Skyward: Flight by: Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson

 

Brandon Sanderson has this reputation for constantly writing and always meeting his deadlines with a bibliography that is always growing, but there have actually been several times where Sanderson had rescheduled his writing schedule.  The conclusion to the second era of Mistborn is one such example, being pushed back twice first to after Oathbringer and then after Rhythm of War.  When devising the Skyward series this was something Sanderson wanted to avoid, becoming especially aware of his works blooming into points where he would physically not have the time to actually write some of these stories himself.  His assistant, Isaac Stewart, has already been mentioned to be writing a Mistborn installment and close friend Dan Wells had already cowritten Dark One, but when writing Cytonic, Sanderson realized there was more of the story that would need to be told he realized there would be no time for him to write these in between stories alone.  Skyward: Flight materialized as three novellas published in ebook and audiobook format in the second half of 2021, the collection coming in print in 2022, being set generally in between Starsight and Cytonic, though eventually becoming concurrent with the latter novel.  All three novellas were devised to be co-written between Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson, with Sanderson outlining the plot and characters and Patterson doing much of the actual writing of events.  As such, this review will largely be referring to Patterson as the author, as much of the quality of these novellas are down to the way Patterson interprets Sanderson’s outlines for the stories.  This review also will not be too harsh on Patterson for having her own style of writing, while she is cowriting with Brandon Sanderson, all three novellas as an end product are more down to her style and sense of storytelling.

 

The collection opens with Sunreach which is by far the weakest of the collection.  Luckily, it is also the shortest novella included.  Some of the issues present here could be Patterson becoming acclimated to Sanderson’s world and characters, reading Sunreach feels more an imitation of Sanderson’s style than Patterson’s own, but it’s also just a narrative that feels more like a sequence of extended exposition than a story being told in its own right.  This is the novella that expands on the several slugs on Detritus, the different colors indicating different cytonic abilities that manifest and the general work being done to understand what the slugs can do.  There are a couple of things of note with Sunreach that stop it from being just extended exposition, FM is our point of view character and it’s utterly fascinating to see this world through the eyes of someone other than Spensa Nightshade.  Spensa doesn’t actually feature in this or the other two novellas in the collection which makes for a nice change of pace overall.  FM as a character has to deal with several deaths in the early section of the novella and the way Patterson reflects on the deaths is quite interesting.  Despite being a young adult novel, the deaths are presented in this forward manner that feels much closer to an adult novel than what you would expect from a young adult novella.  The exposition itself also is far from being terrible, the slugs’ abilities in general are interesting and follow Sanderson’s general rules for worldbuilding and magic.  Although the Skyward series is a science fiction series it is spinning out of the mind of a primarily fantasy author and that is something you can understand with the way the slugs end up working.  The length of Sunreach is also perhaps a mark against it, being the shortest of the three novellas this becomes the one that feels as if simultaneously there isn’t enough material to fill the novella and that there is too much to contain in the shorter page count.  It makes this first novella an odd read as well as having one of the larger problems, it is a bit of a forgettable one.  While Patterson is certainly at fault for crude attempts to blend her style with Sanderson’s in this novel, the majority fault for this novella actually lies with Sanderson for giving an outline that could have been its own subplot in Cytonic, potentially told through interludes instead of being published as its own thing.  Sunreach is also notable for being the only thing I’ve read from Sanderson that I haven’t liked.  4/10.

 

ReDawn fairs almost immediately better than Sunreach does, shifting perspective to Alanik so the reader can see the survivors of humanity from an alien perspective which is just generally an interesting perspective.  Patterson plays around with cultural differences to explore the budding romance between Jorgen and Spensa, all done without Spensa’s presence and generally in a more touching way than many of Sanderson’s pieces of romance.  There is a real sense that the characters, while young adults are still very much adults and have been living in a society where they don’t really have an adolescence (they have an initial childhood but Skyward already established society forcing them into maturity at an early age).  Alanik’s culture is explored throughout the novel as a way to expand the Superiority’s subjugation of the galaxy and Alanik’s general philosophy towards the greater good.  She is at her heart a tactician from a race of tacticians, when others of her race act oddly it must be for some reason.  This is a novella where the major issue that presents itself is that it really is only the first half of a larger novel with Evershore, ending on a cliffhanger that the final novella of the collection immediately reprises and continues with a perspective shift.  While I personally love when a story ends on a good cliffhanger, this is something that can be difficult to truly pull off and properly execute, ReDawn falling into the trap of making the cliffhanger feel not like an ending with more story to come, but that Patterson just ran out of pages and had to stop the story there.  It does at least leave the novella at a point of tension, being a point where Spensa’s grandmother and Admiral Cobb are potentially dead and the rest of Skyward Flight are on the run, but it’s an ending that doesn’t feel if the primary purpose of ReDawn has been resolved.  There is a twist of the Superiority agents infiltrating the human ranks which Patterson pulls off incredibly well that leads up to the point as well as the general commentary on military goals being full of misunderstandings and vengeance minded instead of tactical which makes for interesting reading.  Patterson has also just greatly improved her style in writing this one, while in line with Sanderson’s prose it isn’t trying to be something that it’s not, Patterson communicating the story in her way with her sense of the characters which will reassure readers after Sunreach that she can take over the Skyward series after Defiant with Skyward: Legacy.  7/10.

 

Evershore is the end of the collection and the novella that feels the closest to being complete, despite being essentially the back half of ReDawn.  Told from Jorgen’s perspective, the novella opens with a repeat of the ending of ReDawn which is written in a way to feel like a cliffhanger resolution to an episode of a television serial and not an opening chapter of a novella.  Like Redawn before it, much of Evershore sees the Skyward Flight crew set apart from the rest of humanity on a search for information and an exploration of the greater universe is in order.  While this was written to be after Cytonic, Evershore in many regards feels as if it may help being read before Cytonic.  There is much exploration of the cytonic powers and their place in the universe along with more of the Superiority.  This is certainly enough to fill a novella and indeed this is the longest of the three novellas, Patterson’s efforts also focus quite largely on exploring Jorgen as a character.  The military’s flaws to this point had generally been seen through the eyes of Spensa, taking the role of exile and outcast to her society in Skyward due to her father, but Evershore allows exploration of Jorgen and his relationship with his mother.  Set up to lead but never see any of the war himself, Spensa’s influence has changed him and his mother proves to be an incredibly important military tactician.  Her schemes being generally motivated by self-interest, Jorgen has become motivated by saving lives and lifting humanity up; through his experiences he has become better, but he has also become mentally ill.  The most memorable moment in Evershore is Jorgen having a panic attack, his mental state being generally represented by his ability to use his cytonic abilities which have become generally unstable.  It’s also represented by Boomslug, one of the slugs that has the ability to explode using mind knives, an ability Jorgen essentially shares.  Jorgen’s internal monologue implies worry about becoming a weapon and being gifted essentially with an ability to kill which is utterly fascinating from a character perspective.  Evershore also has more exploration of the kitsen from Starsight which is excellent and Patterson has clearly come into her own fully with this one.  8/10.

 

Overall, Skyward: Flight is a collection that just gets better with each novella, but sadly this also means that there is a genuinely rough starting point for Janci Patterson’s first foray into working with Brandon Sanderson.  Hearing Patterson’s unique voice is imperative while still playing around with Sanderson’s own ideas and world that shine through from the plot outlines adhered to Sanderson’s sensibilities.  It’s sadly more of a mixed bag due to the first of three installments coming across poorly while the other two are genuinely interesting and fun times.  6.3/10.