Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy.  I run this segment in conjunction with the Can’t-Wait Wednesday meme that is currently running at Wishful Endings.  Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them.  For my latest Waiting on Wednesday article I check out one of the most anticipated releases of 2021, the third awesome novel in Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward series, Cytonic.

Brandon Sanderson is an outstanding author who is one of the best, if not the absolute best, fantasy and science fiction authors in the world today.  Ever since his debut in 2005, Sanderson has been a leading figure in both genres, creating an immense number of compelling, detailed and highly regarded reads.  With amazing novels like the Mistborn series, The Stormlight Archive and The Reckoners series, as well as finishing Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series, Sanderson has already left his mark on the literary world and is showing no signs of slowing down.  I must admit that I have not read as many of Sanderson’s books as I perhaps should have, with my first foray into his work only occurring a few years ago when I read The Way of Kings.  While I absolutely loved The Way of Kings, I haven’t found the time to read any of the other books in The Stormlight Archive.  I have, however, made some effort in reading one of his other excellent bodies of work, the Skyward series.

The Skyward series are incredible young adult science fiction novels that follow a bold young pilot, Spensa, as she attempts to save her people from alien fighter ships.  Set on a desolate world where the remnants of humanity have managed to survive and slowly fight back against their alien oppressors, this series has been a highlight of my reading experience over the last couple of years.  So far two novels have been released, the epic Skyward and the equally impressive Starsight, both of which were amongst the best books of 2018 and 2019 respectfully.  Sanderson cruelly left Starsight on a great cliffhanger in 2019 and I have been eagerly waiting to read the third entry in the series for some time.  It looks like my wait is nearly over as details about the third novel, Cytonic, have recently been released.

Cytonic, which is currently set for release in November 2021, will continue Spensa’s adventure as she ventures into a bold new frontier.  There are some great details about this novel’s plot out, as well as two excellent covers, and it sounds like this third novel is going to be pretty intense.

Synopsis:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Reckoners series, the Mistborn trilogy, and the Stormlight Archive comes the third book in an epic series about a girl who will travel beyond the stars to save the world she loves from destruction.

Spensa’s life as a Defiant Defense Force pilot has been far from ordinary. She proved herself one of the best starfighters in the human enclave of Detritus and she saved her people from extermination at the hands of the Krell—the enigmatic alien species that has been holding them captive for decades. What’s more, she traveled light-years from home as an undercover spy to infiltrate the Superiority, where she learned of the galaxy beyond her small, desolate planet home.

Now, the Superiority—the governing galactic alliance bent on dominating all human life—has started a galaxy-wide war. And Spensa’s seen the weapons they plan to use to end it: the Delvers. Ancient, mysterious alien forces that can wipe out entire planetary systems in an instant. Spensa knows that no matter how many pilots the DDF has, there is no defeating this predator.

Except that Spensa is Cytonic. She faced down a Delver and saw something eerily familiar about it. And maybe, if she’s able to figure out what she is, she could be more than just another pilot in this unfolding war. She could save the galaxy.

The only way she can discover what she really is, though, is to leave behind all she knows and enter the Nowhere. A place from which few ever return.

To have courage means facing fear. And this mission is terrifying.

Wow, based on the above synopsis, it sounds like Cytonic is going to be an amazing and compelling read that will set its protagonist on a whole different type of adventure.  There are some interesting story threads coming together for this novel, and it will be quite fascinating to see what sort of adventure Sanderson has come up with, especially considering his protagonist is stuck in a dark new landscape.  I am extremely curious to see where the story goes from here, and I am especially keen to see what happens to the various characters I grew close to in the original novels.  Starsight left the fate of some great characters in doubt, and I hope that the best ones manage to come back in this latest book.  Based on the compelling storyline set up in the previous novels, I think that Cytonic’s narrative will go in some intriguing directions, and I cannot wait to see what happens next.

One of the things that I have really enjoyed about the previous Skyward entries were the unique and memorable alien worlds Sanderson introduced and utilised.  Both Detritus and the Superiority home world were extremely impressive, with their distinctive culture and people proving to be excellent settings to their novel’s narratives.  However, I have to say that I am extremely intrigued by Cytonic’s upcoming setting, the Nowhere, which sounds like a bit of a blank void.  It will be particularly interesting to see what sort of story or people Spensa finds within there, and I am envisioning a culture of weird dimension hopping beings, which has some potential.  I cannot wait to see what trials, dangers and strangeness occur in Cytonic, and I look forward to seeing Sanderson’s creative mind in action again.

Overall, I am quite excited for Cytonic to come out and I think that it has an enormous amount of potential.  Based on Sanderson’s insanely good writing ability and the incredible contents of the first two Skyward novels, I am utterly confident that Cytonic is going to be one of the best reads of the 2021 and I fully expect that I will end up awarding it a full five-star rating.  This is going to be such an awesome novel, and I am very, very keen to get my hands on it.