WARNING: Late Arrival Spoilers abound for all previous books and novellas in the Skyward series.
Defiant is the fourth and final book in Brandon Sanderson's Skyward series.
Spensa is now humanity's greatest weapon, cytonic and Delver in one. She knows all the secrets of their enemies, and is ready to be deployed against both the Superiority and the Delvers.
But her enemies have not been idle. Winzik has finished his conquest of the Superiority, and is ready to ramp up to full military production. The Delvers still have their deal with Winzik, though they are more scared of Spensa than ever. The new alliance will have to strike hard and fast to have any chance of defeating them.
All Spensa has to do is push aside her feelings. To become the unthinking weapon she always swore she wished to be. Then, just maybe, she will be able to save everyone.
This book provides examples of:
- Chekhov's Gun: Gran-Gran mentions that every member of the old Defiant fleet, including the children, was given a rank to help them understand that they were part of something greater. When they find an unfinished flagship in the shipyards and name it the Defiant, she is given command as the last survivor of the old ship.
- Dragon Ascendant: Brade casually kills Winzik when he tries to countermand her orders. Turns out she's been the one in charge for quite a while now, and the rest of the military was just waiting for her to decide a puppet ruler was no more use to them.
- Easily Conquered World: Winzik manages to conquer the entire Superiority, a nation covering thousands of planets, with a fleet about three times the size of the combined human/kitsen/UrDail forces. Between the fact that the Superiority forces member states to give up their military forces, and their tradition of docility and passivity, it's not that difficult. That being said, he does have to deal with more resistance than expected, and most of his fleet is dedicated to keeping member states in line.
- Final Battle: discussed by Brade.
- Gone Horribly Right: the Superiority's far greater industrial base means that their already greater numbers will become insurmountable with time. When the Defiance shuts down their supply of acclivity stone, the Superiority loses this advantage. Rather than be bled out in small battles, they make the logical move: gather to attack with everything they have.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Becca Nightshade, captain of the new Defiant, realizes that the enemy is obsessed with destroying the symbol of human resistance in the form of their new flagship. She convinces the admirals to sacrifice the ship, with her being the last person onboard, to bait Brade into a trap.
- Keystone Army: really, a keystone empire. The Superiority rely on just a handful of secret facilities to maintain hegemony over thousands of planets. While they had an FTL monopoly, centralization helped to keep secrets, but now that the Defiant league is challenging them...
- Slave Race:
- The taynix slugs. Not only are they fully intelligent beings trapped in boxes, but they are treated as interchangeable machine parts and tortured or executed when they "malfunction." Once the slugs (with Spensa's encouragement) talk to the Delvers, the Delvers liberate all the slugs across the entire Superiority.
- Turns out pretty much every species of "lesser" intelligence in the Superiority is like this at least a little. Spensa mentions at the end that many liberated planets weren't actually being fairly compensated for the necessary goods they provided, and are looking forward to having a greater voice in the galaxy to come.
- Soldier vs. Warrior: Spensa is the warrior and Jorgen the soldier. She finally realizes the distinction during her dressing down after a rogue mission and comes to respect Jorgenesque virtues like patience and planning.
- Stranger in a Familiar Land: Discussed; as Spensa explains to Jorgen, in the stories even if the hero does survive, they inevitably come back too changed to stay. Part of the reason she keeps trying to see herself as an unfeeling weapon is to head this off so that it won't hurt so much when it happens. In the end, it's subverted. Spensa fits in just fine after everything is said and done. Though she'd probably get bored if she had nothing to do, so Jorgen puts her in charge of exploring planets that were declared forbidden by the Superiority.
- You Are in Command Now:
- Spensa realizes that this is why most of her friends—who are just a few months past cadets—ended up in charge of the military and by extension their entire civilization. Between the old policies of prioritizing ships over pilots, lots of battles, and Winzik's assassination of the Assembly, everyone more experienced than them is dead. Spensa takes a few moments to wonder what their civilization would be like if they had a reasonable crop of older, veteran pilots still around, even if like Cobb they couldn't really fly.
- When the humans build a new Defiant, they give Becca Nightshade the captaincy, as she is the last surviving crew member of the old Defiant. Becca recognizes this as a political and morale move, but approves, and her insight gives them the winning feint at the very end.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: As it turns out, Winzik was never more than a puppet for Brade. Once he begins making too much of a nuisance of himself, she casually kills him, revealing that she's been in charge of the military for years at the least.
