Starsight

Oh, all the goodness.

So, aside from not being able to talk about the joys in this YA space opera by the wonderful Sanderson, I can at least gush over the things it made me feel.

I was always thrilled about every space battle. It's a perfect blend of personality, piloting, humor, and many little oddities that make this kind of thing special. I was never annoyed by any of the main characters. I loved the AI's existential crises, the cuteness of the tiny fox/badger aliens and their king, and the fact that the majority of the novel deals more with perception and assumption than practically anything else.

The twists? Really great. But no spoilers. We've got an epic setup here and a very satisfying conclusion. You know, aside from that very show more last bit that makes me want to scream and tear out all my hair and demand that all the bookgods heed my plea for the next book in my hands RIGHT THIS INSTANT...

Ahem.

My only complaint? Our big bad aliens read like the ideological liberal left taken to an amazing extreme. Like, total caricature. And while we do dig below the surface and see a bit of variety, it's kinda funny how very... phobic... both sides get, or how those phobias take on some very strange features. Maybe it's not a complaint, but a bit of an annoyance because I would like to have seen a lot more subtlety and divergence in these details even as they grew more pronounced. But, let's face it, this IS a YA novel. Oversimplification, even in an ostensibly FUN tale written for the sake of FUN, is kind of the name of the game. :)

Putting that aside, I had a damn lot of fun. :) So I do believe this is a total win. :) show less

Spena's dream of becoming a fighter pilot has come true, though it meant learning some hard truths about her father and herself. Confident in her flying and ability to defend her people and planet, Starsight picks up not long after Skyward left off. Giving any more of a synopsis is near impossible without spoilers as the story quickly takes a big turn into unexpected and surprising territory that had me alternately worrying and cheering for Spensa, M-Bot and Doomslug. Scud, it made for an exhilarating read!

So what can I say about the book? It's a great big universe out there. The additional world building (galaxy building?) is amazing. The variety of alien species and cultures Sanderson created is impressive. It added a wonderful show more dimension and depth to what we already knew and created a great "fish out of water" experience for Spensa. I loved discovering right along with her just how much of what Spensa thought she knew was wrong and how she adjusted to it/learned from it. She finds new strengths she never knew she had and grows so much throughout the course of the story. It's a great character arc.

We're introduced to a whole host of new side characters. They come in all shapes and sizes and really great personalities. It did make me miss some of our old Skyward flight crew as they took the backseat for most of this story. I have every confidence we'll be seeing them again in the second half of the series and can't wait for them all to meet.

If you enjoyed the space fights of the first book, never fear! There's plenty of that in Starsight too.

Fair warning, this book ends on a cliffhanger. Weirdly it's one of the most satisfying cliffhangers I've ever read as most of the plot threads started in this book are resolved. It's just that last bit at the very end, which is obviously our set up for the next book and has me pulling my hair out. Of course now I'm craving book 3 like crazy and wishing his Cosmere writing wasn't getting in the way even though I'm looking forward to that publishing too. Ahh, the life of a Sanderson fan :) show less

Continuing Brandon's YA SF story. Quite long for a YA tale, but has that feel of somewhat lighter touch without any great peril for our heroine. Covers a lot of ground quite quickly with lots of useful coincidences thrown in to keep things moving.

As the attacks against Detritus keep increasing Spensa meets another cytonics pilot who lands on the surface only slightly injured. This new alien had been enrolled as part of the aliens new space force, and Spensa realises the opportunity for a cunning plan - using her AI's hologram abilities she could impersonate this new aliens species, travel to the Starsight base, and learn the technologies of the hyperdrive allowing her humans to escape the prison they've been trapped in for centuries. show more It's a very flimsy plan and relies on some remarkably contrived circumstances, especially the absence of hologram technology within the alien Superiority. Apparently the eyes and voices that Spensa can hear when she's using cytonics, belong to a race of powerful super-beings called Delvers 'retired' or something to null-space for peace and quiet. When roused they destroy everything around them before fading away. Spensa learns that part of the reason humans are locked away, apart from their aggression, is that they tried to weaponise the delvers, calling them in and sending them away from the human planets, until it all went wrong. On Starsight spensa learns that the aliens aren't just evil repressors of humanity but a diverse range of species all individuals and people like her. She bonds with a few of her fellow pilots as they learn to navigate the structures that Delvers bring into space with them. However the aliens also have politics of their own, and while she tries to remain disguised, she realises the human threat is being manipulated to serve other ends.

I'm not sure Spensa on her own is the most compelling story telling, but circumstances require her to leave the learning to be a person, M-Bot behind. Without such foils it all becomes one thing happening after an other, and the belivability often falters. It is Sanderson though, so the inventiveness quotient remains very hight and the fast pace keeps it fun throughout, but I think his earlier books were better. show less

Winter 2020 (December);

Book 2, and it being so long into this series already being published I got very lucky to not have to wait all the years, and to just have this next book at the press of a button right after finishing [b:Skyward|36642458|Skyward (Skyward, #1)|Brandon Sanderson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531845177l/36642458._SY75_.jpg|58411143] (though I will now be at the mercy of the most-of-year wait for [b:Nowhere|43606157|Nowhere (Skyward, #3)|Brandon Sanderson|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|67851209] to be published next fall/winter now, too).

I did not entirely know what to expect coming into this book, and I though that was a show more low grade thing, with some easy assumptions, and then Sanderson shoved all those assumptions out an airlock by less than 10% into the book, and it was magical. The whole world got flipped upside down entirely and we turned into a familiar trope setup but that had a whole lot of unexpected reveals within it about the past, and humanity, and just how big the rest of this universe is.

I ended up falling in love with a ton of new characters (while, also, absolutely having feelings for the ones we saw in our omnipresent 'Sandersonian' interludes). We solved two really big mysteries that I absolutely was blown out of the water to never have even consider connecting. We had a big reveal for another character, even though it was down in a very on-the-side, more-coming-later fashion that's so very Sanderson thinking incredibly long game for books and books later rather than just chapters.

I really can't wait to see what the DDF does with all this information, or what happens with our epic cliffhanger of an ending, how everyone finds each other again (and how the book 1 cast learns to mesh with the book 2 cast), what's at the heart of Detrius. I'm absolutely breathless with excitement for more of this world. show less

My least favorite part of Skyward features prominently in this book too—starflight training. It's like half the book. I just don't find flying around space that interesting, especially without M-Bot. I also didn't care for how abruptly the book ended after dropping a ton of new stuff on us.

The new alien species are fascinating though, and the characters continue to be great. I really did enjoy the book, it just relied a little too heavily on sci-fi tropes I don't like.

As a fan of Sanderson I can’t quibble over the quality for this target audience (and at 60+ I really am not his TA for this series). I could just write ‘he’s done it again’ and be done with it. Yes, there’s excellent world building, interesting characters and a plot line that just keeps you turning those pages...just as you’d expect in any of his series, but it’s the very humanity he so skilfully embroils into a world that is not quite human that enables you to feel every frustration and every plight and keeps you reading. There’s something very human in the characters, whether they’re actually human or not, that makes you feel you’re discovering something together. And that is the power of a great story teller.