Like many of the other 5 stars reviewers, I am most definitely biased. Had I not heard the audiobook read by Jennifer Hale, whose voice at this point is synonymous with the single most important piece of media in my life, I probably would not have given the story 5 stars. I might have given it 3.5 to 4 stars, but definitely not 5. But, my goodness, Jennifer Hale knocks it out of the park. I savoured and valued every single minute of the 32.5 hours of audio content, and I refuse to finish listening to the addendum because I just don't want this to be over yet. Nonetheless, I am not reviewing Jennifer Hale's TSIASOS, this is Christopher Paolini's book, which was a print book before it was an audio one.

Having never read Eragon, I cannot say whether Paolini's writing has changed or improved since then. The phrases and sentences are often times clunky and repetitive, with some unneccessary descriptions and few scenes of lyrical beauty. To me, it wasn't "bad" enough to hinder my enjoyment of the story, but it often felt like he could have polished certain parts a bit more, while cutting back on other, more superfluous phrasings. I did not really mind the characters - they were loveable, though a bit trope-y, with shipmind Gregorovitch being a clear favorite of mine. Kira was a pleasant protagonist, though I wish we could have gone deeper into her grief, which somehow didn't hinder her as much as I would have liked to have seen. Her xenobiologist career also didn't seem to matter much in the end, as she ended up being on par with a lot of military personell in terms of fighting. Most side characters were dealing with issues of their own, and I was sad to see that these topics were not explored as much as they could have been, given the page count.

The crew of the ship, while refreshingly diverse, was in parts characterized by some iffy cultural stereotypes, which I found weird, given that the story is set in a somewhat distant future. Despite there being a wlw couple and a few non-White characters, this is definitely not the book to go to if you wish for diversity. Maybe I'm just spoiled, but A Long Way To A Small Angry Planet and especially Into The Drowning Deep handled this a lot better.

Paolini played the Mass Effect trilogy and it shows. While I do not mind it, it did sometimes feel like he took the most memorable parts of the games and repackaged them with a different enemy and protagonist (Does Kira ever say "YOU BIG STUPID JELLYFISH!"? I don't remember, but I would have chuckled). The way things fit together didn't always end up feeling natural and plot progression often seemed too convenient. Characters weren't unpredictable (A Song of Ice And Fire is the series that managed this the best, in my opinion) and thus a lot of scenes and situations were foreseeable. I didn't mind this - sometimes you just want a low stakes story with action and heart. I can see how more seasoned scifi readers and those not blinded by love for the Mass Effect universe and Jennifer Hale's voice might be put off by this, especially when seeing the number of pages this book has. Lastly, I wish we could have seen a bit more of how humans shaped their colonies and systems in this universe before we jetted off into the distance in lightspeed. Given the end of the book and the fact that this is the start of a new series, I doubt that we will be back in "familiar" systems anytime soon.