2018
WISE Score
Amazon
Top Gun meets How to Train Your Dragon in space, featuring a girl who talks to rocks and a sentient ship obsessed with mushrooms.
4.7
4.7View →Our reviews and ratings are 100% unbiased, but as an Amazon Associate, Screenwise earns an affiliate fee if you buy a book or game by clicking one of our links. We don't get any credit if you just Google it instead :)
Skyward is a total win. It's rare to find a book that hits this hard on the 'fun' factor while still having something meaningful to say about courage and social stigma.
It avoids the typical 'chosen one' tropes by making the hero work for every single inch of progress. It’s clean enough that you don’t have to worry about 'surprises,' but sophisticated enough that you might end up stealing it from your kid's nightstand to finish it yourself.
Perfect for middle schoolers and up. It’s written for the 12-18 crowd, but Brandon Sanderson has a massive adult following because his plotting is so tight. If your kid liked Star Wars or Marvel, they'll be all over this.
It centers on a girl fighting to clear her family name in a society that's basically given up on her. While the protagonist starts off a bit obsessed with 'killing her enemies and bathing in their blood,' it’s a mask for her insecurity, and the story rewards her for learning empathy and teamwork instead of just being a lone wolf.
Sanderson is the gold standard for world-building. A planet trapped under layers of ancient orbital debris, starfighters with personality, and a sentient AI ship that is obsessed with cataloging different types of mushrooms. It's creative without being confusing.
Extremely safe for the target age group. The violence is restricted to sci-fi dogfights. People do die in battle, and there’s some grief to process, but there’s no graphic gore, no sexual content, and the 'swearing' is mostly made-up sci-fi slang like 'scud.'
It’s a fantastic study on how propaganda works and why we shouldn't just blindly follow the 'hero' narrative. It challenges the idea of what it means to be brave versus just being reckless.
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