Literature / Starsight

WARNING: Late Arrival Spoilers abound for Skyward.

"Don't trust... their lies. Don't trust... their false peace."

— Alanik of the UrDail

Starsight is the sequel to Skyward by Brandon Sanderson.

Following the revelations and strategic re-organization of Skyward, humanity has begun making progress against the Krell. They have reclaimed the closest orbital platforms around their planet, pilot life expectancy is way up, and they are working on repairing their defenses. But the Krell are not sitting idly by. They are fielding more drone ships, more aces, and even battlecruisers—though they can't get close enough yet.

Then a new alien starfighter appears and crashes onto the planet.

Alanik of the UrDail is from a species that was once allied with humanity, and is now trying to join the Superiority, the ones keeping humans imprisoned. Alanik heard Spensa's cytonic cry and came to investigate. Before she passes out from her wounds, she gives Spensa the location of Starsight, a space station Alanik was traveling to in order to join the Superiority military. Thinking fast, Spensa decides to use M-Bot's holograms to pretend to be Alanik, infiltrate the Superiority, and steal a non-cytonic hyperdrive so that her people may finally escape Detritus.

The book is followed by Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson.

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This novel provides examples of:

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Played with. The delvers Spensa sees manifest as versions of Spensa herself only with scary glowing eyes. They are just reflecting her own thoughts back at her. They aren't aware what they look like to her, or even that she's sentient.
• All Myths Are True: The kitsen inspired the myths of kitsune on Earth; apparently humans and kitsen used pre-technology cytonics to travel between their worlds thousands of years ago. For some reason, all the cytonic kitsen left, leaving the rest trapped on their planet.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: The unnamed delver and Winzik.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Played with in regards to the UrDail. M-Bot hacks Alanik's computers and determines that they're not that different from humans; they prefer slightly different concentrations of breathable air, have slightly different dietary requirements, and their basic vital signs are a little different, but nothing too surprising. The human doctors, on the other hand, don't have that context because M-Bot didn't give them access to Alanik's computers before he left. All they can say about Alanik is that they are pretty sure she's not currently dying.
• Bizarre Alien Sexes: M-Bot mentions that varvax genders are "complex," but doesn't go into much more detail. Winzik is close enough to male that "he" is the appropriate pronoun for him.
  • The diones are even weirder (by human standards) being left or right instead of male or female and mating via Fusion Dance.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: The diones have the ability to "preview" the personalities of their children, allowing them to decide whether they want a child with that personality or if they want to roll the dice and try again. This made it very easy for the species to breed out undesirable personality traits, such as aggression.
• Blatant Lies: Hesho is quite insistent he is no longer a king - his people are now a democracy, as required for higher Superiority membership. The fact that his people still treat him like a king is a complete coincidence. At least until near the climax, where Hesho's crew overrules him. He accepts it, with bemusement.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: This book involves way more direct interactions with alien species, so we get to see a lot of this. For instance, Hesho is the heir of a monarchy and Spensa notes how archaic a system of government that is—and that Detrius's system of letting proven soldiers and military leaders make all the decisions is the best. She also meets the Dione people, who can test out the personalities when the parents temporarily merge. This phase is called a draft, and if the extended family don't like the personality the parents separate and merge again. Then during the book's finale Spensa finds out why the delvers seem to be a Always Chaotic Evil species. They actually aren't, it turns out that they didn't realize the small creatures telegraphing so much hatred at them were alive like they were. They only felt so much hate because that's what anyone who interacted with them felt for them.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Morriumur is too conflicted to fight in a real battle and is about to submit to being redrafted when the delver shows up. Then they get in a ship and arrive just in time to provide critical help to Spensa.
• Chekhov's Gun: It's mentioned early in the book that dione "drafts" (diones in the middle of their Bizarre Alien Reproduction cycle), have two linked brains. It turns out that this makes drafts almost immune to the hallucinations that the delvers use to defend themselves: since no two people see the same hallucination, a draft sees two separate illusions and can use this perspective to figure out what's actually real.
  • Also, Doomslug and their species is the key to safe hyperspace travel.
• Children Are Innocent: What makes Sensa finally accept that Starsight is mostly the happy and peaceful place it seems and not the giant deception she thought. She could believe that every single adult was only pretending to be a friendly civilian, but she can't believe that anyone could make the children keep up the pretense if it wasn't at least partly true.
• Cliffhanger: The book ends with Winzik initiating his coup while blaming everything on the humans of Detritus and Spensa specifically, Cuna hopefully alive and free but Winzik reporting that Spensa murdered them, and M-Bot's ship shell destroyed, leaving him in nothing but a dumb drone. And then Spensa jumps in a portal to the nowhere, which is normally used for executions.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: While Spensa fought the Krell in the last book, they were just a faceless threat and the real antagonist was the spartan, militaristic society of the Defiants with the stern and seemingly malicious, but ultimately shown to be honourable and well-intentioned, Ironsides at the fore. In this book the antagonist is the opulent, aggression-averse Superiority embodied by Winzik, who is oily, deceptive, and pretends to be well-intentioned while actually being a ruthless bastard out to seize complete power for himself.
• Dehumanization:
  • Any species that is too aggressive is dismissed as basically an animal, fit to be utterly exterminated if they become too troublesome. Spensa sees a news program where an "expert" dismisses the humans of Detritus (who, it should be noted, have gone from Stone Age to spaceflight in less than a hundred years in order to defend themselves) as basically just non-sentient insects who can be killed without remorse.
  • This turns out to be the problem with the delvers. They are so massive that they are utterly incapable of recognizing anyone in the normal universe as actual people. When Spensa is able to force one to understand that it is killing people, it is horrified, and immediately leaves.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hesho is killed during the Battle of Detritus; his shieldbearer takes over for the Battle of Starsight.
• Eldritch Abomination: The "delvers", mysterious entities native to the nowhere-space that cytonics access to use their powers. The use of cytonic communication or transit causes them pain (it's described as being like an unpleasant buzzing noise), and sufficient use of cytonics can allow them to manifest in conventional space, at which point they lash out to try and crush the creatures that are creating that annoying noise. Cytonics who spend too much time near them begin to feel the same hatred for everyone that the delvers do. It turns out that the delvers are genuinely unaware that the "insects" are intelligent. They are so huge in both body and mind that they can't see people as anything more than annoyances. Spensa is able to show a delver that people are alive. The delver, horrified, immediately leaves.
• Evil All Along: The Krell had been implied to be Punch Clock Vilains by the reveal at the end of Skyward, but it turns out that in truth their almost as evil as humans initially thought they were. Their leader launches a coup to take over the galaxy and they had been using humans as a scapegoat to increase their political power. Though they are not Always Chaotic Evil and some are still friendly.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Brade offers Spensa a spot for humanity as Winzik's soldiers. She cannot understand why Spensa would refuse this deal just because Winzik is launching a coup and has been murdering Spensa's people for decades.
• Fantastic Racism: In addition to lots of racism against humans (M-Bot notes that licensed humans like Brade tend to get scapegoated by the system), the Superiority sorts member races into "primary intelligence" and "secondary intelligence," with the latter shamelessly referred to as lesser species. It's demonstrated multiple times that whatever the Superiority claims, "intelligence" ends up meaning "useful to the Superiority."
• Fighting a Shadow: A delver's manifestation in the physical realm consists of a "maze" and a cloud of asteroids called "embers", made of matter brought through from the nowhere and controlled by the actual delver through a portal to the nowhere.
• Foreshadowing:
  • With access to the Superiority datanet, M-Bot identifies Doomslug as a taynix, a dangerously venomous creature that is typically killed on sight. Doomslug hasn't hurt Spensa, though, so she dismisses it as not worth worrying about. The taynix are actually the secret to the Superiority hyperdrive, and they spread information about them being dangerous to keep that fact hidden.
  • Vapor insists several times that, despite what rumors say, her people are not assassins. But they are definitely sent to "deal with" troublesome officials. Turns out she was put in the recruit pool to spy on Winzik so that he could be put on trial.
• Good All Along: Sort of. The delver that Spensa sees isn't necessarily "good", but it's not really hostile like she assumed. Apparently the use of Cytonics cause Delvers extreme pain, so they would destroy them whenever they popped up, not realizing that the beings using them were also alive. When faced with this fact, the Delver retreated, not wanting to kill other living beings.
  • Cuna as well. They turn out to be leading a Superiority faction that wants to overturn the Superiority's Fantastic Racism.
  • And most importantly Spensa's housekeepers aren't spies like she assumes. They really are housekeepers.
• Hegemonic Empire:
  • The Superiority exercises control not through military power, but through being the only ones who know how to make FTL drives that won't attract the attention of the delvers. They don't need to attack worlds that rebel against them, all they have to do is deny them FTL access and cut them off from the rest of the galaxy.
  • This turns out to be the reasoning behind Winzik's coup: he knows that the secret to Superiority FTL is on the verge of coming out, and wants to create a military and gain control of the delvers to keep the Superiority in power.
• Hidden Depths: Spensa is, once again, terrible at reading people. She's slightly better than in the previous book, but still not great.
  • She is convinced that Starsight is one big act to make outsider races think the Superiority is perfect and peaceful when it's not. While the Superiority isn't as perfect as it pretends, the people on the station are genuinely just simple, happy people going about their lives, and certainly not trained actors.
  • Spensa thinks her housecleaner is a spy—it's a perfect cover. She's actually just a nice old lady who wants to make meals for Alanik.
  • She quickly becomes convinced that Cuna is a Smug Snake politician using her as a pawn in a power play between departments. That's not completely wrong, but her big mistake was thinking that they were cruel and evil. The truth is that Cuna is leading the peaceful faction to make real alliances with lesser races, unlike Winzik's faction that just wants conquest.
  • She identifies Winzik as a Faux Affably Evil monster who hides behind a veneer of civility while engaging in a war of extermination. In fact, these assumptions about Winzik are what make her assume the worst about the rest of the Superiority. She's actually mostly right, but her big mistake is assuming that Winzik has a lot more control than he really does. It's only his one small faction trying to exterminate humanity, most of the things he's doing are explicitly illegal, and he has to launch a coup to get control.
  • She thinks that Vapor is an assassin sent to kill someone in the flight group, or at least the recruit pool. Vapor is actually a spy, sent to gather evidence on Winzik so that he can be brought to trial legally.
  • She thinks that Brade is a brainwashed slave showing just enough cracks to eventually be turned. Brade is brainwashed, but it goes so deep that she doesn't care that she's a slave any more. She is actually trying to ride Winzik's ambitions to a more powerful position.
• Hope Spot: Spensa wakes up in a Superiority hospital, and Cuna informs her that the delver is gone, deaths were minimal, Winzik will soon be tried for his crimes, and the galaxy is even opening up communications with the humans of Detritus, with Cobb in particular making a good first impression. Then Spensa realizes that Winzik isn't going to just roll over, and barely gets out as he launches his coup.
• Hypocrite: The Superiority believes aggression is the root of all evil. Therefore, any evil can be justified, as long as it is not aggressive. Imprisoning entire species with no explanation or chance for appeal? Perfectly fine. Killing new recruits in a training exercise? Well, they needed to be sure the recruits could handle real combat, right?
• I Lied: Spensa, after giving Jorgen a Big Damn Kiss.
  D-Bot: I'm confused at what just happened between the two of you. I thought you insisted to me several times that you had no romantic inclinations towards Jorgen.
  Spensa: I lied.
• Killer Rabbit: The kitsen are about two feet tall and look like adorable foxes. They are still skilled warriors, and their basic "fighters" are built like battlecruisers, with a dozen gun turrets for multiple crew members. The first kitsen ship seen is named Big Enough to Kill You, in a clear reference to how much they are underestimated.
• Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand: Spensa does this to Hesho during the Battle of Detritus. She depressurizes her fighter's cabin and dangles in space in front of him because she promised him the first shot at a human. Hesho does not take the shot and instead helps her apprehend Brade
• Lovecraft Lite: The monstrous delvers are so powerful that they can threaten entire civilizations and nothing can harm them, but thing they aren't actually evil, and the previous times they had destroyed civilizations was because they didn't understand they were killing other living things.
• Mildly Military: The Superiority has no idea what they're doing when it comes to organizing a military. They think killing off a bunch of recruits is a fine idea, don't bother with ranks, and leave every flight to come up with their own chain of command and flight patterns. Not to mention how they have such a ridiculously small military. Despite being a star-spanning empire, they have about the same number of pilots as the humans trapped on Detritus, who have a population of less than a million total.
• Mind Rape: Delvers can force people near them to experience horrifying hallucinations and can force cytonics near them to feel their horrible emotions and hatred of life.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Spensa has this reaction when she realises that she's saved Detritus by making the delver go after Starsight instead.
• No-Sell: Because of their two brains, Morriumur is virtually immune to the delver's Mind Rape.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Subverted. M-Bot says Alanik's species doesn't drink milk, and Spensa immediately points out that Alanik has obvious breasts. "What are they for, decoration?" M-Bot clarifies that they don't drink the milk of other species because they think it's gross. They do breast feed their young (and may even be mammals: Morriumur theorizes that many races around the galaxy are actually distantly related to humans who travel to other planets via Cytonics).
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Like the previous book, the interludes aren't written in first-person narration and aren't from Spensa's point of view. Here, they follow Jorgen's journey to learn about his cytonic powers and Morriumur and Cuna during the delver's appearance at Starsight.
• Perfect Pacifist People: The subversion from Defending Elysium continues here. All species that join the Superiority are calm, unfailingly polite, and far more likely to apologize for bumping into you than to get mad. They became this way due to using a variety of brutal methods to get rid of anyone too aggressive or violent. The diones are the least horrific, using a weird and natural form of eugenics to "preview" the personalities of their children. The other species mostly just exile their criminals without remorse or chance at redemption, and species that are too violent are cut off entirely. Then it turns out that "exile" means "shoved into a portal to nowhere," which most likely kills them.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Subverted. Spensa was worried that the Superiority hyperdrives might use cytonic brains or something else horrible, but it's nothing of the sort. The hyperdrive actually uses taynix slugs like Doomslug, because they evolved a natural cytonic jump that works without attracting the delvers. The slugs don't appear to be harmed by the process.
• Slasher Smile: Cuna smiles with far too many teeth, and Spensa immediately identifies them as a smug asshole who is hiding something. They are hiding something, but it's that they want peace with the "lesser" races instead of the unsustainable system of technological hegemony. Spensa belatedly realized that diones like Cuna normally don't smile at all; Cuna is trying to copy Spensa's mannerisms and isn't very good at it.
• The Sociopath: It's hard to tell due to his Faux Affably Evil nature, but Winzik is implied to be one, even though his species supposedly bred out such traits centuries ago. He thinks nothing of intentionally killing a dozen recruits in a training exercise, enslaved a human as his own personal weapon and convinced her that she should be thankful for it, and apparently spent decades fighting at the front lines when most Krell can only emotionally handle a few months of it.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Brade is a human raised by the Superiority. The reason she acts like a mad dog on a leash is because she believes that's all humans are, and therefore there's no point in trying to temper her aggression.
• Training from Hell: When Spensa tries out for the Superiority space force, the initiation test uses live ammunition—twelve recruits are killed. Oh, and they didn't actually warn anyone about this ahead of time, just had everyone sign vague releases about how they could be hurt. This action sparks organized protests, and later Vapor notes that they've been forced to dial it back on the simple logic that if they keep killing their recruits they'll quickly run out of recruits.
  • Particularly ironic when compared to the "violent" humans in the first book, who spend several months doing training exercises in simulations before ever being allowed to fly at all, much less with live fire, and they still consider the amount of training recruits get before their first real fights to be wildly insufficient.
• War Is Hell: Spensa gets shaken out of much of her War Is Glorious mindset by actually getting to know the other side.
  Spensa: Cobb. Those aren't bloodthirsty monsters out there; they're just people. Normal people, with lives, and loves, and families.
  Cobb: And what did you think we've been fighting against all these years?
  Spensa: I...
  Cobb: That's what war is. A bunch of sorry, desperate fools on both sides, just trying to stay alive. That's the part that those stories you love leave out, isn't it?
• We Can Rule Together: Brade, on behalf of Wiznik, offers Spensa and the humans of Detrius the chance to join him as he takes over the Superiority and turns it into a military dictatorship.
• We Need a Distraction: This is roughly how taynixes can make an FTL jump without attracting the delvers. When they jump, they use a kind of psychic ventriloquism to project a "scream" in another part of the nowhere, causing the delvers to look at that rather than at the taynix slipping through.

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