Author: Christopher Paolini
Publication Date: May 2023
Publisher: Tor Books
In a horror movie, trouble always beckons. And the people always follow.
On the seemingly uninhabited planet Talos VII, the crew of the Adamura discover an anomaly – a hole, to be precise, too perfect to be natural. A mongrel mix of duty, curiosity, and purposelessness drive a small group to land on the planet and journey to the hole on foot. With each step, they are brought closer to the unexplained force of the anomaly, and somehow closer to the lives they forced behind them.
“‘Tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch.” This quote begins part one, entitled “Apprehension.” The eminence of death renders cowards of us all; the only variance is when and in what form this occurs. For Alex, his fear and apprehension manifest themselves in his enrollment on the Adamura, ironically avoiding the future in a capsule designed for exploration of the unknown. Alex is perhaps likable only for his bitter realism. His grief is a black hole, and the immediacy with which his pain is slammed into the story borders on excess, eased only by the sympathy it earns.
What begins to redeem Alex is that he is more determined than he recognizes. When a black hole swallows matter, it can spit it out disheveled and decomposed. Alex’s grief pulls him into a black hole. His journey across Talos VII finishes the decomposition. That decomposition is necessary for rejuvenation. Paolini defines Alex’s comrades on the punishing planet by one or two things each – hedonism, indecisiveness, etc. Their motivations barely exceed the nihilist nothing-left-to-lose. Their physical separation from the remainder of the Adamura’s crew removes the remaining stability from their motivation and self-definition. That is where Alex’s willing decomposition becomes a strength.
Aside from the physical and psychological torment of the characters, Paolini’s storyline and writing are clean. His fluid style and his ordering of flashbacks and present events inform readers about the mindsets of the characters and the impact of their backgrounds on their current missions. The ending was a cliffhanger, but fit the nature of the underlying messages and didn’t prevent relishing the rest of the story. And of course, there is the mounting tension that heightens the awe and import of the anomaly for both characters and readers.
In this particular story from the fractalverse, the universe in which this and Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars are set, Paolini physically juxtaposes a reputed paradise with the hell that is being alone in the unknown. He promises readers neither an end to suffering nor an answer to it. He does urge us to seek knowledge and community with each decision we make, and know that the relative impermanence of both should give us the freedom to love them without trying to control them. Your reviewer has been with Paolini since the first of The Inheritance Cycle, and is eager to read more fractalverse stories.
D. K. Nuray, age 16
