Genre: Science Fiction
Release Date: May 16th, 2023
Pages: 304 (9 Hr. 57 Min.)
Publisher: Macmillan Audio (Tor Books)
Narrator: Jennifer Hale
My Rating: ⭐⭐
Publisher’s Synopsis:
“July 25th, 2234: The crew of the Adamura discovers the Anomaly.
On the seemingly uninhabited planet Talos VII:a circular pit, 50 kilometers wide.
Its curve not of nature, but design.
Now, a small team must land and journey on foot across the surface to learn who built the hole and why.
But they all carry the burdens of lives carved out on disparate colonies in the cruel cold of space.
For some the mission is the dream of the lifetime, for others a risk not worth taking, and for one it is a desperate attempt to find meaning in an uncaring universe.
Each step they take toward the mysterious abyss is more punishing than the last.
And the ghosts of their past follow.”
My Review:
Ugh… I’m so disappointed. This was one of my top ten most highly anticipated books for the year and it really let me down. After reading To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and it becoming one of my favorite books of all time, I had really high hopes for finally getting another book in this universe. But this prequel lacked everything I loved so much about the first book in this series, and failed to add any depth to the overall arc of the story world itself.
I felt zero connection with any of the characters. All of them were surface level at best. The protagonist had no other qualities to speak of except mourning the loss of his wife, but we couldn’t even empathize with him because we got no real glimpse into their relationship whatsoever. Two of the other characters were melodramatic caricatures and over-the-top with seemingly having only the purpose of creating meaningless conflict over their religious beliefs.
The plot itself is thus: a team finds a hole on a supposedly uninhabited planet and ventures to discover its secrets. And that’s literally it. It was a really boring slog to read through. It takes the entirety of the book for them to actually get to the hole and even then we learn absolutely not one single thing about who made it, why, how, when, etc. Honestly, the entire story seemed rather pointless in the end. We learned nothing, we experienced nothing, and it added absolutely nothing to this series. Other than the fractal pattern, there are no connections to anything else.
I’m really at a loss for this book. I don’t know what happened here. I would have never guessed this as being written by Paolini nor of being a part of the Fractalverse series. Fans of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, you can honestly just skip it.
The one thing I liked was the dramatic audiobook narration with the sound effects, which really added to the immersion of the story and kept me engaged.
Disclaimers:
Huge thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for gifting me an early copy of this amazing story! I voluntarily read and reviewed this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Have you read this book? Planning to add it to your TBR?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
I love a good book discussion. 🙂
Leave a Reply