Editors Reads Verdict
Skyward is Sanderson at his most propulsive and emotionally direct, a military YA science fiction novel that uses dogfighting and starfighters to tell a story about shame, belonging, and the courage to question what your community tells you about itself. M-Bot is one of Sanderson's finest supporting characters, and Spensa's rage and hunger are more compelling than most YA protagonists' more temperate ambitions.
What We Loved
- Spensa's ferocity and social awkwardness make her a distinctive and compelling YA protagonist
- M-Bot is funny, strange, and emotionally affecting in ways that defy his AI premise
- The flight sequences translate epic fantasy's action choreography to space combat effectively
- The mystery of what really happened to Spensa's father drives the plot with genuine tension
Minor Drawbacks
- The flight school structure follows familiar beats that YA readers will recognize
- Some secondary pilots are more archetype than character
- The worldbuilding's deeper mechanics are withheld for future volumes in ways that occasionally frustrate
Key Takeaways
- → Shame inherited from family can be more limiting than any external obstacle
- → Belonging to a community is not the same as accepting everything that community believes about itself
- → Courage requires questioning the stories societies tell about cowardice and heroism
- → An AI character works best when its limitations are as interesting as its capabilities
- → Military training sequences in fiction work because they externalize the internal struggle for self-mastery
| Author | Brandon Sanderson |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Delacorte Press |
| Pages | 513 |
| Published | November 6, 2018 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | YA readers who enjoy science fiction with strong female protagonists; fans of military SF wanting an accessible entry point; Sanderson readers looking for his lightest and fastest standalone entry point. |
The Daughter of a Coward
The premise of Skyward is simple and effective: humanity is besieged on a cave planet by an alien force called the Krell, the only way off the cave is through combat flight school, and Spensa Nightshade is the daughter of a pilot who broke formation in battle — a coward, according to the society that relies on courage to survive. Her father’s disgrace is Spensa’s inheritance, and her ferocious desire to fly and fight is partly aspiration and partly refusal to accept a verdict she believes is wrong.
This is good YA premise construction. The external obstacles (she’s banned from flight school, she has no money, everyone knows who she is) are directly connected to the internal conflicts (she is ashamed of her father and furious at that shame and uncertain whether the fury is justified). Sanderson makes the connection visible rather than obscuring it, which means the story’s emotional progress tracks directly with its plot progress.
M-Bot
The crashed starfighter Spensa discovers beneath the surface of the planet contains an AI — M-Bot — who has been waiting for his pilot for centuries. He is fixated on mushrooms (his pilot programmed him to collect mycological data), constitutionally incapable of lying, and uncertain about the nature of his own experience in ways that gradually move from comedy to genuine pathos.
M-Bot is the character who elevates Skyward from a very good YA military SF novel into something more. His questions about whether he experiences anything, whether his goals are his own, whether mushroom data matters — these are philosophical questions about consciousness and meaning delivered through comedy, which is the best way to deliver them in a book aimed at teenagers.
The Flight School
The training sequences at Sanderson’s flight school follow the familiar beats of military academy fiction — the antagonistic authority figure, the close-knit flight group, the training exercises that test different skills, the first real combat. Sanderson executes these beats well without fundamentally reinventing them. What he adds is the world-building pressure: everything the cadets learn is shaped by the particular constraints of their cave planet, by the behavior of the Krell, and by a mystery about the nature of their enemy that the society’s official history doesn’t address.
That mystery — what the Krell actually are, what they want, why human pilots who break formation get destroyed immediately — is the series’ engine, and Skyward sets it up without resolving it.
Our rating: 4.4/5 — Sanderson’s most purely propulsive series opener, with a distinctive protagonist, an excellent AI companion, and a mystery that makes the next book feel urgent.
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