This book was really difficult for me to finish. There were many sections I felt were unnecessary, a lot of long treks across space, only for another big fight. Another stretch of cryo, then yet another big fight. There is also a lot of lore and background history that bogs it down.
The descriptions of the different species were difficult to picture at first. Especially the xeno that attaches itself to Kira. What the xeno is capable of becomes more apparent as time goes on, which makes it easier to picture. I first thought of it as Venom, like from the Marvel comics, a sort of ectoplasmic material that oozes like slime. It’s not just that, though I continued to picture it that way.
Kira’s reaction to her fiance’s death was underwhelming at best. It definitely had me questioning her love for him, not that we saw all that much of them together in the first place. She barely spends a second to grieve and doesn’t even think of him often after that. If she does, it’s very distant. One could blame everything that happened giving her a sense of unreality and causing her to dissociate. The cryo gives a false sense of time passing, as well. Suddenly, nine months have passed and of course Kira isn’t grieving as she should have been.
My favorite character was Gregorovitch, the ship's mind. He spoke the best and was the most interesting. I would have much rather heard more about his history and his point of view. He reminded me of the AI in Illuminae, as well as Wheatley from the video game, Portal 2. I definitely see elements of both Illuminae and the Starbound trilogy in Paolini’s writing. It’s not incredibly unique as a story line. It’s a little bigger than many stories try to take it, with the jellies attacking the entire galaxy, rather than just one system. I still don’t think I fully understand what was happening.
For the most part, I found Kira annoying and boring. She just wants to get married, in the beginning. Then she becomes host to the xeno, an alien being that covers her and inhabits her like a suit. She kills people, including her own fiance, Alan, after she loses control of the suit. One could argue that the xeno killed her friends and fiance. I just don’t think she struggled enough with the horrible things that happened, from the death of her fiance to killing some of her friends, to being tortured. I wish she would have faced her suffering with more realism.
I will never read a book like this again. I did not enjoy it. It was boring most of the time, with some interesting aspects spread throughout. I wish the characters had been fleshed out more, but the ‘plot’ kept jumping around, shuttling the characters off to somewhere else and into cryo before we could really learn about them. It was easily apparent that the main characters wouldn’t die, after a point. Between medical advances and tech, almost everything could be fixed and, if not right away, the character could be put in cryo until a fix was available.
I almost stopped reading several times but I pushed on, just to finish it. It was a constant exercise in checking how many pages I had left. I was just so bored and there was a bare wisp of intrigue, and the desire to finish, keeping me reading.
The descriptions of the different species were difficult to picture at first. Especially the xeno that attaches itself to Kira. What the xeno is capable of becomes more apparent as time goes on, which makes it easier to picture. I first thought of it as Venom, like from the Marvel comics, a sort of ectoplasmic material that oozes like slime. It’s not just that, though I continued to picture it that way.
Kira’s reaction to her fiance’s death was underwhelming at best. It definitely had me questioning her love for him, not that we saw all that much of them together in the first place. She barely spends a second to grieve and doesn’t even think of him often after that. If she does, it’s very distant. One could blame everything that happened giving her a sense of unreality and causing her to dissociate. The cryo gives a false sense of time passing, as well. Suddenly, nine months have passed and of course Kira isn’t grieving as she should have been.
My favorite character was Gregorovitch, the ship's mind. He spoke the best and was the most interesting. I would have much rather heard more about his history and his point of view. He reminded me of the AI in Illuminae, as well as Wheatley from the video game, Portal 2. I definitely see elements of both Illuminae and the Starbound trilogy in Paolini’s writing. It’s not incredibly unique as a story line. It’s a little bigger than many stories try to take it, with the jellies attacking the entire galaxy, rather than just one system. I still don’t think I fully understand what was happening.
For the most part, I found Kira annoying and boring. She just wants to get married, in the beginning. Then she becomes host to the xeno, an alien being that covers her and inhabits her like a suit. She kills people, including her own fiance, Alan, after she loses control of the suit. One could argue that the xeno killed her friends and fiance. I just don’t think she struggled enough with the horrible things that happened, from the death of her fiance to killing some of her friends, to being tortured. I wish she would have faced her suffering with more realism.
I will never read a book like this again. I did not enjoy it. It was boring most of the time, with some interesting aspects spread throughout. I wish the characters had been fleshed out more, but the ‘plot’ kept jumping around, shuttling the characters off to somewhere else and into cryo before we could really learn about them. It was easily apparent that the main characters wouldn’t die, after a point. Between medical advances and tech, almost everything could be fixed and, if not right away, the character could be put in cryo until a fix was available.
I almost stopped reading several times but I pushed on, just to finish it. It was a constant exercise in checking how many pages I had left. I was just so bored and there was a bare wisp of intrigue, and the desire to finish, keeping me reading.