Skyward by Brandon Sanderson – Book Review! – Becky’s Book Blog

Spensa’s world has been under attack for decades. Now pilots are the heroes of what’s left of the human race, and becoming one has always been Spensa’s dream. Since she was a little girl, she has imagined soaring skyward and proving her bravery. But her fate is intertwined with her father’s–a pilot himself who was killed years ago when he abruptly deserted his team, leaving Spensa’s chances of attending flight school at slim to none. No one will let Spensa forget what her father did, yet fate works in mysterious ways. Flight school might be a long shot, but she is determined to fly. And an accidental discovery in a long-forgotten cavern might just provide her with a way to claim the stars.

Honestly, if I ever needed a book to show how my reading has changed since I first started blogging, this would be that book. According to Goodreads, I first read this in 2018 and gave it a whopping 5 stars, and now on my re-read, that’s dropped down to 3.75 which is a huge leap. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, I did, but it just shows to me how much more critical I’ve become as a reader since I first started my blogging journey 7 years ago.

But now onto the actual review. Skyward is a fun and fast paced sci-fi where people and the plot aren’t always what they seem. The story follows Spensa, a young women determined to clear her father’s name and become the best fighter pilot there’s ever been. At first, she starts off as plucky, if not a little weird with her need to randomly blurt out lines like:

“When this is done, Jerkface, I will hold your tarnished and melted pin up as my trophy as your smoldering ship marks your pyre, and the final resting place of your crushed and broken corpse!”

Which, while funny at first, started to get a little on my nerves the further into the book we get. For a lot of reasons, but the main one being it’s one of the biggest indicators of Spensa’s lack of growth. She just came across quite flat, she was determined to clear her father’s name and become the best pilot ever, but outside of that we don’t really get much growth at all. In fact, that was the case for every single character in the book, but seeing as how we spend the entire time in Spensa’s head, I just wish we could have gone a little deeper into her character.

In fact, the whole book needed more development in my opinion. The first few chapters were quite dense when it came to world building, but then it was like reveals were thrown in with no warning, sometimes bits of lore felt like they were made up on the spot to fit the narrative. But despite the slight info dump at the beginning, the story really does move at a breakneck pace, especially when M-Bot becomes involved. This was when I found myself really getting interested in the story, and if I’m being honest, M-Bot was my favourite character out of them all.

I do love a snarky side character, and M-Bot gave us that and so much more. They helped to give Spensa a little more depth to her character, and the interactions between the two of them were some of my favourites throughout the book. But M-Bot is really the only side character that was given any kind of development, and I do think this book would have benefited from having a few more POV’s. The only other one we get is from the Admiral of the flight program, and even she kind of fits into the kind of pre-built character slot the others seemed to. We have the grumpy but good-looking love interest, the gruff with a heart of gold mentor, the quirky girl next door friend. They all just felt a little gimmicky, mainly due to the lack of any kind of development.

Overall while this wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t great either, and I was really surprised by just how much my opinion changed during my re-read. I picked it up because I had the next two books on my kindle ready to go, but I DNF’d the second book after noticing a lot of the same issues I found in this one. Everything just seemed too easy, too neat, conclusions were jumped too with hardly anything to back them up, and it just felt lacking in a lot of ways. That being said, if you enjoy fast paced sci-fi’s with plenty of action and snark, I would give this a go.