Jake’s
Comments
(group member since Mar 05, 2019)
Jake’s
comments
from the Challenge Readalongs group.
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Does anyone else read The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck)? it's among my favorite book series, and the source material for the popular TV adaptation of the same name currently on Amazon Prime video. Anyway, the eighth and likely penultimate book in that series comes out later this month and I've been waiting on it for a year-and-a-half. In that time, I have read almost no science fiction. I finished Skyward just an hour or so ago and I have many thoughts that I will keep to myself until I know most of the other people in this group of finished it, but right now I can't help but think how this was the perfect choice to reintroduce me to spaceship battles and crazy physics. Honestly, the Expanse is the only book series I've ever read that REALLY tackles the true physics and the implications thereof when it comes to high-g battles, or even travel, in space, so I was glad to see those ideas touched on in Skyward.
I'm on chapter 34 and I'm choosing not to believe (view spoiler). I'm getting waves of nostalgia here for the feelings of my youth when I first had to accept that the people in my life and the ones I called friends wouldn't be in my life forever. When you're young, you can't see that there will ever be a time in your life when you don't have the people you've had around you since you've been aware of their importance. and then it happens all of a sudden and there's no going back. Those people will come and go in and out of your life sometimes, but things will never be the same again. At this point in the book, I have a real strong remembrance of what it felt like to finally accept that. It's weird to think about now but the people who seemed so important in Irreplaceable to me are people with whom I've had virtually no contact for 20 or more years. and isn't that they stop being important, we just took different paths and I wonder if they ever stop and think about me and try to remember my name like I do with them. I guess this isn't completely related to Skyward, but it feels like spin is realizing these things about her flight and it just put me there mentally. this is a much better book than I had anticipated it being. I know enough about Brandon Sanderson to know there was no way it would be bad, but I've been pleasantly surprised. I really glad I chose to participate in this read along.
I'm reading this on my phone as an e-book, so I'm not sure what page I'm on, but I'm at the (view spoiler) at the start of part 3.I like most of the characters, but keeping up with the whole flight is a challenge for me. Personally, I always have to keep a running list of characters in almost every book I read. It's just the way I process information, so, at the risk of sounding just downright awful, (view spoiler).
I'm impressed with sanderson's ability to write young adult fiction, a genre that typically annoys me, in a way that I find engaging. Moreover, it's rare that an author would be able to write a character like Vin from the first era of Mistborn, who is roughly the same age as Spensa, and just as much of a know-it-all brooding young girl, but write her in a way that fits that series and THEN write something like we're reading and give a similar protagonist a voice that speaks much more to a young audience. Additionally, I feel like he does a good job of writing the ADULTS from a young person's perspective. I'm 38 years old and I don't have any kids, and that's a conscious choice. I like kids, but neither my wife nor I have the patience. That being said, finding the empathy necessary to really immerse myself in Spin's teenage state of mind is challenging, but I'm finding it easier than with other YA books I've read.
So far,(view spoiler) is my favorite character.
