I disliked so many parts of this book in the end it became me hate-reading it to prove I could finish it. The action was good, if you like action (I find it messy and confusing and tend to skim it).

Spoilers for my rage-filled rant:

I hated the immediate relationships. On the Wallfish for three minutes, and then Kira's convinced them to board a Jelly ship? No. Nearly gets the crew killed, and then next minute they're agreeing to go find the Staff of Blue (don't even get me started on that lame-ass name)? No. The UMC saying no, you can't go find the Staff of Blue, and then joining the mission in the next breath? No.

Kira deciding that she alone can save the universe by going head-to-head with the aliens without any hint of a personality that runs headlong into physical danger. I was actually ranting aloud until Kira herself stopped and said "what am I doing?". What are you doing, Kira? Why do you think you can save the universe based solely on your abilities to communicate with the aliens and also uncontrollably stab things?

My suspension of disbelief failed in all those moments.

A fellow Goodreader mentioned the video game parallels, and I feel like it hits the RPG aspect here: once Kira is narratively shoved into the Wallfish crew, she sits down with each of the crewmates and has a good long 'delve into your backstory' scene. All of it was forced and artificial-feeling, , and in a game where I can't skip the cutscene I tolerate it because that's part of the genre, but I hated it here.

The gift-giving at the end? Ugh. All of a sudden you're Princess Leia giving out Galadriel-like gifts. Unnecessary, and contributes to the book being tediously longer than it needs to be.

Paolini writes in the endnotes that it took a few goes to get the book to publication, but I think it could have used at least one more pass at finessing out the disjointed, jerky parts I've ranted about in those spoiler tags.

I liked the names of the UMC ships.