Sadly disappointing

I’m a huge BS fan. The Storm light Archives, Mistborn, reckoners, warbreaker, and elantris. I keep all of those books in both audible and word form on all of my devices and book mark them like the Bible. I LOVE his writing, the twists and cataclysmic build ups in the stories that we have each experienced and enjoyed. Unfortunately, for Skyward this was not the case. The twists were minimal and expected, I’m used to some great “oh lord that changes everything moments” and this had at best one of those, but still not to the level I expected. When the long anticipated build up occurred it was rushed, poorly explained, and not all that interesting. Coward - I felt beaten over the head with this word. It must have been used 500 times over the course of the book. I understand that it was important to the story, but there are synonyms that should have been used to diversify the dialogue. The Soul of the Machine - besides having a rather lame name, M-Bot’s character felt bland and continuously annoying. From Brandon’s description of this book where he compares the relationship between Spensa and M-Bot to a young explorer who encounters a dragon egg and develops a relationship with it. I was disappointed by the lack of development and time spent on nurturing and maturing their relationship. M-Bot’s character progression was non-existent and even when opportunities were presented to delve deeper into a meaningful dialogue between Spensa and him, the conversations either stopped after just scratching the surface or were redirected back at Spensa to determine if she was a coward or not. I felt like a hamster running on a wheel, reading and reading hoping to find either a pivotal or progressive moment where I could say “yes! I emotionally connect with this” but I never found it in Skyward. All that being said, will I still buy the next book? Yes, of course. But it will be with the hope of re-discovering a universe that I actually want to explore.