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Home›Book Reviews›CYTONIC by Brandon Sanderson (BOOK REVIEW)

CYTONIC by Brandon Sanderson (BOOK REVIEW)

By Shona Kinsella
June 23, 2022
1511
2

Cytonic is the third instalment in the Skyward series and honestly, I’m a little conflicted about it.

This review contains spoilers for the first two books so if you haven’t read those yet, you might want to go and do that first. 

Spensa has survived her infiltration of the Superiority and she knows about their plans for war and for the Delvers. In desperation, she jumps into a portal that the Superiority use to get rid of people who have been banished, and she finds herself in the Nowhere. 

Here, we see Sanderson’s skill as a worldbuilder – the Nowhere is great fun with a huge range of different environments to contend with. Spensa immediately encounters an adventurer called Chet. He could have been straight out of one of the old stories Spensa loves so much and he has almost as much dramatic flair as Spensa does. The two of them make for some fun exchanges and when you add M-Bot into the mix, I was chuckling often throughout the book.

Spensa’s character goes through a lot of growth in this book and it’s really good to see her wrestling with questions of what it means to do the right thing. How much of herself does she have to give before it’s finally – finally – enough. There’s a great maturity in the conclusions that she comes to, and especially in a world where women are so often taught to give until they have nothing left, it was really refreshing to see the conclusion that it’s okay to stop. That you’re not a bad person just because you choose to preserve yourself, to have some life for yourself, that not every action has to be for others. 

My big problem with this book is that a lot of it felt like filler. The stakes felt low compared to the previous two books, the journey felt like it dragged on longer than it had to, and the interactions with the side characters were less enjoyable than the ones with Skyward Flight. Sanderson writes long books and that is not a fact that I consider a problem, although I know it can be off-putting for some. But of all the Sanderson books that I’ve read, this is the first one which felt too long. Perhaps it’s just the common, middle book problem, where the action falls while the characters go on journeys, collect items of power and gather themselves for the next big push against the enemy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still looking forward to book 4, I will still finish reading the series. I need to know how it all shakes out. But I’m looking forward to it a little less than I was before Cytonic. 

 

TagsBook ReviewsBrandon SandersonCytonicSci-fiScience FantasyScience FictionSkywardSpace Opera

Shona Kinsella

Shona Kinsella is a Scottish fantasy author who lives on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond with her husband and three children. She is the author of Ashael Rising (Unbound, 2017), Petra McDonald and the Queen of the Fae (Fox Spirit, 2018) and Miranya’s Oath (an illustrated web serial). You can find out more about her work at www.shonakinsella.com and she loves talking to new people on Twitter www.twitter.com/shona_kinsella 

2 comments

  1. Jonas Norlin 20 October, 2022 at 12:50 Reply

    I agree with your “big problem with this book” and I had to use all of my willpower to force-push my way through this mess. I wish he hadn’t uncovered and diluted the Nowhere to such an extent, or atleast made it an interesting place. The worldbuilding is horrible, the characters are tedious and the story is a fetch quest. Actually, I would rather kill x creatures in a video game quest than read this. The only things I enjoyed were the tiniest bits of character development and uncovering some of the mysteries from the other books, however not all of the answers were satisfactory..

  2. Julieanne beckham 26 July, 2022 at 04:20 Reply

    Yeah this book is very disappointing
    I have read many other Sanderson books but this one, I’ve totally lost interest with about 13 hours of audio to go

    I can’t bear how one dimensional all the characters are in this third book of the series

    I don’t like Chet at all and his voicing is really very irritating and he is on almost every page. The catch ups with Juergen via the mind are just not good

    I’ve never seen such dull writing from Sanderson and yes it’s like fan fiction

    Elantris has big clunkiness but it was very early writing from him

    This is just Meh. I can’t finish it and am looking for someone else to binge on for a while

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