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Sunday, April 2, 2023

Skyward by: Brandon Sanderson

 

There is a trope in fantasy called ‘the boy and his dragon,’ essentially describing a coming of age fantasy where a young farmboy comes into the possession of a dragon whom he has to raise and grow, it gaining sentience as their partnership grows.  Anne McCaffrey is perhaps one of the originators of the trope, with Christopher Paolini’s The Inheritance Cycle being perhaps the most popular example.  Skyward is Brandon Sanderson’s execution of the trope at the heart of the story, but instead of a boy and his dragon, it’s a girl and her starship.  Yes, this is the first installment of Sanderson’s Cytoverse (outside of a small short story available on his website) and it's based around the idea of a young girl dreaming of flying through the stars.  This is a book which clearly follows the coming of age narrative, with main character Spensa having several trials and tribulations to overcome before achieving her dream of becoming a pilot in her planet’s military.  The audience is clearly skewed towards a young adult and Sanderson has adjusted his writing style accordingly, making his already easy prose somehow simpler without sacrificing the characterization.  Spensa takes primary point of view for the novel, and this goes a long way to assist Sanderson in crafting his usually intricate world but through the view of a child.  This is not his first foray into young adult fiction, Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians was already a very successful series, but Skyward’s prose is genuinely what makes the book work.

 

Spensa as a character is your classic fantasy protagonist in a world that has turned its back on her: her father was shot down as a coward, leading to her and her family being societal outcasts, the military in control of their colony already has it rigged so she cannot enter pilot school, and while one of her father’s flight squad pulls strings to get her into pilot training she is forced to live in a cave and publish washroom instead of having her own bunk.  Sanderson clearly cannot write a protagonist who doesn’t overcome some sort of adversity, and much of Skyward feels as if it wishes to dismantle the systems of the military in societies.  The planet has a system of military dictatorship and in classic military dictatorship fashion, those who are important to the colony are allowed special privileges while the underclasses are generally sent to be slaughtered against their enemies.  Sanderson attempts to show this through the dwindling numbers of Spensa’s Flight Group along with an examination of the stress of people dropping both out of their cadet position and in battle, but it doesn’t ever quite work to the extent as the system itself doesn’t really have a representative in the plot outside of the leading admiral who gets secondary point of view chapters, mainly in the interludes of the novel.  Ironsides is almost too human of a character to represent the type of bureaucracy that would lead to this outcome.  She is still a fascinating character in her own right, understanding the need for ruthless efficiency and conducting intelligence experiments to determine why Spensa’s father would betray them.

 

Perhaps what brings Skyward down is that there is the classic Brandon Sanderson worldbuilding just peeking through the corners.  The last third of the novel includes the most from M-Bot, the stealth fighter Spensa finds crashed in the cave she’s staying in, fulfilling the trope of a girl and her starship, but outside of a vibrant personality there is this kind of sad sense that much of Skyward is setup in that regard.  There is clearly an interesting world out there, the Krell have a very interesting culture and backstory, M-Bot’s snark is an utter delight whenever they are on the page, and Doomslug is just adorable, but these are all secondary.  This makes Skyward feel more like two shorter novellas grafted together and interlaced at points and something that may have been better served if Sanderson was able to expand the universe, something it is clear the sequels are going to do.  7/10.

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