A review by toggle_fow
Starsight by Brandon Sanderson

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 This book takes after the first one, but with a massively expanded scope.

Spensa sets off on a last-minute spy mission to an unknown alien world. SO many worldbuilding mysteries are solved. The who/where/why of Detritus's existence becomes painfully clear, and after this I think the setup for a much bigger-stakes galactic power struggle is about to begin.

This book is mildly more political than the first one, but honestly there is yet another flight school and a lot of flying, so I would say it's more similar than it is different. Spensa and M-Bot continue to stay just this side of incredibly annoying with their I'm Always So Very Funny antics, and the new cast is intriguing. I did drop the rating of this one a little from the last, not because anything is wrong with the book particularly, but just because I didn't feel the same need to keep reading through this as I did with Skyward.

I do think that having Spensa be on her own for so much of this book did let a little air out of the tires, since we didn't get to build on any of the relationships created in the first one. And having so many mysteries solved did remove a lot of the urgent suspense that kept me hooked on Skyward. Overall, I still enjoyed it and am interested to see where the series goes from here.