Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book picks up right where Skyward Book 2, Starsight, left off, so be sure to read them in order. [SPOILERS] The human world of Detritus is under attack, and Spensa has traveled into the nowhere with M-bot (now housed in a tiny drone body) to escape the Superiority.

Spensa is joined early on by a mysterious adventurer, who she thinks may be M-bot's original pilot. I won't tell you how that works out. ;) Together, the three of them travel across the broken realm of the nowhere on a quest to locate cytonic ruins that reveal old memories in an attempt to piece together what the delvers truly are and why they hate the people in Spensa's dimension so much.

I absolutely loved the descriptions of the floating land masses of the nowhere, each with distinct ecosystems so we get a lot of variety in a very short period of time. I also liked the political makeup of the pirate factions that exist within the nowhere. I will say that parts of the plot felt a little heavy handed--too much convenience for my taste. Though, to be fair, some of those coincidences are explained toward the end. Spensa makes a number of difficult (usually reckless) decisions, faces lots of challenges, and learns some important history lessons, but though it all she remains the same impulsive, loud-mouthed, adrenaline junky she's always been.

While Spensa is off having her grand adventure, the humans she left behind are struggling to survive. There are some changes there, but little real progress. Time flows differently in the nowhere, so it's a little difficult to match up the two timelines. I believe the series of novellas that come between this book and the final book in the series are designed to explain what's happening to the other characters in more detail. But from Spensa's perspective, she doesn't know much about what is happening at home, which creates a sense of urgency for her to get back.

I didn't like this book quite as much as the first two, probably because it had a very "middle book" feel. That said, I still enjoyed it a great deal and will definitely be continuing the series.

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