"Cytonic" by Brandon Sanderson

Iiiiiiiiit's the weird one! Though to be fair, Starsight was also not just "We see you read Skyward! Would you like another Skyward?", so it's not like the previous two books were a solid pattern that Cytonic radically deviated from.

But yeah, I was not expecting "|wandering around in hyperspace|" to be an entire book. It honestly got kind of boring at times; not enough for me to dock it a star on the rating, but enough that I felt the need to mention it. It's like a whole book of side quests.

On the upside of that, though, we get a lot of character development. And worldbuilding. Spensa has grown, and is no longer so perpetually angry. Spensa's sentient robot assistant has only sort of grown, but that's kind of to be expected because, y'know, he's a robot. The book also |neatly sidesteps all the problems inherent to including an artificial general intelligence, via going "oh yeah, hyperspace just kind of sentientifies robots" (which actually ties pretty hard into the lore, in ways I won't specify because they're pretty big spoilers)|.

Speaking of lore, |we learn the origin of the delvers. I almost, almost wish we hadn't, because I think they were cooler when they were an inscrutable extradimensional threat|. Also, if you're wondering what the word "cytonic" means, it's |the hyperspace-jumping psions in the Skyward universe|. Spensa is one of them, hence the title.

This might be my favorite of the Skyward series covers.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A stern T for sci-fi violence and some sexual references.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    "You will not distract me from my current purpose, adversary. Though you have fought admirably, I will defeat you, then compose poetry for your funeral."

    "This . . . um . . . isn't to the death, |Hesho|."

    "I will defeat you," he said in the exact same tone, "and compose poetry for your retirement party."

    Page 262. Spoiler tagged because that name is a spoiler for Starsight.

    [from the acknowledgements]

    My ever-patient writing group is Kaylynn ZoBell on lead guitar, Darci Stone on drums, Eric James Stone on sousaphone, Emily Sanderson on flute, Ben Olson (on loan from the Olsen Family Singers), Alan Layton on rap vocals, Ethan Skarstedt on rhythm shotgun, Karen Ahlstrom on strategically timed phone alarm music, Peter Ahlstrom on operatic vocals, and Kathleen Dorsey Sanderson on brownies.

    Page 414. As I said, it's from the acknowledgements.

(Endnote: For whatever reason, Blogger really hates having a line start with an italic word, and it'll stretch previous lines to avoid doing it. I'm not sure why, but it annoys me.)