Starsight by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Starsight, by Brandon Sanderson, is the sequel to the incredibly popular young adult science fiction novel Skyward. Starsight expands on the universal adventures of pilot Spensa and her journeys to protect her home planet, Detritus. Although Skyward was an engaging and overall exciting read, Starsight falls short.

Starting with the positives: Brandon Sanderson does not lose his direct writing style and stunning visual imagery of action scenes and new environments that Spensa finds herself in. Spensa’s character remains intriguing, and M-Bot and Spensa’s interactions are still hilarious.

I found Starsight’s plot to be overly complex, with many new characters that aren’t explored fully. While reading the book, I found myself flipping back and forth through the pages to remind myself of who each of the characters were and what they looked like. Unlike that of Skyward, the plot of Starsight feels half-baked, and the ending is anticlimactic and mainly serves to introduce a cliff-hanger for Sanderson’s next novel in this series, Cytonic.

While I certainly enjoyed parts of this novel, I found myself confused about the tangled plot and excess of characters for the most part and was disappointed by the ending.

View all my reviews —Review by Varun F. ’24