Sunreach & ReDawn Review
Skyward Flight novellas 1&2: Sunreach and ReDawn
Upfront warning: this review will contain worldbuilding spoilers and some plot spoilers for both books.
With book 3 of the Skyward series, Cytonic, coming out in just a couple weeks, I wanted to sit down and do a review of the new novellas that have come out in the last month or two. While the main series is written by Brandon Sanderson, the novellas are a collaboration between Brandon and Janci Patterson. I confess, I was a little nervous when I first heard this; Brandon is my favorite, and I’ve heard of Janci but never read anything she’s written because…I’m not actually sure. But I was cautiously optimistic when they were announced.
The end of July while I was on vacation, the opportunity to get involved with the gamma/beta reading of these books came up and I jumped on it, because that’s what beta readers do. The chance to read unpublished stories is just too good to pass up. So between August 1 and October 1, I got to read all 3 of the novellas (and make comments, check grammar, etc.). And oh boy are these stories a LOT of fun! Some of the best parts of both author’s styles make it into an excellent set of novellas (or really more of one big book separated into three parts). Here’s where we dive in…
Sunreach starts at the time of the end of Starsight; if you’ve read Starsight it will be obvious where the overlap is, but I don’t want to spoil that ending for you if by chance you are reading this before you’ve read that. Sunreach follows FM, one of the pilots of Skyward Flight that was fairly flat through the first two books. Seeing through her eyes and getting some of her backstory really helps to flesh her out as a full character here. Though she’s a Dissenter and against the military running of the Detritus government, she loves flying and working with her Flight and wants to change the government/military from the inside now. FM struggles with the loss of squad mates and really believes that fighting isn’t the way to go, despite the fact that they’re in a struggle for survival of the human race.
Returning from his trip to the Detritus caverns, Jorgen brings back some strange animals to hopefully help with the war: more Doomslugs, of a variety of colors. And we learn quickly that different colors means different abilities. The blue and yellow slugs (classic Doomslug) hyperjump all over Platform Prime making adorable nuisances of themselves. Orange and purple slugs are able to communicate cytonically, over long distances too. And then there’s the red and black slug that makes cuts all over Jorgen’s face when squeezed too hard.
The climax requires Skyward Flight commanded by Jorgen and led in their taynix (Doomslug) befriending by FM to complete their mission at Sunreach. Also, an adorable teen romance develops between FM and Roge. It’s worth the read for either one of these plots, but both together are fantastic.
The second novella, ReDawn, starts with Alanik (from Starsight) waking up on Platform Prime and escaping back to her homeworld ReDawn with her cytonic abilities. There’s trouble there, with a faction of her people coming to political power just in time to capitulate to the Superiority’s demands to hand over cytonics etc. In an effort to regain control of the situation, Alanik’s mentor sends her back to Detritus to get both military help and a political alliance. Jorgen’s mom and the Assembly however, are trying to make the same sort of deal with the Superiority and Cobb not-orders those left in Skyward Flight to not-help ReDawn, which looks a lot like defecting to the DDF. In helping Alanik’s people the Flight learns how to use an old cytonically powered battle station and meets another new kind of slug, teal and green, which inhibits cytonic powers. In a high speed, explosive ending… I won’t tell you. The cliffhanger here is terrible and that’s how it’s meant to be. Maybe reading Cytonic in a couple weeks will give you answers. Maybe you’ll have to wait for Evershore in December. Either way, spoiling this ending would be a crime.
A note on the worldbuilding for ReDawn now. It. Is. Amazing. On all the art, Alanik is human-shaped with ridges on her cheekbones and white hair. Turns out the coloring comes in part from the atmosphere of her planet. They live on FLOATING GIANT TREES turned into cities that literally float somehow (acclivity stone maybe?) in a gas giant planet. I LOVE it. I don’t know that I’ve ever read of people living in the gas clouds of a gas giant planet, though admittedly I haven’t read a ton of SF and I’m sure it’s been done somewhere sometime. Living in the purple gasses of the planet has some side effects of course, but I love the mental images of this. I’m not sure if Brandon or Janci came up with this, but either way I just think it’s fantastic.
To finish up, yes you can totally read Cytonic without reading these novellas. And if you prefer print books maybe waiting till they’re all out next year sometime will be better for you. I did read Cytonic first after all, since the beta and gamma of Cytonic were basically done before the novellas were really started. I think though, that you’re really going to want to have read these all before the fourth and final book (currently called Defiant) comes out later next year. A lot of changes happened while Spensa went wherever she did at the end of Starsight, and I think they’ll be important for the ending scenes of the series.
As a final plug, my kids love this series. My 8yo is the biggest driver of us listening to them, even though they’re technically for a YA audience she loves them SO much. And my older kids are happy to go along with her in listening to them.
