Skyward

Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with Brandon Sanderson. He's an author who everyone raves about on Booktube, but I cannot seem to get into. I thought his Steelheart YA series was fine. Not anything spectacular, just fine. And the first book I read of his infamously awesome Mistborn series left me feeling confused as to why I had not loved it like so many others. This latest experience with Sanderson left me hesitant to pick up anything else by him. Still, my curiosity was peaked when I saw this book at my local library. Then, the next thing I knew, I had read the story in a little over a week, and what was more, I enjoyed reading it. This makes me think that this novel just might turn around my opinion of Sanderson yet.

Spensa is a girl who lives on a world attacked from space by the Krell, a race of aliens who do not want them to leave the planet after her ancestor's crash landed there hundreds of years ago. Her society lives under ground in a series of caverns for safety as they desperately try and find a way to get off the planet, before the Krell destroy them. Spensa has had enough, and decides to become a pilot, just like her father. There is just one problem though. Her father, an ace pilot, was very highly honored amongst the members of her community, which made it all the more troubling when he fled during a large Krell attack, forever branding him a coward, and Spensa a coward's daughter. Spensa must endure bullying all her life. It only gets worse when she enters flight school, as she faces doubts from both her squad and instructors alike that she will turn and run like her father. Spensa's determined to prove them wrong and try and be the best pilot she can be in her fight against the Krell. But as Spensa starts her training, she begins to suspect that there is more to her battle with Krell than what she has been told, and that there is more to her fathers' defection than meets the eye. Will she be able to find out what is really going on, assuming she survives combat?
As far as characters go, Spensa is a standout because she is written well with balance to her personality. Many times, in YA, main characters seem to be almost too perfect. They can do no wrong and succeed at seemingly every challenge they face. Sanderson, however, writes Spensa as to take her strengths and turns them up a notch so that they become weaknesses. Spensa has a certain intensity in her desire to become a pilot and over confidence at wanting to fly. One can see her goal of becoming a pilot as someone being proactive, but many times, it causes Spensa to come into conflict with her teammates and instructor, which often gets her into trouble. At the beginning of the story, her confidence is to the point where she feels she knows more than her teachers, but she quickly finds out that she has a lot to learn and can be very naive when she takes her book learning and puts it in context of the real world. Over the course of the novel, she learns to temper these two flaws, making for a convincing character arc by the end of the book. She is one of my favorite characters in the novel and may just become one of my favorites in all of YA fiction.

Sanderson also writes the motivations of the main antagonists well. There are a few people who seem to be against Spensa becoming a pilot, and yet, by the end of the book, all their motivations become clear and are understandable, given what we know about them. Compared to books of the last few years, where villains must be either completely evil, with no redeeming qualities, or someone who's actions are completely justified, I think this is a nice compromise. We the reader see why they took the actions that they did, and can understand them, even if we still support Spensa in the end.

The world building is also on point, as one can expect from Sanderson. His stories have a knack for keeping all forms of power/weapons on balance with one another, so that no one has complete dominance over the other. That is on display here, and it makes for good action. Sanderson also writes with just the right amount of pacing so that, for the most part, everything moves well, and no one scene outstays its welcome.

As for the negatives, there are a few I need to mention. One would be how many themes are brought up, but are never properly addressed. The only two that are given any real attention are the views on cowardice and the idea of being defiant in a militaristic society. Other themes are brought up only once or twice in the novel, and then never seen again. Themes like the effect of the military being a priority in a society, and children being placed in roles of authority and being asked to kill at such a young age are brought up only once and ignored the rest of the time. These themes are good ones to explore, and yet are never given proper screen time (page time?), which is a shame, considering the impact they can have on the teenage reader.

Then there are other elements that I know Brandon Sanderson had to include because this is a book for the YA genre. One is the budding romance between Spensa and another character. While I won't expand on it here for spoiler's sake, I'll only say that it does not seem to make sense given what we have seen from their interactions together. Also, the ending seemed to wrap up a little too nicely, as though it was planned with many Dues ex Machinas in mind, with of course, Spensa leading the charge in the final battle. These attributes of the YA genre, or YA-isms as I like to call them, do not really detract from the book, I just expected more from such an accomplished writer.

Still, as far as Brandon Sanderson goes, this book was a pleasant surprise for me. While I would be hesitant to say that he is my favorite author, like so many people seem to claim, I will say that I am excited to see where this series goes, and I am eager to see how Spensa continues her journey to the stars. I give it a four out of five.