A brilliant sci-fi/science-fantasy adventure! This manages to be a YA book which captures both the fun and the deep, embarrassing self-realisation process of being a young adult. Funny, set in a world which is relatively standard enough sci fi fare to put the characters in centre stage, but with enough quirks to the world to keep things interesting, and with a set of characters who, for me, successfully came across as schoolmates, with all the compatibility and incompatibility that implies. The plot keeps things going at a good pace, incorporating enough twists and reveals to keep things interesting, and providing moments of genuine sweetness, while hitting with enough weight where needed. My personal new gold standard for YA.

I do, however, have to highlight a personal issue I find with fantasy in general, and in Sanderson's writing in particular, which really came across here... Scud, I understand sci fi and fantasy writers wanting to give a culture their own profanity both to keep the age rating of the book down and to give the culture more texture, but please, please for the love of scud choose more than one scudding word! For scud's sake, make a set of five or so, so that the reader gets some variety and it actually feels like a scudding set of swear words, rather than just this one weird scudding exclamation on every page of the scudding book. Because scud me sideways, when you see a word that scudding often it can make the world feel that bit too artificial, and that was a shame given that otherwise I was genuinely fond of the place. Aside from that personal rant, though - Scudding great book!