Warning – possible spoilers! (Tiny ones, though, and I’ll try to avoid even those; I swear I’ll give my best not to ruin it for you… :-))
Starsight by Brandon Sanderson – Book Details
TITLE – Starsight
SERIES – Skyward, book #2
AUTHOR – Brandon Sanderson
GENRE – science fiction, fantasy, young adult, space opera
YEAR PUBLISHED – 2019
PAGE COUNT – 461
MY RATING – 4.5 of 5
RATED ON GOODREADS – 4.39 of 5
What It Is About
“They say that you were monsters. But I thought…nothing can be more monstrous than they are…And if anyone can fight…it would be the ones they locked away…the terror that once nearly defeated them.”
Starsight by Brandon Sanderson starts a few months after the ending of Skyward. Spensa and people from Detritus are still trying to kick those Krell asses. And thanks to Spensa’s ability to “hear” the Krell’s remote commands, they managed to gain some advantage.
Spensa also has an ulterior motive for pushing so hard. She hopes that by getting herself into deadly danger, she might be able to activate her cytonic ability once again and that way hopefully open up an escape route for the humans from Detritus.
But during one battle, a small unknown damaged alien spaceship appears by their space defense platforms. The injured pilot manages to give Spensa a cryptic warning right before sinking into a coma.
Now Spensa has to travel to a whole other galaxy, hoping to steal the aliens’ hyperdrive technology. What she finds there will prove to be as dangerous as it is surprising.
Starsight by Brandon Sanderson – My Review
That was a darkness that should not exist, a darkness beyond the mere lack of light. A wrongness. They lived in there.
This is not going to be a very long review, because I don’t want to say too much about the plot. If you’ve read Skyward, then you know the general setup. In Starsight, the story continues, the world expands, and here are some of my thoughts about it all.
In a nutshell, I liked Starsight, but not as much as I liked the first book. It’s still currently one of my favorite series, but I hope the following instalments will get the story back closer to where it was in the first book.
Because my biggest problem with Starsight was that it felt like it maybe took too big a turn too quickly. I expected (and was looking forward to) getting a sequel of Skyward as we got to know it in the book one. Instead, it kind of felt like we just moved on to something completely new.
The fact that I’d so grossly misread their expressions reinforced this idea. I was among aliens. They were people, with real love and emotions, but they also—by definition—wouldn’t do things the same way humans did.
I was just so much in the mood for the Detritus setting as we got to know it in the book #1. I was hoping to get that going-back-home feeling you sometimes get with series. But in this book, we just moved on right away. Spensa spent a huge chunk of the book not only away from Detritus, but away from the characters I hoped to see more of.
It actually took me quite a while to get into the story. Until about 50% I even thought I would give it 3.5 – 4 stars. But that was before certain things finally happened and I started screaming WHAT! after every second sentence.
Then, it was just a wild ride all the way to the end (That ending!!!), followed by an overpowering urge to grab that third book right that very moment (which I still didn’t do, mostly because I am a masochist like that).
Because even with my complaints, it was still Brandon Sanderson. It’s still Spensa Spin Nightshade. Still an exciting, high stake YA intergalactic war. Still a sassy AI with bits of personality of Sheldon Cooper when he is in a good mood.
So, yep – still 5 stars.
I could remember, with some measure of fondness, the days when my starships hadn’t talked back to me.
I don’t even know why I ever doubted the man. His beginnings are always slow building, and then the endings leave you gasping for air.
Undoubtedly, Starsight was way more action than character driven, compared to what I expected. The world expanded greatly and there were a lot of surprising and even shocking new discoveries you just have to appreciate. But at the same time, it all made the book feel less personal.
But, again – that ending was so worth it and I can’t wait to continue with the story.
Ooooohhhh, I thought. That was actually a reasonable guess. Utterly wrong, but more reasonable than the truth was, in many ways.
And that’s it. I don’t really have much else to say about this book. It had a bit of the second book syndrome to me. As a sequel, Starsight relies heavily on the first and third book, and it’s a bit weird and ungrateful to try and review it on its own.
But I have the third book on my bookshelf and I’ll probably read it traditionally on the New Year’s Eve (it just so happened unintentionally with the first two books, but now it kind of feels like a tradition). The book #4, Defiant, is planned for November 2023, and it’s one of my most anticipated 2023 releases. I wanna be ready for it soon after it’s out.