Fun, tropy, and full of excellent starship names and cute callouts to scifi's past. Paolini delivers what he's great at: sprawling adventures that focus on the cool things you can do with magic, though as with Eragon, this magic leans more towards the technological. It follows rules, and we thrill in the characters exploration of those rules. Nobody here is making stupid mistakes; a whole bunch if very smart people are in space and unfortunately sometimes they're going to ruin each other's days.