progression as much as I do, but also scores on describing believable characters and giving them enough depth to make them feel real. Still, that doesn‘t necessarily make for a great book. The beginning was good, but this book is entirely too long. It‘s ok, I didn’t dislike it. But after a while it just got boring and turned into a slog. No wow-effects, it just rambled on towards the presumed ending. 

I could have happily stopped in the middle and would not have missed it. I did in fact leave this book aside for days at a time. Ultimately I handed my audiobook copy back to Audible after 24 of the 33 hours, 73% into the narrative. I do actually want to know how it ends, but I didn’t want to struggle through another nine hours of not really enjoying this to find out.

More power to you, if you loved this book. The story wasn‘t bad, it just didn‘t do it enough for me to put up with 33 hours of narration.