The #1 New York Times bestseller!From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Reckoners series, the Mistborn trilogy, and the Stormlight Archive comes the second book in an epic series about a girl with a secret in a dangerous world at war for humanity’s future.All her life, Spensa’s dreamed of becoming a pilot and proving herself a hero like her father. She made it to the sky, but the … pilot and proving herself a hero like her father. She made it to the sky, but the truths she learned there were crushing. The rumors of her father’s cowardice are true–he deserted his Flight during battle against the Krell. Worse, though, he turned against his team and attacked them.
Spensa is sure that there’s more to the story. And she’s sure that whatever happened to her father that day could happen to her. When she made it outside the protective shell of her planet, she heard the stars–and what they revealed to her was terrifying. Everything Spensa has been taught about her world is a lie.
Humankind has always celebrated heros, but who defines what a hero is? Could humanity be the evil the galaxy needs to be protected from? Spensa is determined to find out, but each answer she discovers reveals a dozen new questions: about the war, about her enemies, and even, perhaps, about Spensa herself.
But Spensa also discovered a few other things about herself–and she’ll travel to the end of the galaxy to save humankind if she needs to.
“Sanderson delivers a cinematic adventure that explores the defining aspects of the individual versus the society. . . . Fans of Sanderson will not be disappointed.” —SLJ
“It is impossible to turn the pages fast enough.” —Booklist
“He’s simply a brilliant writer. Period.” –Patrick Rothfuss, author of the New York Times bestseller The Name of the Wind, on Brandon Sanderson.
more
I really am loving this series and would be happy to read for years (decades) if Sanderson continued. Doomslug takes on a life of her own in this story and M-Bot–well, such perfectly placed witticisms that had me laughing out loud! Oh, and of course Spensa is brilliant. Oh to write like Sanderson when I’m grown up. 😛
WAILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!! I have to wait a whole year for the next book!!!!! Loved the first one and waited impatiently for this one – jumped in and was swept right up in the great characters, including a slug and humanish M-bot, and exciting adventures of Spensa in her journey of space and self discovery. Always a pleasure to read, Sanderson’s Skyward series is set to be one of my favorite series!
Brandon Sanderson has done it again. Starsight, the sequel to Skyward, is an amazing work of sci-fi genius. I thought, several times when reading, that I had figured out what was going to happen. Right as I thought I knew what was going on, he threw a curve and caused me to readjust my thoughts and emotions. Absolutely would recommend this book to anyone looking for a space-bound adventure. After finishing Starsight, I cannot wait for the sequel to be published, though I have no choice but to wait.
A Fantastic science fiction novel that is miles better than book 1 (I loved you book one don’t feel bad) it had anticipating what would happen next the only question I have after reading it is WHEN IS THE NEXT PART?!?
Sanderson keeps up the pace in the sequel to Skyward. I thought the first book was actually better than his norm in terms of character development, because there wasn’t as much time devoted to magic systems as in his fantasy books. In the sequel, he keeps up this trend, showing us different cultures and how they react, interact, and misunderstand each other. There are some great reveals as usual, and the book leaves you ready for the next one!
This story is an equally compelling read to the first in the series, but I still liked it slightly less for three main reasons: first, Spensa is the only character in the story really that carries over from the previous one, because she hyperjumps across space and meets a bunch of aliens. Second, while I buy that she’s super amazing and everything, she feels like a one woman show in this version (of course she does; she’s all alone, so everything relies upon her creativity, skill, and ingenuity). In the previous book, she was part of a team, which was both more believable and somehow more endearing. Third, while the ending was still a super spectacular awesome Spensa moment, somehow it couldn’t compete with the ending of the first book in the series — probably because in Skyward, everyone expected so little of her. Even she expected nothing of herself… but then circumstances pushed her to the brink of herself, and she had literally nothing to lose.
The plot: Spensa, on her home planet of Detritus, encounters an alien who was in route to Starsight, an alien civilization many light-years away from them. Because she can hear the Krell’s communications with one another in the “nowhere,” she learned in the climax of the last book that she can also transport herself in the nowhere, meaning that she and only she can hyperjump across space. She uses this, as well as a hologram from her super advanced space ship, to impersonate the alien who is back home in Detritus recovering. Her goal is to steal some of the alien hyperjump technology so that the rest of the humans can do what she does. They need to do it fast, so they can leave Detritus, since the Krell are threatening them with extinction.
Spensa infiltrates the alien political system, even to the point of training other pilots there whom she knows will eventually attack humans. Humans are universally hated on Starsight, believed to be excessively violent. In the course of the story, though, even as Spensa gets deep into alien politics, she realizes that the aliens are “people too,” and befriends them–all except the one other human among them, who ironically despises other humans and ultimately betrays her.
There were I think two or three very brief interludes back on Detritus also following Jorgan, the love interest from the first book. It seemed that the implication there was that Jorgan may also have the same “defect” that Spensa does. That hadn’t been set up earlier in the story that I can recall, though I assume it was mostly a setup for the next book in the series.
My rating: ****
Language: none
Violence: none (fantasy only)
Sexual content: none
Political content: none
A great continuation of Spensa’s quest to free the humans. She’s showing some great character growth, and I really enjoyed the new friends she made on Starsight. M-bot and Doomslug are my favorite side characters. Looking forward to the next book and hopefully learning more about the Delvers and the Nowhere.
I’ve been putting off reading Starsight for a while, mainly because I didn’t want to see Mbot turn evil somehow, which seems to inevitably happen with AI stories. How silly of me. Brandon Sanderson continues to sidestep tropes and deliver compelling characters, intriguing situations, and a very real sense of danger with every cliffhanger.
Following the events of Skyward, Spensa has helped turn things around for her people. That is, until the Superiority shows signs of amping up their attacks on Detritus. In a last ditch effort to save her people from utter destruction, Spensa goes undercover with the assistance of trusty M-Bot, discovering far more than she ever fathomed about herself and the threat facing the humans. Can she put the pieces together, or is her race doomed for total annihilation?
Much like the first book, this was a solid YA scifi journey.
Spensa once again stands out as a strong, scrappy character who will go any distance to save the people of Detritus. Spensa has a lot of character progression in this book. She learns a heck of a lot more about her strange abilities, and her reactions to the ever-changing landscape of her situation were relatable given what she’s been led to believe.
M-Bot stood out for me again, and he had some progression of his own that helped keep things interesting. Some of his questions regarding existence reminded me of Murderbot (a series I love to death). I won’t give anything specific away, but I’m curious where his journey will take us in the next book, almost as much as Spensa.
The plot was pretty darn great! First and foremost, the universe-building was great. There are so many intriguing, quirky races out there, and the ones we got to know intimately felt real and three dimensional. I especially loved the kitsen. They sound so cute! Can I have one, please? This booked moved fast for the most part, and the mystery element of the new threat called the delvers added a great creepy element to things.
In spots, I did feel like the pacing lagged a bit, and Spensa could get inside her own head a little too much, but besides that I don’t really have any complaints.
I’m excited to continue this series once the third book comes out, and if you haven’t started this series, definitely give it a try!
Sanderson does it again. Engaging and fun read. So much action and I love the main character. I cannot wait to see how this series ends.
It was amazing
Can’t wait for the sequel!!
The worst part about this book is the wait for the next in the series. This one did not disappoint.
And here I thought the first one was an incredible. Brandon Sanderson has out done himself with this one. Action, adventure, lots of answers, and a ton more questions which leads to the only downside: this isn’t the conclusion. But I can’t complain because I am eager to see where it goes next. I can’t wait!
Good ride, will definitely get the next book
The second book of Skyward expands the fictional universe to other locations, multiple alien species, a galaxy-wide political system…while keeping the story tightly focused on the main character (these books are written primarily in first-person narrative).
I do have a quip… An operating system for an AI requires millions of lines of code. If the AI crashes after copying each line of its code (and then has to rebut to continue), then it would need many days to complete this task. Consider one million lines of code (it would more). Let’s say that it only takes one second between each “take”, then to copy 1,000,000 lines would take a little over 11.57 days. If we actually take Brandon Sanderson’s narrative and use more like 3 minutes (or more) between operations, then the number of seconds would be 180,000,000, which is almost 21 days. This doesn’t work with the story… Other than that, it was good. But the simple error really rubbed me the wrong way. It was a simple thing to check.