Starsight by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh, all the goodness.

So, aside from not being able to talk about the joys in this YA space opera by the wonderful Sanderson, I can at least gush over the things it made me feel.

I was always thrilled about every space battle. It's a perfect blend of personality, piloting, humor, and many little oddities that make this kind of thing special. I was never annoyed by any of the main characters. I loved the AI's existential crises, the cuteness of the tiny fox/badger aliens and their king, and the fact that the majority of the novel deals more with perception and assumption than practically anything else.

The twists? Really great. But no spoilers. We've got an epic setup here and a very satisfying conclusion. You know, aside from that very last bit that makes me want to scream and tear out all my hair and demand that all the bookgods heed my plea for the next book in my hands RIGHT THIS INSTANT...

Ahem.

My only complaint? Our big bad aliens read like the ideological liberal left taken to an amazing extreme. Like, total caricature. And while we do dig below the surface and see a bit of variety, it's kinda funny how very... phobic... both sides get, or how those phobias take on some very strange features. Maybe it's not a complaint, but a bit of an annoyance because I would like to have seen a lot more subtlety and divergence in these details even as they grew more pronounced. But, let's face it, this IS a YA novel. Oversimplification, even in an ostensibly FUN tale written for the sake of FUN, is kind of the name of the game. :)

Putting that aside, I had a damn lot of fun. :) So I do believe this is a total win. :)



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