I’m sure many of you have heard about the new upcoming book by Christopher Paolini (of Eragon fame). If you haven’t, it’s called To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and it sounds amazing!!! Here is the synopsis so you can get a little idea about the book:

Kira Navárez dreamed of finding life on new worlds.
Now she has awakened a nightmare.
While exploring a distant planet, she discovers an alien relic that thrusts her into an epic journey of transformation and discovery.
Her odyssey will carry her to the far reaches of the galaxy.
Earth and her colonies are on the brink of annihilation.
One woman.
The will to survive.
The hope of humanity.
This epic novel follows Kira Navárez, who, during a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, finds an alien relic that thrusts her into the wonders and the nightmares of first contact. Epic space battles for the fate of humanity take her to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and, in the process, transform not only her ― but the entire course of history.

First things first (I’m the realest). Sorry, whenever I say that phrase, that lyric from Fancy always pops into my head. Anyway!! My point was I first wanted to focus on the premise – a heist? An AI? Yes. Two of my favorite things. I went into this book being pretty sure I would love it. Sadly I didn’t quite LOVE it, but I still did enjoy it a lot.

Retellings are hugely popular in young adult books these days. I love them, but I’m getting tired of the same fairytale being redone over and over. So thank goodness I finally picked up this one! This is a retelling of the longest epic poem ever, the Indian poem called The Mahabharata. I don’t know much about the original, except what I read on Wikipedia. Knowing that it’s a non-Western retelling kinda makes me love it already without reading it haha.

Another thing that intrigued me right away was that the gods and goddesses were a part of the story. I loooove that so much. It also means that since this is set in space, it is a space fantasy! Aka my favorite genre! And in my opinion, a genre we need a lot more of.

I thought I had this series on my TBR for years but apparently this first novella was only published in 2017 lol. Well okay I guess that’s still 3 years ago! But still I thought it was longer. Anyway! I finally read the first novella today! And it was funny and enjoyable and relatable and I’m really glad I read it.

Let’s just start off with the first paragraph of the novella so you can get an idea of the tone.

“I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,00 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”

Martha Wells, All Systems Red

What is the Pondathon?

The Pondathon is a co-operative and story-driven readathon hosted and run by CW from The Quiet Pond. The aim of the Pondathon is to read books and collect points to protect the friends over at The Quiet Pond from the encroaching malevolent forces that threaten our friends in the forest.

Have fun participating in the Pondathon readathon by joining one of five teams, each with a unique way to collect points and signing up! You can also follow the story of the Pondathon as it unfolds, and participants can also complete ‘side quests’ during the readathon to collect extra points. The readathon takes place from January 24th 2020 to March 7th 2020. More information about the readathon can be found here.