Author: Brandon Sanderson

Sometimes I wonder about Sanderson’s inhuman dedication to producing epic, high quality work on a consistent basis. He is definitely a shining example of someone who sits his butt in the seat and writes without excuse.

What makes him stellar, in my eyes, is he’s also unpredictable. There’s not a clear trajectory of what he’ll produce next (even though there are expectations for him to continue a series) and you’re always left with a pleasant surprise when something new comes along.

Skyward is yet another pleasant surprise.

I suppose you could label it as a young-adult sci-fi book, but it reads so smoothly and at a level that can engage just about anyone. It’s the fun of his Steelheart series, but hooks you like the season finales of Lost (let’s just ignore the finale on that simile).

The characters are deep and feel real, even (spoiler alert) the Knight Rider inspired fighter plane that talks. You want the characters to succeed because you empathize with their cause.

There’s no real downtime in this book either. It keeps pulling you sentence-to-sentence and chapter-to-chapter and before you know it, it’s 2:30am and your partner is yelling at you to turn off the light and get some sleep.

That’s why I never felt intimidated picking this up in the Express section of my library. Although I had significantly less time with the book than a regular checkout, I knew I’d be plowing through it in even less time than was given to me.

Yeah– I guess you could say I liked it.