All her life, Spensa has dreamed of becoming a pilot. Of proving she’s a hero like her father. She made it to the sky, but the truths she learned about her father were crushing.
Spensa is sure there’s more to the story. And she’s sure that whatever happened to her father in his starship could happen to her. When she made it outside the protective shell of her planet, she heard the stars–and it was terrifying. Everything Spensa has been taught about her world is a lie.
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.
Brandon Sanderson is a guy that has pretty much perfected his formula in recent years. He rightfully gets a tonne of praise for his fantastic worldbuilding, and he has a well-earned reputation for writing imaginative, fast-paced books that are a hell of a lot of fun to read. Starsight is no different. It’s an incredible sequel that takes the work done in the first book, Skyward, and builds on it to take the story to exciting new places.
This was the book that made me realise just how well Sanderson and sci-fi go together. It’s an odd thing to say about a book centered around spaceships and aerial dogfighting, but Skyward is a much more grounded book compared to its sequel. Starsight embraces the sci-fi aspects of this world. There is more space, more aliens, more dogfighting… but there’s never too much stuff to distract from the story.
One of the most satisfying parts of this book for me was Spensa’s character development. It’s a pet hate of mine when an author repeats the same arcs for a given character across successive books in a series. When they never seem to learn from their experiences and are instead stuck in a loop, rehashing the same conflict over and over. This is thankfully not the case here. Spensa has learned her lessons from the events in the first book, and the decisions she makes are informed by this new-found maturity. Which isn’t to say that she doesn’t have those same impulsive urges that made her so fun to read about in Skyward, just that she’s a little better at deciding when she can use them to her advantage. This sort of growth and respect for consequences makes the series as a whole feel so much stronger.
The cast of characters grows along with the world, and without spoiling too much, Spensa spends a lot of time completely cut off from the supporting cast of the previous book. There are more people to meet, to love, to fight… and the more perspectives Spensa comes into contact with, the more her own worldview is challenged. The politics of the wider universe come into play, and there are a few of those trademark Sanderson revelations that turn everything you thought you knew on its head.
If you liked the first book then I’d be willing to bet that you’ll love this one too. It’s fun, it’s fast-paced, and it’s incredibly imaginative. It’s not a deep and serious read (though it has some thoughtful themes), but it’s the kind of story you’ll fire through in a few afternoons, having a blast while doing so.
If you haven’t read the first book yet, and you like the idea of a bunch of plucky humans trying to break free of a planet that’s under what is essentially a Space Invaders esque attack, then you need to start reading this series yesterday.
A copy of this book was received from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Gollancz for the review copy!
