Cytonic by: Brandon Sanderson

 

What is fascinating about Brandon Sanderson’s general approach towards young adult fiction is that it isn’t entirely different from his adult fiction.  Cytonic is the third installment in the Cytoverse and like Skyward and Starsight before it Sanderson is doing something almost completely different in each installment, leading to a series that clearly has a big picture explored (and some gaps filled in with some novellas that were published in between).  Starsight expanded the general universe while Cytonic expands other dimensions, something that has become a theme in Sanderson’s larger body of work.  Cytonic concerns Spensa’s exploration of the Nowhere in an attempt to gain an advantage over the Superiority which has been ruling the galaxy and subjugating humanity.  Sanderson’s position with this novel is almost fascinating stance on the general human uprising, framing it as a building revolution that humanity is planning but also using it to explore ideas of war itself.  Spensa throughout Skyward and Starsight has been determined to fly and essentially has had the goal of fighting the oppressors in all out war.  Cytonic is somewhat more contemplative, Spensa being on the outside for once with Sanderson using a group of space pirates incredibly effectively to highlight this outside nature of the novel.  It does mean that the Superiority does not actually get explored, nor do many of the previously established supporting characters.  Jorgen is the only human character who appears in Cytonic, and even then he does not appear often so Spensa can realize her longing and romantic interest in the man.  Sanderson writes the romance to be almost childish in nature because this is aimed at a younger audience which is fascinating when compared to his Cosmere romances, already a relatively weak spot in his writing.

 

Cytonic is very much Spensa’s book, but Sanderson’s most interesting material are actually involving M-Bot and Doomslug.  Doomslug’s true nature is further revealed in this one, the creature actually being able to communicate verbally with Spensa at the climax of the novel in perhaps the best scene.  M-Bot is once again Spensa’s constant companion, and Sanderson furthers the idea of M-Bot being alive and now having to cope with that fact.  The development here involves M-Bot learning to really experience and articulate emotions which is utterly fascinating to watch develop as the character was already capable of emotion.  Cytonic allows the artificial intelligence to essentially learn how to act on its own, circumventing its parameters and subroutines for its own ends, something Sanderson explicitly uses to avoid a story about AI gaining intelligence and becoming evil.  Sanderson actually explores much of the learning process with M-Bot, the sequence where he takes control of a starship for the first time and flies on his own being a particular highlight.  It’s a sequence where M-Bot is allowed to fail in its identity so it can also rebuild the identity from the ground up.  Paralleled with M-Bot is Chet Starfinder, a character who Spensa spends much of her time with in the novel who has been stuck in the nowhere for over a century and a half, losing his memory.  Chet has to rediscover his sense of self, something that Sanderson writes with quite a bit of subtlety.  Chet is only seen through Spensa’s eyes and as such there is this almost adoration from Spensa, believing he may be M-Bot’s original owner.  This is once again building to a twist which is a twist that adds to the complexity of the morality of the Cytoverse, something that Sanderson has done well at bringing everything back to Spensa’s journey.

 

Overall, Cytonic is once again a very different book for what the Cytoverse had established, and pieces are moving towards a finale.  It really only suffers from having to introduce so many extra characters, meaning that the villains of the book actually suffer from being just a bit forgettable.  The journeys that Sanderson focuses on are excellent and what really make the novel work incredibly well on the whole.  This has some of the best twists of the series and while there’s clearly some more setup needed for the final book it’s a great and breezy read, especially by Sanderson’s more lengthy standards.  8/10.