Took a turn for the worse
I initially read the first part of this book as an excerpt here on BookishFirst, and really liked it. It's unfortunate that the story takes such a sharp turn from there. The world-building was uniformly impressive, and I enjoyed many scenes featuring ship-mind Gregorovich, but besides that the characters and plot were kind of boring. This book was too long by half. It's a huge time commitment, and not really worth it in my opinion. I'm not interested in continuing this series at all.
I also tried out the audio version of this book, courtesy of NetGalley, with narration by Jennifer Hale, and it was fine. She did a good job with the source material, with some voices appropriately alien. The human characters were well-differentiated. It's not Hale's fault that the book was tedious. I appreciated the recorded author's note and the interview between Paolini and Hale that were included at the end. Both gave me more appreciation for the work that went into the writing and the audio production!
I also tried out the audio version of this book, courtesy of NetGalley, with narration by Jennifer Hale, and it was fine. She did a good job with the source material, with some voices appropriately alien. The human characters were well-differentiated. It's not Hale's fault that the book was tedious. I appreciated the recorded author's note and the interview between Paolini and Hale that were included at the end. Both gave me more appreciation for the work that went into the writing and the audio production!