This special signed edition available through B&N was supposed to be YA king Christopher Paolini’s first adult novel. It read like a normal 12-18-year-old YA novel to me. I felt hemmed in once I started to read this 878-page tome and I hate to stop reading once I start a novel. While the novel does have mostly adult characters, there are almost no sexual innuendos. It reads like a cross between Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy...a little too silly for my taste. In a sci/fi novel, I prefer the antagonist be as close to a single entity as possible, such as in the Alien series or in The Day The Earth Stood Still. I don’t need to read a book with a variety of foolish characters in impossible situations; such as the movie Abbott & Costello go to Mars (1953) or Spider-man or Batman novels. Now after that somewhat rant you must think that I hated this novel...not so book lover! I hate being deceived. When I read the teaser inside of the dust jacket, and it says, “Kira Navarez dreamed of life on new worlds...now she’s awakened a nightmare.” That’s false advertising...believe me, it was not that dramatic. Was it well written? Yes. Was it as teased? No.
Kira Navarez and the company she works for were finishing up its survey of Adrasteia, an earth-size moon, light-years away from earth. On the last night of their mission, they celebrated their departure in the mess hall. While Kira and her fiance, Alan, were at the punch bowl, the expedition boss cleared a path to her. He said, “We have a problem: one of the drones down south went dead.” Kira said, “So? Send another one.” Her boss replied, “They’re too far away, and we don’t have time to print a replacement. Last thing the drone detected was some organic material along the coastline. Needs to be checked before we leave.” The moon they were on had to be cleared before the expected colonist could arrive. Kira would have to shuttle down in the morning and check it out. Kira and Alan spent the night together before Kira’s mission in the morning. That night, Alan asked Kira if she would be his wife. She said, “Yes. Thousand times yes.”
The organic material in question was on the top of a hill a few hundred meters to the south of her shuttle. “At the top of the hill, she found a flat spread of rock scored with deep grooves from the last planetary glaciation...biologically, there wasn’t much interest on Adrasteia...still, the absence of more developed forms of life was a plus when it came to terraforming: it left the moon a lump of raw clay, suitable for remolding however the company, and the settlers, saw fit.”
She found a rock formation that looked like the result of a meteor strike or a volcanic eruption. She then fell into the hole. “Kira lay where she was, stunned. In front of her, all she saw was rock and shadow.” She was lying on a pile of stone rubble, covered in dust. When her head cleared, she realized that she fell into a room. It had to be made by intelligent aliens. The dust started to cover her body like a series of tight, ever-shifting bands. “Outside the suit, the dust flowed over her visor, plunging her into darkness, Inside the suit, the tendrils wormed their way over her shoulder and across her neck and chest...she opened her mouth to scream as the torrent of dust rushed inside of her. And all went blank.”
The tight suit of tendrils and dust is the focus of the novel (that could have been finished in 350 pages). What is it? Is the suit good or bad? It is capable of defending her in any attack, but possessing it causes ungodly damage to many planets and aliens. Why does all of the universe seem to want the suit? Good luck finding that out...I was on page 646 and still didn’t know. The author has to learn how to leak out a little information in order to keep the reader interested...but alas, he didn't.
RATING: 3 out of 5 stars
Comment: I’m not into exotic-looking aliens like you would see in a Star Wars movie. That’s how I visualized the different types of aliens in Paolini’s space opera. Give me a good ole Robot like Robby or Gork anytime before an Ewok, Chewbacca or God forbid...a Jar Jar Binks!
In Larry Niven’s classic 1985 novel, Footfall, the antagonists threatening Earth are the Fithps, baby elephant-looking creatures with multiple trunks. Why is this monster okay? Because it’s a single entity. No other creature appears in the novel. See my review of this wonderful story on 3/30/2011.
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