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I’ve been hooked on this series since pretty much the first chapter of Skyward. It’s been so much fun, with great action, characters and mystery. And who can resist charming fluting pet slugs, an alien race of cute but fierce and poetic tiny fox-squirrels, and a sometimes-snarky, often-sweet AI?
Since the publication dates of these books were spaced out a bit, I took the time to re-read all the previous ones before reading Defiant. I wanted to remember all the details so I wouldn’t get confused. My re-reading included the first three in the series as well as the Skyward Flight novellas. Sometimes “extras” like these in other series just allow readers to enjoy more time in their favorite worlds. But the information the Skyward Flight stories provided about what was happening on Detritus while Spensa was gone made a real difference in understanding the full story in Defiant. I highly recommend reading them.
In this last book of the series, Spensa emerges from the Nowhere understanding who she is and what she can do as a cytonic. Meanwhile, her friends and leaders of Detritus have been learning a lot about the slugs, and Jorgen is coming into his own as a leader and cytonic, but with different powers than Spensa. All that knowledge is going to be crucial if the humans and their allies are to defeat Winzik, who has taken over the Superiority and focusing on crushing this “very aggressive” rebellion.
Spensa can do a lot to help her fellow humans, but she’s worried about what will become of her: with what she is, she may be unable to just relax and enjoy being with her friends and family if they do defeat the Superiority.
Everything comes together in Defiant, and I loved every minute of it. Sanderson pulled in beloved characters to do some awesome things, we saw growth in Spensa, and the denouement was very satisfying. Bonus: there will be a bit of a continuation/spinoff of the story in another set of books. Yahoo!!
Rated: Mild. Profanity is only 20 uses of mild language and lots of uses of a made-up term. There are some kissing scenes, one pretty intense. Violence is the highest in this book of all the series, and it may be closer to moderate for younger readers. There’s a lot of action and more fighting and sometimes killing not just in the sky or in space but hand-to-hand combat. There’s some blood.
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*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
