Book Review: Starsight by Brandon Sanderson

The cover of the book was taken from its Amazon buy page for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Starsight  is the second story in the Skyward saga by Brandon Sanderson.  My review for Skyward is here. Spoiler Free Summary: Spensa’s dream of becoming a hero is only the beginning. An alien visitor appears, giving her the chance to learn about the people who have kept her captive this whole time. She also learns about the entity that is even more horrifying than the thought of humans at war. What secrets will she unveil? Will she be able to protect the secrets she keeps? What doe the eyes of the starts know?

Character: Spensa is still a charming character. She’s growing, which is nice to see. I like MBot too. She’s proactive still, rather like Naruto in a lot of ways. However, she’s growing smarter. She’s forced to teach, and that gives her some tools that she needs. I honestly think seeing her growth from the last book to this one was one of the more interesting parts of the story. The cast sort of splits and expands here. We meet essentially an entire new cast. We don’t cut completely away from the other characters, but they don’t get much screen time.  

Exposition: The exposition of this story wasn’t beyond what I’d expect from a first person narrative. There are, of course, some “conversations” that decently hide the information we’re provided. They’re fun conversations and also reveal character, so I didn’t mind them at all.

Image of Sanderson by Nazrilof was taken from Sanderson’s website for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Worldbuilding:  This novel expands on the universe and provides insight to “the big bad” everyone is afraid of. In true Sanderson fashion, “the big bad” is never really what people think it is.  This is where Sanderson has always, and will always, shined. This book made me miss Rithmatist (but not enough for him to stop working on Stormlight 4). The slow expansion of the world and it’s secrets is similar.

Dialogue: This is pretty much what I’d expect from any Sanderson story (especially a Sanderson YA story).  

Description:  I thought the description was great. I felt Sanderson was a little understated in his description in the last story, but this gave me the “something” I felt was missing from the last story.

Overall: This is easily the second-best book I’ve read so far this year. It fulfilled a lot of the promises the first book made. It became impossible to stop listening to it (this was an Audible story for me) with about three hours to go. It was a lot of fun. The only demerit I have is the cliffhanger ending. I hate those. I will always hate those. Even with that ending, I still loved it.

Thanks for reading

Matt