Skyward

Executive Summary: After a bit of a slow start, I liked this a lot more than I expected to. I guess I'm not quite done with Brandon Sanderson's non-Cosmere stuff after all. 4.5 Stars.

Audiobook: I don't believe I've listened to a book by Suzy Jackson before, but she does a good job. Her normal reading voice is a good fit for the main character and she does a few other voices as well making audio a good option here. I particularly liked her voice for Kimelynn.

Full Review
So after Mr. Sanderson's Reckoner series, I swore off his non-cosmere books for good. My tastes and Mr. Sanderson's work was starting to diverge apparently. When this was announced as a YA sci-fi series, I said: “Nope, not for me.” I didn't even add it to my to-read pile in case I changed my mind later.

Fast forward oh, 6 weeks after it was released and I bought it. So obviously I have really great willpower!

The reality was that I was looking for something light and fun to listen to for my Christmas week driving (14+ hours round trip plus a bunch in between visiting friends and family) and this seemed to fit that bill. Even if I didn't like it very much, there was very little chance of it bringing down my holiday spirits.

Early on I was pretty so-so on the book. I didn't regret buying it, but I was thinking I might have been right to avoid it. Once the main story got going however I started to change my mind. For one thing the dumb humor that drove me nuts in the Reckoners books wasn't here.

There are jokes. Most of them aren't great, but they weren't purposely bad and annoying. Humor isn't Mr. Sanderson's strong suit. In my opinion his best humor often comes when he's not trying too hard.

So as always the world building is fantastic. Since it's sci-fi there is no magic system. However this is far from hard sci-fi so you could almost count his space ship technology as a sort of magic and in that regard I really enjoyed it.

I thought the characters were all pretty good too. I particularly enjoyed Kimelynn. She's my favorite. Spensa was far more likeable than David from the Reckoners series.

I'm interested in the bigger picture of what's going on with humanity. We get some insights near the end of the book, but mostly I had more questions than answers.

So now I'll be picking book 2 up on release day. Maybe Mr. Sanderson and I aren't drifting apart as I thought. I guess I just didn't like his Reckoners books that much.