It's Happening: Second Fractalverse Book Announced

[masterghandalf]

Literally just stumbled onto this on Tor.com this morning, and when I checked here I was a bit surprised to see that no one had posted this already, so I thought I'd go ahead and break the news. It looks like another Fractalverse book is indeed happening; behold Fractal Noise, coming May 16th, 2023. I'm honestly a bit surprised by this, since To Sleep in a Sea of Stars didn't seem to make all that big of a splash, but it looks like Paolini is determined to go ahead. At the very least, hopefully it will be sporkable. And apparently it's set before To Sleep, rather than a sequel.

There's also a summary, which sounds rather generic to me: July 25th, 2234: The crew of the Adamura discovers the Anomaly.

On the seemingly uninhabited planet Talos VII: a circular pit, 50 kilometers wide. Its curve not of nature, but design.

Now, a small team must land and journey on foot across the surface to learn who built the hole and why. But they all carry the burdens of lives carved out on disparate colonies in the cruel cold of space. For some the mission is the dream of the lifetime, for others a risk not worth taking, and for one it is a desperate attempt to find meaning in an uncaring universe.

Each step they take toward the mysterious abyss is more punishing than the last. And the ghosts of their past follow.

Comments

[sassyelfby]

The sheer arrogance of this is astounding. Freaking Star Wars couldn't pull off a successful prequel - what makes Paolini think his flash-in-the-pan space opera is going to succeed where a mega-franchise failed?

[ignoresandra]

Being reasonably fair to Star Wars, the fanbase kind of had unrealistically high and specific expectations. The prequels are fairly good if you let go of those expectations and take them as what they are.

Source: Am a massive star wars fan.

To Sleep isn't even good by that metric, which is an extremely bad starting point for a series. Why would I or anyone else care about the origins of the "fractalverse" setting?

[sassyelfby]

Yeah. The prequels had some interesting ideas, and I respect that they did their own thing instead of just repeating story beats from the original trilogy. Very casual Star Wars fan here, but I can remember the general plots of all three films despite it being years since I last watched them, which is more than I can say about any of Paolini's work. Meanwhile, I doubt anyone but Paolini's Inheritance Cycle fans remembers the space brick - and they want Book Five, not whatever this is.

[epistler]

Why would I or anyone else care about the origins of the "fractalverse" setting?

Why indeed? At least Star Wars had a lot of interesting lore and history to explore. The setting of the Space Brick, whatever the hell it's called, has nothing.

[ignoresandra]

I mean I could stand to read a fic where the inventor of "Overlays" gets beaten up for their obviously terrible invention but other than that there's no interesting mystery at the core of Space Brick.

[epistler]

Yeah, exactly. There's just nothing there to explore, or at least nothing that would be worth the effort. And if that's just me being overly cynical then I'll respond with even more cynicism by saying fine, but even if I'm wrong we all know Paolini will still make it boring, just as he will make all the characters one dimensional and unlikeable.