From Goodreads:

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.

In love with this. Truly, completely in love with it. My favourite read of the year so far. I was super excited to start the next one, more than willing to go out and buy it directly after finishing the first. When I discovered it wasn’t out yet, I was devastated. I didn’t realise that Skyward was so recently published, so just assumed the next one would be out, and wasn’t emotionally prepared for it not to be.

The Characters

Spensa – Our glorious main character. She’s got great depth, with details of her life revealed expertly by Sanderson. Everything she says and does has a clear motivation and her backstory perfectly suits who she is and what she does throughout. Despite the fact this is a sci-fi, where nothing should really be relatable, I could totally understand why she acted the way she did and why she was angry at the world. I felt really sorry and angry for her at first and then ended up cheering her on as the story progressed. At one point, I actually physically punched the air in celebration because apparently this book really got to me.

Cobb – Cobb is the best instructor going. He’s different to the rest of the instructors and seemed to genuinely care for his cadets. His backstory, again, was expertly woven in and, as the reader, we can understand why he does what he does.

M-Bot – I don’t know where to start with this. Honestly, you’ve got read this to understand M-Bot, who he is and why he’s so freaking fabulous.

Jorgen – His arc here from jerkface (Spensa’s words, not mine) to a loveable character is great. It doesn’t happen overnight (well, I read the book overnight!), and I went from hating him to rooting for him.

I won’t mention anymore characters, but they were all so fantastic, unique and worthy that I could easily mention every single character, where normally I’d only feature the main few. I mean, I feel like I need to mention Doomslug, at least. If you read Skyward, you’ll know what I mean.

The World

The world! Where do I even start? The world this takes place on is Detritus, which is a fantastic name for this planet. The descriptions we get throughout this novel makes it sound like a hard, but rewarding place to live. The sci-fi elements aren’t heavy at all, there’s no difficult scientific sounding descriptions, so I’d say this would be a decent novel to start with if you’re interested in sci-fi but don’t want anything too heavy. The world felt so real as I was reading it. I could truly imagine the falling debris and the hell that could follow them.

Overall, I’d say Brandon Sanderson is going to be a new favourite for me. In the time between finishing Skyward and finishing this review I’ve also read Mistborn, which I also really enjoyed (you may except a review at some point!).

Would I read it again? Yeah, I’ll read this before the next one comes out. I can also see this being a comfort read for me. You know, one of those books you go back to if you’re in a slump or if you want something good to read.

Will I be picking up the next in the series? Hell yes!

Would I recommend it? 100% absolutely without a shadow of a doubt yes.

Is it going on my favourites shelf? See above! My love for this book is way more than I ever expected it to be. I need more people to read it so I can shout about it with them!

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Created Mar 11, 2019 at 2:51pm • Submit your own review...