Title Fractal Noise Author Christopher Paolini Cover Art --- Publisher Tor - 2023 First Printing Tor - 2023
	Title To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Author Christopher Paolini Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing ---
	Category Science Fiction Warnings None Main Characters Alex Main Elements Aliens Website ---

Fractal Noise

While reading this review you need to be aware that I have not read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. I usually try hard to read books in publishing order, but at over 800 pages, it wasn't something I could squeeze in over a weekend, so I dived into this prequel with no idea what I was getting into.

There was definitely no problem getting into the world, I didn't feel like I was missing anything, except maybe at the very end where I felt that maybe knowing how the alien artifact affected the universe (I assume it shows up there) would help tie this book into the rest of the series. And that's fine, its a prequel, its allowed to assume I know something about the world before I start.

Now I had just read a book called Forever, Interrupted...and I couldn't help feeling that Alex was a male version of that main character. Basically he can't get over the death of his wife, his life is aimless, he doesn't care about his work, and the only reason he goes down to that alien planet is because his wife would be excited to go check out a real alien artifact, proof that humans were not the only intelligent species out there. It gave the book and overall dark and depressing tone.

Alex goes down to the planet with your standard group of misfits. Must admit I was kind of fond of the "Russian" guy (technically he's not Russian but from a colony but you can tell by his speech patterns...well, by everything about him in fact, who the original colonists were), he reminded me of one of my managers at work, they had very similar views of the world and a desire to needle people into discussing philosophy, religion, and if possible see you squirm under uncomfortable subjects. And of course if you toss four people who already don't like each other onto a barren planet where mere survival is a challenge, well, things aren't going to go well.

And mustn't forget the artifact itself. A giant hole in the ground that sends out pulses every ten seconds. The problem was, this is where I lost my ability to suspend disbelief. See something that big, sending out such a powerful pulse is firstly very very loud, and secondly generates a lot of wind, like 400 km/h, thus you can't send say a drone, the EMP would fry it, have to send humans to check it out. So far, all good. But now...you want me to believe, that four people dragging sledges can walk right up to the edge of this thing and not get blown away...we're talking 400km/h (the worst hurricane on earth was 345 km/h, and hurricanes can blow houses apart, 190 km/h will knock you over...the hole it double that) See when they first land a good distance away where it was more like 160 km/h they already had to hang onto things to avoid being blow over. How am I to believe that they WALKED 30k into that blast of wind???? And the sound, sure they had protective gear but I'm not sure how your body doesn't explode, after all that's what makes an explosion destructive, the shockwave which is, well, sound. Paolini sets up this super dramatic scenario but then its so impressive that he wrote himself into an impossible to believe scenario...

Other than that, for a story about four people trudging across an empty alien landscape with mostly nothing happening for a good chunk of the time except their own internal demons, it was surprisingly engrossing. At not point did I get bored. Am I willing to attempt a version that is nearly three times as long? Yes indeed, I've added To Sleep in a Sea of Stars to my to-read list and look forward to finding out more about this artifact and perhaps even the aliens that created it.