4.5
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10,819 ratings
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The third book in an epic series about a girl who will travel beyond the stars to save the world she loves from destruction from the author of the Reckoners series, the Mistborn trilogy, and the Stormlight Archive.
Spensa’s life as a Defiant Defense Force pilot has been far from ordinary. She proved herself one of the best starfighters in the human enclave of Detritus and she saved her people from extermination at the hands of the Krell—the enigmatic alien species that has been holding them captive for decades. What’s more, she traveled light-years from home as an undercover spy to infiltrate the Superiority, where she learned of the galaxy beyond her small, desolate planet home. Now, the Superiority—the governing galactic alliance bent on dominating all human life—has started a galaxy-wide war. And Spensa’s seen the weapons they plan to use to end it: the Delvers. Ancient, mysterious alien forces that can wipe out entire planetary systems in an instant. Spensa knows that no matter how many pilots the DDF has, there is no defeating this predator. Except that Spensa is Cytonic. She faced down a Delver and saw something eerily familiar about it. And maybe, if she’s able to figure out what she is, she could be more than just another pilot in this unfolding war. She could save the galaxy. The only way she can discover what she really is, though, is to leave behind all she knows and enter the Nowhere. A place from which few ever return. To have courage means facing fear. And this mission is terrifying.
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ISBN-10
0399555889
ISBN-13
978-0399555886
Print length
432 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Ember
Publication date
November 22, 2021
Dimensions
5.5 x 0.86 x 8.19 inches
Item weight
11.1 ounces
Having the permission to stay had somehow given me the courage to leave.
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But…stories say something. About us, and about where we came from. They’re a reminder that we have a past, a history. And a future.
Highlighted by 738 Kindle readers
I’m not exactly a “there are nuances to this situation” type of girl. I’m more of an “if it’s still moving, you didn’t use enough ammunition” type of girl.
Highlighted by 646 Kindle readers
ASIN :
B093P86W32
File size :
17182 KB
Text-to-speech :
Enabled
Screen reader :
Supported
Enhanced typesetting :
Enabled
X-Ray :
Enabled
Word wise :
Not Enabled
Praise for Skyward
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
"Startling revelations and stakes-raising implications . . . Sanderson plainly had a ball with this nonstop, highflying opener, and readers will too." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"With this action-packed trilogy opener, Sanderson offers up a resourceful, fearless heroine and a memorable cast . . . [and] as the pulse-pounding story intensifies and reveals its secrets, a cliffhanger ending sets things up for the next installment." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"It is impossible to turn the pages fast enough." —Booklist
"Sanderson delivers a cinematic adventure that explores the defining aspects of the individual versus the society . . . [and] fans of [his] will not be disappointed." —SLJ
Praise for Starsight, the sequel to Skyward
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
“No one has more fun writing or is better at describing galactic dogfights. . . . Read the first one for fun or enjoy the second on its own.” —Booklist
**1 **
I dropped out of a wall.
Like, I emerged straight from the stone. I flopped forward in a heap of tangled clothing and limbs. M-Bot made a grunting noise as his drone body fell out beside me, but there was no sign of Doomslug.
I scrambled to my feet, orienting myself, looking around to see . . . a jungle? Like, a real jungle. I’d seen pictures in school of Old Earth, and this place reminded me of those. Imperious moss-covered trees. Branches like broken arms, twisted and draped with thick vines like power lines. It smelled like the algae vats, only more . . . dirty? Earthy?
Scud. It truly was a jungle--like where Tarzan of the Apes had lived in Gran-Gran’s stories. Were there apes here? I’d always thought I’d make a good queen of the apes.
M-Bot hovered up, turning around to take it in. The wall we’d fallen out of was behind us. A flat stone freestanding in the jungle, like a monolith. It was overgrown with weeds and vines, and I recognized the carvings in it. I’d seen similar carvings on a wall in the tunnels on Detritus.
I knew from the delver’s impressions that this was the nowhere. That felt right to me, for reasons I couldn’t explain. Somehow I had to find answers in this place. Which seemed a whole lot more daunting to me now than it had moments ago. I . . . scud, I had barely escaped the Superiority with my life. Now I thought I could find answers about the delvers, one of the universe’s greatest cosmic mysteries?
Not merely about the delvers, I thought. About myself. Because in those moments when I touched the nowhere, and the beings that resided in it, I felt something that terrified me. I felt kinship.
I took a deep breath. First order of business was an inventory. M-Bot looked fine, and I still had my stolen energy rifle. I felt a ton more safe holding it. I wore what I’d escaped in: a standard Superiority pilot’s jumpsuit, a flight jacket, and a pair of combat boots. M-Bot hovered up to eye level in his drone, his grabber arms twitching.
“A jungle?” he asked me. To him, the time I’d spent communing with the delver would have passed in an instant. “Um, Spensa, why are we in a jungle?”
“Not sure,” I said. I glanced around for any sign of Doomslug. She was cytonic like me--slugs were what made ships able to hyperjump--and I hoped that she’d done as I’d asked, and jumped to safety on Detritus.
To be certain, I reached out with my powers to see if I could sense her. Also, could I jump home? I stretched outward, and felt . . .
Nothing? I mean, I still had my powers, but I couldn’t sense Detritus, or the delver maze, or Starsight. None of the places I could normally hyperjump to. It was eerie. Like . . . waking up at night and turning on the lights, only to find infinite blackness around you.
Yes, I was definitely in the nowhere.
“When we entered the black sphere, I felt the delvers,” I said to M-Bot. “And . . . I talked to one of them. The one from before. It said to walk the Path of Elders.” I rested my fingers on the wall behind us. “I think . . . this is a doorway, M-Bot.”
“The stone wall?” M-Bot asked. “The portal we entered was a sphere.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking up at the sky through the trees. It was pinkish for some reason.
“Maybe we passed through the nowhere and came out on another planet?” M-Bot said.
“No, this is the nowhere. Somehow.” I stomped my foot, testing the soft earth beneath. The air was humid, like in a bath, but the jungle felt too quiet. Weren’t these places supposed to be teeming with life?
Beams of light filtered in from my right, parallel to the ground. So was it . . . sunset here? I’d always wanted to see one of those. The stories made them sound dramatic. Unfortunately, the trees were so thick that I couldn’t make out the source of the light, merely the direction.
“We need to study this place,” I said. “Set up a base camp, explore the surroundings, get our bearings.”
As if he hadn’t heard, M-Bot floated closer to me.
“M-Bot?”
“I . . . Spensa, I am angry!”
“Me too,” I said, smacking my hand with my fist. “I can’t believe that Brade betrayed me. But--”
“I’m angry at you,” M-Bot interrupted, waving an arm. “Of course, what I feel is not real anger. It’s just a synthetic representation of emotion created by my processors to present humans with a realistic approximation of . . . of . . . Gah!”
I set aside my own concerns and focused on how he sounded. When I’d first found M-Bot in the little drone, his speech had been sluggish and slurred--like he’d been on heavy pain meds. But he was speaking clearly now, and quickly, more like his old self.
He buzzed back and forth in front of me like he was pacing. “I don’t care anymore if the emotions are fake. I don’t care that my routines simulate them. I am angry, Spensa! You abandoned me on Starsight!”