Officially Announcing: Skyward (2024)

Hey! I’m back from tour, and let me say, it was quite the experience. I knew you all were excited for Oathbringer—but I didn’t understand just how excited you were. Oathbringer, as of this writing, is still the #1 most read book on Amazon’s “what are people reading” chart. (I guess the length might have something to do with that…)

My signings were two to three times the size of previous ones, and you all kept my hand very busy with your books! Thank you to everyone who came out to see me, and I apologize again for long waits to get what amounted to a very brief interaction. We outgrew our venues and sold out of books at almost every stop—to the point that I’ve said that all future signings are going to have to be off-site in a theater or something, so at the least people have chairs to sit in while they wait. I’ll also be trimming and shortening the signing protocol to get people through faster. (Look for a post about that later this week.)

These are awesome problems to be having, I must say. It wasn’t that long ago when I’d do a signing or reading where the only people to show up were those who knew me.

On tour, I did a reading from what up until now was listed as “Mystery Project” on my website. If you missed the newsletter explanation, I’ve pulled the book I was going to release next year (The Apocalypse Guard) because it needs more work. Instead, I’ve turned my attention to something else—and after a furious bout of writing, I’m confident in where it’s going. So it’s time to announce Skyward.

Like Steelheart and its sequels, this is a kind of borderline YA/Adult project. In the US, it will be published by Delacorte Press (publisher of Steelheart) in the Young Adult section of bookstores, while in the UK it will be published by Gollancz (publisher of almost all my books) in my main line, shelved in the science fiction/fantasy section of bookstores.

I’ve mentioned Skyward before in summaries of stories I’m working on, but haven’t said much about it. I started noodling with the ideas in 2012, I believe. (The year that the Write About Dragons recordings of my lectures happened, where I mentioned it briefly—but not by name.) The first outline thoughts are dated summer 2013. It’s a book I’ve been wanting to write for a long time, and it finally came together this year.

It has its roots in some of the very first books I ever read as a young man getting into fantasy. Like many young readers, I was captured by books about dragons, specifically books about boys who find dragons and learn to fly them. These have been staples of the fantasy genre for some fifty years. For me, it was The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey and Dragon’s Blood by Jane Yolen. For others, the “boy and his dragon” story that captured them was Eragon, or How to Train Your Dragon.

I’ve always loved this story archetype, but I’ve never written anything using it. This is in part because…well, it’s a familiar story. Too familiar. I wasn’t certain I could add anything new to it. So I left it alone, letting ideas simmer, until in 2012 something struck me. Could I mash this together with a flight school story like Top Gun or Ender’s Game, and do something that wasn’t “a boy and his dragon,” but was instead “a girl and her starfighter”?

Skyward was born, much like Mistborn, with me taking two ideas and mashing them together to see where they went. And they went someplace incredible—I grew increasingly excited about the project, as I saw in it a chance to both play in a space I loved, and do some very interesting things with story and theme. It wasn’t until this year that I got the personalities of the characters right, but I really got excited when I found a place for this in the lore of stories I’d been creating.

The official pitch is this: Defeated, crushed, and driven almost to extinction, the remnants of the human race are trapped on a planet that is constantly attacked by mysterious alien starfighters. Spensa, a teenage girl living among them, longs to be a pilot. When she discovers the wreckage of an ancient ship, she realizes this dream might be possible—assuming she can repair the ship, navigate flight school, and (perhaps most importantly) persuade the strange machine to help her. Because this ship, uniquely, appears to have a soul.

As I’ve played with Skyward over the years, I tried to pull it into the Cosmere, then found it didn’t work there. However, it is in the continuity of something I’ve written before. Something that isn’t the Cosmere, and isn’t the Reckoners. And no, I won’t say anything more for now. However, you can listen to me read the prologue as part of my presentation for this year while on tour. (The reading is in part two.)

Part One:

Officially Announcing: Skyward (2024)

FAQs

How many words is Skyward? ›

Learn to accept that sometimes what you feel isn't invalid, but that it doesn't mean you have to act according to those feelings either.” To put this into comparison, Skyward is about 141,000 words long and Starsight is roughly 136,000 words long.

What is the story of the book Skyward? ›

Spensa (Spin) is a 17-year-old girl who is part of a group of shipwrecked humans living on a ruined world called Detritus, under constant attack from mysterious aliens called the Krell. Spensa dreams of following in the footsteps of her deceased father, a fighter pilot of the Defiant Defense Force (DDF).

Is there a Skyward book 3? ›

Cytonic is a 2021 young adult science fiction novel written by American author Brandon Sanderson. It is the third book in the Skyward series after Skyward and Starsight.

Will there be a 4th book in Skyward? ›

Defiant is a satisfying concluding volume to the Skyward series that reflected the root of the first book: friendship.

Is Skyward appropriate for 12 year olds? ›

The book does get dark as other characters die off, and some of the hardships of survival during war are addressed. Although dark, the humor really balances the book out. I think a mature 10 year old could handle the book, and it would be appropriate for 8 or 9 year olds to read with a parent.

Does Skyward book have romance? ›

So there's no romance in this book, though there is a hint of enemies-to-lovers, which may develop in further books.

Who is Chet in Skyward? ›

Chet was the delver that Brade summoned outside Detritus. Spensa sent the delver to Starsight to save Detritus. Afterward, Spensa went to the heart of the delver maze, where she showed Chet that the buzzing noises were in fact people with families, hopes, and dreams. Chet was horrified and returned to the nowhere.

How old is Spensa Skyward? ›

Spensa for the greater part of the series is a 17 year old, she has brown hair and distinctive purple eyes on book co. She is 157.48 in cm(5ft2in) tall.

How long is Zelda Skyward? ›

Read More. How long is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword? When focusing on the main objectives, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is about 38 Hours in length. If you're a gamer that strives to see all aspects of the game, you are likely to spend around 58 Hours to obtain 100% completion.

What reading level is Skyward? ›

Product information
Publisher‎Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (March 3, 2020)
ISBN-13‎978-1978682849
Reading age‎12+ years, from customers
Grade level9 - 12
Dimensions‎6.5 x 1.13 x 5.5 inches
6 more rows

How old is Skyward? ›

The Roots of Skyward. The year was 1980.

Do you have to read the novellas in Skyward? ›

Definitely read the three novellas in order, but, ultimately, you can read Cytonic at any point and not mess things up or get a lot of spoilers.

References

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