Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
Skyward #1
YA Science Fiction
November 6, 2018

Somehow I was under the assumption Skyward was my first read by Brandon Sanderson, but turns out-

I was wrong!

I read Mistborn a few years ago, so huh… How did I forgot he wrote that series? I pride myself on knowing this kind of stuff! I’m never going to forget again.

Sorry, I just discovered I was wrong, right now, writing this review, and my mind is a little blown. It doesn’t feel like the same author at all. I mostly liked Mistborn; it was just a little stiff. There was nothing stiff about Skyward. Skyward took me on an unstoppable adventure!

I was invested, 110%.

In the Sci-fi/Fantasy genre, I majority lean toward Fantasy. Give me a new land, some wizards, mystical creatures, and I’m in heaven. Put the story among the stars, with spaceships and aliens; I automatically start out leery. I knew that when I read the back of Skyward in B&N, but I bought it anyway. It just sounded so good.

Exactly as I thought, I ended up shelving it. After about a year I finally picked it up. I want to say it was worth the wait. It wasn’t. Eff the wait. I should have read it immediately. It deserves to be read immediately.

Skyward hit on one of my favorite tropes ever; The Power Team. Hell, I’ll go one better, it had a power team with call signs! F*ucking A! All I can think about now is what my call sign would be if I were on Skyward Flight Team! Soaring Bird??

“Call Sign: Avem”… ooooh, I like that one!

It’s Latin for ‘Bird’.

I digress…

I guess the secret to my loving Sci-Fi is putting your main character into a team of badasses. At that point, I’m hooked. Following along with Spensa’s (call sign: Spin) flight traning, getting to know all the characters, made me fall in love with the story. Spin, as a main character, was awesome. She was strong, and she was vulnerable. Watching her learn to love her team, and vice versa, really got to me. Hooked.

BUT, I will also admit to getting caught up in the flight battles. I was on the edge of my seat, rocking a bit, full of adrenaline. As a reader, I’m not really into battle scenes. They bore me, and the lingo flies right over my head. There’s no part of me that wants to be in any kind of armed forces. Birdie knows, if the choice is fight or flight, I’m out.

The writing of one Mr Brandon Sanderson did it for me. Between the pages of Skyward I wanted to become a pilot. Spensa described the feelings of the cockpit- and the gravity- and the emotion of the battle, so well that in those moments I wanted to be Top Gun. That’s how good this book was. It took an apprehensive Sci-Fi reader and made her want to fly straight up and pluck a star.

Onward to Starsight, which I already own.
In hardcover.