Skyward by Brandon Sanderson: Worth It?

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson: Worth it?

By Haylee Crapo

Sci-Fi books are usually littered with aliens, futuristic technology, ships with advanced AI, and space battles. Skyward by Brandon Sanderson contains all of these aspects and more.

This book follows the life of Spensa “Spin” Nightshade, a brash and sarcastic seventeen year old who is facing the consequences of having a disgraced fighter pilot father. All she wants is to be just as great a pilot as him, but she must fight all those who refuse to trust her due to her father being labeled as a coward and a traitor.

However, against all odds, she makes it into flight school, where she will finally become a pilot. Here, she will learn how to fly and fight the Krell, aliens that keep attacking her home planet of Detritus and are intent on exterminating the human race. Even as her dreams are coming true, intense tragedy surrounds Spensa as she learns what it really means to be both defiant and a coward. As the Krell attack more and more vigorously, and as Spensa discovers more about herself and her past, will she be able to hold it together and become a pilot? Or will she crash and burn?

Sanderson has created a wonderful universe filled with funny banter and easy to grasp world building. However, where this book tends to slip is with the characters, who don’t seem to be completely whole. Most characters have one or two personality traits, and then that’s it, which is very disappointing. The characters that are more fleshed out just seem to be stereotypical stock characters copy and pasted from other novels. Usually I wouldn’t mind this, except it’s so obvious in Sanderson’s work that some of the characters make me cringe at just being in a scene.

Skyward, however, is one of the better books in the series. While it can’t really be read as a standalone due to its cliffhanger, the rest of the series just becomes boring. I was able to get through the second novel, Starsight, due to the expanding of the universe, but wasn’t able to get through the third book, Cytonic, because of an ongoing romance plot that feels random and the lack of any real excitement or obstacles for Spensa. The fourth book in the series, Defiant, comes out today (November 21), but I have no plans on reading it. I don’t have high hopes.

My conclusion: Yeah, the first one is worth a read if you have time to kill. However, the rest of the series is not.

3/6 stars.