Skyward

The Brand New Series

528 pages

English language

Published Jan. 1, 2019 by Orion Publishing Group, Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-4732-1787-4
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5 stars (10 reviews)

Defeated, crushed, and driven almost to extinction, the remnants of the human race are trapped on a planet that is constantly attacked by mysterious alien starfighters. Spensa, a teenage girl living among them, longs to be a pilot. When she discovers the wreckage of an ancient ship, she realizes this dream might be possible—assuming she can repair the ship, navigate flight school, and (perhaps most importantly) persuade the strange machine to help her. Because this ship, uniquely, appears to have a soul.

14 editions

A fun YA hard science fiction yarn

4 stars

I greatly enjoy Brandon Sanderson's fantasy novels. His world-building and magic systems always have an interesting logic - balancing a power's advantages against its limitations or disadvantages. I always feel that those rules would translate directly into a well-tuned RPG.

"Skyward" is the first Sanderson science fiction I've read, but it won't be the last. It's a hard sci-fi YA adventure with a teenage girl protagonist who makes mistakes and embarrasses herself but has you cheering her on every step of the way.

The technology and action scenes are convincing, and I enjoyed the way Sanderson went into some detail about how the spacecraft and their weapons worked.

Overall the plot was a little predictable but didn't detract from the fun of the story, and the final revelation was a good surprise and set-up for the sequel.

Review of 'Skyward' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

It was so funny even through it was predictable. I don't believe that they could actually have coffee or icecream, if they have only a civilization of 7000 people. They don't have enough orchards, I don't get where they would raise their animals. I do not even see how they could have transported those animals when they had to flee. There is no real explanation about the energy for the ships which drove me nuts. All this flying and shooting? Costs so so much power.
Where did they get the shipbuilding machine from?
There are so many problems with this. But aside from this it was fun to read.

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Subjects

  • American literature