Skyward Full Book Spoiler Thread

[Chaos]

Hi guys, looks like most ebook places are distributing Skyward now, so it's time for full book spoilers! Post them here.

I didn't really like how the topic tags happened with Oathbringer, so I would say don't do that here but please do keep spoilers out of topic titles. 

So yeah, here we go! I hope you enjoyed it.

[+Extesian]

In that case I'll start with a spoiler that's only for the 17th chapter. 

The answer to which universe Skyward is set in.

SPOILER for chapter 17

Spoiler

We've known for a while that Skyward is in the same continuity as one his non-Cosmere novels, but not which one. 

Quote

“Great. What else is offline?”

"Other than my memories? Boosters, acclivity ring, cytonic hyperdrive, self-repair functions, the light-lance, and all mobility functions. Also, my wing appears to be bent.”

Skyward ch 17

From one of Brandon's scifi jaunts, available here.

Quote

"A race discovers FTL Cytonic Transmission at the same time it achieves a peaceful civilization."

Defending Elysium 

So there you have it. Worth reading anyway it was pretty interesting, but even more so now we know it's essentially a prequel

 

[Overlord Jebus]

So the cats out of the bag! 

I mentioned in my review that I felt that some of the reveals weren't my favorite. I'd love to know what people's thoughts on the information we get regarding the following mysteries was and how people liked them, warning, this list spoils what answers we get:

Spoiler

 

Who are the Krell? 

Why do the Krell attack in this manner? 

What really happened with Spensas dad? 

What's going on with the planet of Detritus? 

 

We're doing a podcast on skyward soon and I'll go into my specific opinions on that. 

More questions! 

Who is everyone's favourite wingmates? 

What do people think about Spensa as a character and the growth and changes she goes through throughout the book? 

Just gimme opinions in generallll!!! 

[Straw]

@Overlord Jebus

Spoiler

1. I thought that the Krell reveal made sense, but it wasn't particularly exciting. However, I suspect that they'll be slightly more interesting in future books.

2. My opinion on this was basically the same as above, but I found it a bit weird and confusing.

3. I thought that this was one of the better reveals in the book, mainly due to how it brought the book together.

4. I didn't quite get this one, but from what I could tell the planet of Detritus somehow dampens Cytonics?

 

1. Probably Jorgen due to his character development and growing relationship with Spensa.

2. I really liked her development so far, and I'm interested to see how she'll grow in the future.

 

[Use the Falchion]

11 hours ago, Overlord Jebus said:

Who is everyone's favourite wingmates? 

What do people think about Spensa as a character and the growth and changes she goes through throughout the book? 

Just finished!

I like Quirk the best, but I feel for Morningtide. 

I honestly think Spensa's growth is one of the most realistic growth patterns we've seen of Sanderson's characters. I'm excited to see where she goes from here and how the story continues. 

[Blackwarder]

Am I the only one who felt that it’s not a true Sanderson book since it’s too short?

[Use the Falchion]

2 minutes ago, Blackwarder said:

Am I the only one who felt that it’s not a true Sanderson book since it’s too short?

Don't worry, that's just a sign you want more!

It's longer than any of his other non-Cosmere books: Steelheart was roughly 318 pages in the hardcover, Calamity was 410. Skyward is a tiny bit over 500. 

I think it's just the mix of 1) we had the pre-released chapters, so it's less of the actual book we read. And 2) the last book we had by Sanderson was over 1200 pages long. Skyward is a little over of 1/3 of that, and not nearly as dense. 

Honestly, since we're getting 4 of these books instead of the usual trilogy* I'd say we have plenty of time for more story. 

 

*I mark this down because recently it seems like his trilogies have been running away from him...

[Govir]

Haven't finished (I'm on Chapter 23 atm), and haven't read any of the replies here, but I just want to say:

I can't stop reading M-Bot as Mmm-Bop. Please send help.

[Use the Falchion]

3 minutes ago, Govir said:

Haven't finished (I'm on Chapter 23 atm), and haven't read any of the replies here, but I just want to say:

I can't stop reading M-Bot as Mmm-Bop. Please send help.

How about a different fix? MMMMMMM....GOOD LIES. 

...and now I can't stop thinking about M-Bot as a crack-ship (crack ship? HA!)  for Pattern...and it would be glorious...

Edited November 6, 2018 by Use the Falchion
Made and unintentional joke and I wanted to make it intentional.

[yulerule]

So when Spends tries to call M-bot's Massacre it, I couldn't help but be reminded of Murder it diaries. (Another series, another author)

I just finished reading it. You know... I didn't predict each of the twists, what it would actually be, but I did realize what plot points would be twisted. 

And Spends definitely grew up over the course of the book. And I really like M-bot's personality, mushrooms and all. 

And I want to know more about Doomslug!

[Geraden]

I particularly love the "empty box with a display" that is described for where the Cytonic hyperdrive is supposed to go in M-Bot. We are told by Rig that it's not there, just empty housing with a display, and we are meant to believe the previous pilot took it for some reason.

If I recall correctly (and it HAS been a while), that was the entire twist in Defending Elysium... There WAS no device, it's powered by the supposed "guard" protecting the device, or in this case, a pilot.

 

Other thoughts: Spensa's situation at the end of the book seems to be well in hand. She has the admiral's guilt protecting her, the truth about her father's death coming to light and answers as well as hope for a way to end their people's plight. Not to mention she's the only one with Cytonic ability that we know of AND the intermediary with the most advanced ship they have and M-Bot won't let them take him away from her.

Usually we have SOME indication of what the challenges will lay in the next book when a sequel is setup, but in this case I think the only thing we can guess right now is that maybe the humans will be able to get such a strong advantage on their Krell "prison guards" in the constant fighting, that the Krell coalition will panic and need to actually send in some REAL forces. I'd then imagine it becomes a race to see if the humans master FTL Cytonic travel to escape before an overwhelming Krell force appears? If the (fascist style) pacifism from the other alien species in Defending Elysium can be used as a metric, I wonder if there even IS a Krell force that could be more intimidating.

[shadowwisp]

 I don't know about you guys, but I absolutely loved this book. For me, it outshines all his other non-cosmere books by far. 

And of all of his short stories, Defending Elysium was my favorite. So I am absolutely thrilled to find out that Defending Elysium was the prequel to Skyward (although I didn't put the two together until I came to the forums).  

 

So uhhhhh, does anyone know when Skyward 2 will be out? I believe he already submitted the final draft to his publisher correct?

[shadowwisp]

OMG, I just realized that:

Skyward + Defending Elysium spoilers:

Spoiler

They named the "defect"/cytotic part of brain after the main character in Defending Elysium. Jason Write.

"The Writellum section of her brain,” Rikolfr said, “went crazy with activity when she was around the Krell."

 

Edited November 7, 2018 by shadowwisp
crap sorry for the double post, not sure how to delete it

[Govir]

• @yulerule: If you haven't read Defending Elysium, I think you should. It can be found for free on Brandon's site. If you have read it, read my first spoiler section below.

 

• 3 hours ago, Geraden said:

  • I particularly love the "empty box with a display" that is described for where the Cytonic hyperdrive is supposed to go in M-Bot. We are told by Rig that it's not there, just empty housing with a display, and we are meant to believe the previous pilot took it for some reason.

Spoilers for Defending Elysium:

Spoiler

I think Doomslug is the biological component to the Cytonic hyperdrive, and she has to be in that housing. If it were just the pilot, why would it go offline directly after being used?

 

• And here's my shortened reaction: I absolutely loved this book.

 

• My main question is not about Skyward though, it's about reading order. And I'm going to put this in spoiler tags too, because I'm overly cautious. Go read Defending Elysium if you haven't. It's pretty short :).

Spoiler

Personally I read Defending Elysium prior to Skyward. Because of that (and because of reading the AMAs), I knew to be on the look out for connections to other series and where to look for them. I feel like each story has spoilers for the other, but I still think reading DE prior to Skyward is the better order. It allows you to make educated guesses of how this play out, but still be surprised by other aspects of the story. Where as Skyward straight up spoils the ending of DE, which is kind of a big deal since it is so short.

I'm surprised humans lost the war. I seem to recall in DE that the Aliens didn't have much in the way of warships. Although I suppose that could be explained away by saying they were hiding them like they were hiding their treatment of some of their own kind.

 

• The humans that were fighting in the war appear to have been enslaved, which means it doesn't make sense that the Krell can't wipe out the humans on Detritus.

 

• Editing in a quote from the spoiler free review by @Overlord Jebus

Quote

Unfortunately, it’s those plot revelations that I think this book is at its weakest. Skyward starts off by setting up several major mysteries to be answered throughout the book and I unfortunately felt that they didn’t always pay off as well as they could.

When you say the answers to the major mysteries didn't pay off as well as they could, do you mean because you were able to predict them? If so, do you think that is because this is a YA novel? If not, do you have any spoilery elaboration?

I personally like each of the reveals. From your spoilers above (also, spoilers for Defending Elysium):

Spoiler

 

Who are the Krell?
Once it was obvious this was connected to Defending Elysium, I knew the Krell would be the "aliens" (ok, it was a hypothesis. The other being that the Humans had won, eradicating the other aliens. And so the Krell were Cyto sensitive humans). So this answer was in line with what I knew could happen.

Why do the Krell attack in this manner?
Since the very beginning of the preview chapters, the way the Krell attacked reminded my of Gurren Lagann. The Krell were trying to keep the human population in check / keep them from organizing too much. So this didn't surprise me because I'd seen it before. It does raise some questions though, mainly what I said above: These humans don't appear to be the last humans, so why spend resources on keeping them imprisoned instead of killing them all?

What really happened with Spensas dad?
Once I found out he was a "traitor", I wish I had been right about him being overwritten by a Krell. That was established as possible in Defending Elysium. I don't remember (although I've only read it once) if the rewriting vision was established beforehand. In that sense, it was disappointing.

What's going on with the planet of Detritus?
I feel like we got some answers to this, but not all of them. The shell seems to be an old station of some sort, I'm envisioning a dyson sphere, but that doesn't make sense around a planet (from what I know of dyson spheres). Although there is machinery in the planet that seems to be running off of geothermic power, so it's possible that people of old lived on Detritus and built a space station shell around it for unknown reasons (possibly just more living space?) It's also possible that it was built as a Cyto blocking facility, e.g. maybe this is one of the planets that dissident cyto sensitive aliens were kept at one point. So I guess my feelings on this is that I don't think it's fully answered.

 

 

Edited November 7, 2018 by Govir

[Use the Falchion]

An added thought:

This book definitely felt like Sanderson still had some "Stormlight writing" in him with the additions of the interludes and the drawings. If this is a constant thing going forward, I am ALL ABORD. The interludes aren't anything special, but they definitely helped flesh out Ironsides, and while the drawings are simple, they add so much in terms of cinematic value! It makes me feel like I'm getting the most bang for my buck.

 

Edited November 7, 2018 by Use the Falchion
Grammar

[Havoc]

5 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

An added thought:

This book definitely felt like Sanderson still had some "Stormlight writing" in him with the additions of the interludes and the drawings. If this is a constant thing going forward, I am ALL ABORD. The interludes aren't anything special, but they definitely helped flesh out Ironsides, and while the drawings are simple, they add so much in terms of cinematic value! It makes me feel like I'm getting the most bang for my buck.

 

You could say that the structure of this book is Storm-lite.

[Overlord Jebus]

2 minutes ago, Havoc said:

You could say that the structure of this book is Storm-lite.

I am in favour of referring to these books as the storm-lite archive!

5 hours ago, Govir said:

When you say the answers to the major mysteries didn't pay off as well as they could, do you mean because you were able to predict them? If so, do you think that is because this is a YA novel? If not, do you have any spoilery elaboration?

I will go into this in detail on next weeks Shardcast about this but I felt there were unsatisfying answers. My biggest issue was probably the explanation of Detritus. The reasoning behind the planet being how it was being "We found it that way" felt very... unSanderson. The planet basically arbitrarily existed to allow the story to happen and seemed generally unconnected to the rest of the story. It's not bad, it's just... a boring explanation. Maybe we will get more information on Detritus in the future but in Skyward, I felt the explanation was disappointing.

[Alejo_arg]

Spoilers:

 

Was i the only one sad about this being the future of DE story? I mean the book ends with a war thats about to start, humans vs the universe and by the end of skyward u realize we lost that war.

 

 

[Stormcage Cotto]

I'm unsure how I feel about this one. I think mainly because it felt more YA exalted by Sanderson than Steelheart did which was more Sanderson compacted down into YA. That said I'm glad he's trying new things. Especially Scifi.

 

Overall it mainly just leaves me excited for Mistborn Era 4 more than the sequel. I'll definitely read it day of when it comes out though. And I'm really glad DE is getting followup that was such a good quick read.

[Sirscott13]

Can we get an official confirmation of Defending Elysium and Skyward being shared universe? 

 

Was really cool when the grandma was talking about how her mother was the engine. Complete call back and I literally had to ask myself if it was in the shared universe 

[+Extesian]

18 minutes ago, Sirscott13 said:

Can we get an official confirmation of Defending Elysium and Skyward being shared universe? 

 

Was really cool when the grandma was talking about how her mother was the engine. Complete call back and I literally had to ask myself if it was in the shared universe 

The confirmation is Brandon saying its in a continuity with one of his novels, and the use of Cytonic technology. We don't really need more confirmation than that but if official confirmation comes from Brandon I'll let you know. 

[mr.bug]

That was freaking awesome!!!!

[Steeldancer]

That was good. I didn’t put two and two together until the very end when

Spoiler

I realized omg she’s going to teleport, and I realized it was the connection between skyward and Defending Elysium

. I do love M-Bot. And while I expected the ending more or less, but it’s execution still surprised me and made me very satisfied. It’s not cosmere, but I enjoyed it. 

Edited November 8, 2018 by Steeldancer

[Spinner16]

[Callsign: Necrosis]

I loved the book. The characters, even your typical villians were well fleshed out and with purpose, the main character was fun and grew, and it had a great moral. I agree though, that the mystery pay offs weren't as good as some of the other things Sanderson has done. It isn't that I guessed it before, it just didn't feel as it had as much impact. We got a reason for it, but as Ironsides said in the Epilouge, "so what?" it didn't really effect anything.  However, I have to admit it as been ages since I read DE. I shall have to go back and read it, and see how that effects my opinion of the reveals. Not a bad book, still much better than what most other people write, the character growth and portrayl was better than normal, but the pay off and Sanderson 'cascade' ending wasn't as strong. Maybe I would have liked to see some more pay-off at the end of the book, more resolution. Not sure. Over-all very impressed.