SPOILER FREE REVIEW: SKYWARD BY BRANDON SANDERSON

Title: SKYWARD

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Pub. Date: November 6th 2018

Genre: YA Science Fiction

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Pages: 510 Pages

GOODREADS | BARNES & NOBLES | AMAZON 

Spensa is a young girl who has always been told to reach for the stars by her father, the one person she holds in highest regard. The world she lives in is constantly under attack & all that are left of the human race are fighting to stay alive. Most have been recruited to become Pilots in order to continue growing their fleets & balance the scales against their enemy. Not much is know about the mysterious ships that attack in the sky. The intel that has been gathered lets Spensa’s people know their enemy is more technologically advanced but their motives/agenda remain unclear. Spensa’s path to becoming a Pilot comes with a ton of opposition, her father was labeled a coward for deserting his team during an all out attack. This however does not stop Spensa from pursuing a career as a Pilot & searching for answers behind her fathers fallen legacy…

“𝑳𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒄𝒚, 𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒔𝒕, 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒆 𝒖𝒔 𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒘𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒍𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒖𝒔. 𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒔 𝒂 𝒃𝒐𝒙 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒂𝒏 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, 𝒊𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒈𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒐𝒐 𝒇𝒂𝒓.”

This may be a action packed YA Sci-Fi but make no mistake! the characters are the icing on the cake 🤗 Spensa our MC is a Sun Tzu quit lover with a ton of confidence that may often times come off a arrogance. She means well though & honestly just wants to be accepted amongst her peers & judged fairly w/out the alleged sins of her father being brought up to play. This does mean she puts up with ill treatment from superiors & having to consistently prove her bravery. Spensa is in flight academy along with her flight mates Kimmalyn, Jorgen, BIM, Nedd, Arturo, FM, and others. Her flight instructor Cobb was her father’s wing-mate & goes up to bat for Spensa when the higher ups were opposed to allowing her to enter flight academy because of her dad. Cobb is a seasoned older gentleman with PTSD who has opted to retire from flying & instead teaches future Pilots.

I loved seeing the team in simulated training sessions where their personalities truly came out to play. Kudos to keeping it strictly platonic! I don’t remember the last time I read about a group of teens where there wasn’t some romance so this was refreshing. Of course this will probably not be the case in the sequel but I’m actually excited to see if a certain potential ship takes off. My FAVORITE character who may just make it into my faves of all time is the A.I. M-Bot 😎 who is super advanced & dutiful. M-Bot is part of the ship Spensa discovers & with the help of her best friend Rig brings back to life. M-Bot is perfectly paired with Spensa, both pretty cocky and chatty these two were destined for each other. I had a few good laughs reading interactions between M-Bot & Spensa that left me craving more from this duo.

The last book to give me such an adrenaline rush was Pierce Brown’s Morning Star & so SKYWARD is joining my hall of memorable action packed reads. I could hardly put this book down & could visualize all of the teams calls to action. The fighting sequences & the ships themselves were so detailed in a reader friendly way. I never felt like it was too heavy on the schematics, instead it played out as if I was watching Maverick in the popular movie Top Gun but the female version 🙌🏽 With their being very few books featuring Father/Daughter relationships, SKYWARD already has a special place in my heart. Seeing Spensa follow in her fathers footsteps as a Pilot was heartwarming. We see Spensa battle her love for her dad & the image of him she has engraved in her memory. Character development was A+ as was the story building. We’re left off with a mind blowing revelation & final battle that sent me running for the sequel 🤗

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