The science-fiction novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, written by Christopher Paolini, was published in 2020 by TOR, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers. Paolini is well-known for his popular fantasy series, The Inheritance Cycle, most notably Eragon, the first of the collection, published when he was only 15. With To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Paolini begins his Fractalverse collection. The novel is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and won the award for Best Science Fiction in the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards. In 2022, the novel was optioned for a film adaptation. A sequel, Fractal Noise, is due to be published in May of 2023 by TOR.

This study guide refers to the 2020 ebook edition published by TOR.

Plot Summary

The year is 2257. Humans have achieved interstellar space travel beyond Earth’s solar system and have colonized other systems extensively over the past 300 years. All human settlement is under the purview of The League, the interstellar governing body, and their military arm, the United Military Command (UMC). In all their time in space, humans have found only one sign of alien life, an abandoned structure they call The Great Beacon.

The protagonist of the novel, Kira Navárez, is a xenobiologist and part of a team surveying the planet Adrasteia, or Adra, for possible human colonization. However, just as the team is preparing to leave Adra, Kira discovers an alien life form, a xeno that bonds with her, covering her in a living suit and integrating itself with her body. Because of the xeno, Kira is responsible for the death of her fiancé, another member of the Adra team. The UMC arrives on the planet to investigate the xeno, the second alien artifact ever found by humans. Before they can, however, alien ships arrive and attack the UMC, intending to retrieve Kira’s xeno, which they had hidden on Adra. Kira escapes on a shuttle and is later picked up after months drifting in space by the Wallfish, a civilian ship captained by Salvo Falconi.

Falconi and his crew tell Kira, who has been in cryosleep for 88 days, that the aliens, who they call “Jellies,” are now engaged in full-scale war with the UMC. The Jellies attack the Wallfish, and Kira is able to use the xeno to kill one of them but accidentally injures one of the human passengers. Without Kira noticing, a piece of the xeno is torn off and bonds with an injured human and the dead Jelly, healing them together and creating a monstrous being called the Maw. Kira only finds this out later when the nightmares, another alien species, attack. She realizes that the nightmares are servants of the Maw, and she is at least partly responsible for its creation.

Because of the xeno, which she calls the Soft Blade, Kira is able to communicate with the Jellies. There are two Jelly factions: one that wants to destroy the humans, and one that wants to ally with them to destroy the nightmares, their common threat. Kira and the Wallfish crew work with the friendly Jellies to infiltrate the enemy Jellies, with Kira eventually killing their leader, Ctein. The remaining Jellies and the UMC unite to fight the Maw and the nightmares.

Throughout her travels, Kira struggles to adapt to her relationship with the xeno. It is not the Jellies' creation but that of a far older race, the Vanished, who also created the Great Beacon. The Jellies have acquired their technology by finding and excavating technologies left behind by the Vanished. The xeno responds to Kira’s emotions and is difficult to control, resulting in the death of one human and the injury of another. She works with Sparrow, one of the Wallfish crew, to learn to control her emotions and collaborate with the xeno. Once she fully understands the xeno, it tells her that its name is Seed, and it has been constructed to create, not destroy.

When it becomes apparent that the humans and Jellies, even united, will lose to the Maw, Kira unites herself and the Seed with the Maw. She and the xeno work together to heal it, and then Kira uses their combined power to create a new space station, which she calls Unity. She intends for it to be a neutral space in which humans and Jellies can learn to work together. However, Kira discovers that the Maw previously created seven copies of itself and sent them into space. Although Falconi and the Wallfish crew are willing to help her in her search, Kira sets off on a solitary mission to find all of the remaining pieces of the Maw and reintegrate them into the xeno.