"When this is done, Jerkface, I will hold your tarnished and melted pin up as my trophy as your smoldering ship marks your pyre, and the final resting place of your crushed and broken corpse."
The room grew quiet. "All right....," Jerkface said. "Well, that was...descriptive."
The easiest, and only, five star I've given this year. This book was intelligently crafted, a genuine pleasure to read and almost felt like a cinematic experience because the writing was so damn good. After her father infamously broke rank at the Battle of Alta and retreated from his wingmates who were later forced to shoot him down, Spensa, or "Spin" as she's largely known in this book, has been branded as the daughter of a coward - a label she just can't shake off. So despite the fact she is determined to become a pilot herself, almost everyone who knows who she is wants to stand in her way; after all, who could trust her as their wingman when her father ditched his?
Proving she isn't a coward has become part of Spensa's identity and this is portrayed really intricately in this book. Spensa competes for flight school knowing that only the best of the best will qualify. Whilst Spensa is a very complex and well-crafted, character equal parts headstrong, confident and defiant as much as she is strange (in a good way!), resourceful and funny that isn't actually what made her stand out for me. What I liked the most about her character was that she actually isn't the best at all. None of the characters really are. They are each remarkably flawed, rather than being the heroic special girl we've come to expect, and I absolutely adored her personality.
As a matter of fact, all of the characters in this book are developed exceptionally well. Subtle nuances between Spensa and her flight teacher Cobb (who manages to wrangle her a spot in the school) and her flight leader Jorgen (not-so-affectionally named Jerkface) make this book really special. Each of the members of the flight are interesting, have strong personalities but most importantly are really memorable - a large cast like this can be hard to identify and relate to unless they're well-imagined and each of these characters absolutely is. I felt completely invested in each of their well-beings, spending my time torn between feeling anxious alongside Spensa that one of her crew wouldn't make it back from a mission, the stark reality of which was perfectly captured, and wanting to throttle them myself for them making her life difficult!
Now add to that a talking ship. When Spensa is forced to live in a forgotten cave after Ironsides, the leader of the school, despises her enough to prevent her from being able to stay in the same quarters as her crew, she stumbles across a wreckage in the form of a ship. A much better ship in fact than the ones her crew are used to, particularly as it can talk. M-Bot is an advanced, personality coded, ship with the biggest attitude of an AI I have ever seen; almost every interaction between M-Bot and Spensa is hilarious. Sanderson explores the potential for AI's to build memories, personal opinions and personalities in a fun and unique way.
Whilst all of that constitutes the necessary ingredients for a really great book, it's perfectly achieved thanks to Sanderson's frankly phenomenal writing. A relatively complex world filled with quite foreign concepts for some readers - flight school, alien lifeforms, artificial intelligences, the engineering behind ships and so on - are simplified just enough to make the book entirely palatable but not so far as to patronise or lessen the experience of the reader. Equally, and most notably for me, there are no conveniences within this book.
Often authors will lead you towards an upcoming death, leaving bread crumbs in their narrative for you to follow, so you know what's about to happen. Often they will tease you with a character death, but really you just KNOW the character won't be dead and despite being happy they're not, you're also pretty disappointed the author was so unoriginal. Often they leave gaping great plot holes big enough for YOU to see without even trying so God only knows how THEY missed them. Not so with Sanderson, he was utterly ahead of me every step of the way, expertly filling in potential holes, acting on his decisions regardless of whether it's going to hurt or not and not at all finding a convenient eagle for anyone to fly off on at every turn to save the day.
This is a wonderfully created novel bursting with genuinely likeable characters and a snarky, talking space ship. I honestly don't know what more you need.
"Just for that, I shall hunt your firstborn children and laugh with glee as I tell them of your death in terrible detail, with many unpleasant adjectives!". "May a pox of unique human diseases - many of which cause an uncomfortable swelling - come upon you!". - MBot.
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