It's great. No hard feelings for writing this instead of the next Stormlight Archive book!

It's a pretty safe endeavour of course. Harry Potter but with space fighter pilots instead of wizards. I can see absolutely no way this could have been a disappointment. Perhaps it could have been too macho? But this is Brandon Sanderson. He is a master of his craft and appears to have picked this setting exactly to have a discussion about machismo. We have a female protagonist, a female villain, and the central topic is bravery and cowardice.

The detailed list of ingredients:
- A lot of dogfighting against alien spaceships. The ships have some interesting quirks that keep these action sequences fresh. But, wow, there is a lot of dogfighting!
- A lot of personal relationships and their evolution. I easily get impatient with relationships when I feel like they are keeping me from learning more of the plot. But here it felt fine. Great characters all around and you get to like everyone in the end.
- A solid plot. A few pages in, there is a shocking twist. Spensa's father was shot down for deserting. Ten years later we still have no answers. What happened? Why? This mystery works very well because it ties so strongly to the bravery/cowardice theme.
- Worldbuilding. It is comparable to Stormlight Archive in that in general shape and form it resembles a generic sci-fi (or fantasy) world, but then every detail is a fresh original idea.
- Humor. While there is a fair amount of tragedy, there is also some quality goofing around. Let me add some quotes:

I’d like to point out that the true coward’s weapon is a comfortable couch and a stack of mildly amusing novels.

Thanks Brandon! You think I would be reading your books if flying starfighters against the Krell were also an option? (Yeah, okay, I guess I would.)

“That’s probably some irrational human confirmation bias speaking,” he noted. “But my subroutine that can simulate appreciation . . . is appreciative.”

I nodded.

“That’s kind of what it does,” he added. “Appreciate things.”

“I would never have figured.”

M-Bot (an AI) is brilliantly written and a non-stop source of comedy. He can be thought-provoking too:

“I’m afraid of death now,” M-Bot said softly as we flew.

“What?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

“I wrote a subroutine,” he said. “To simulate the feeling of fearing death. I wanted to know.”

“That was stupid.”

“I know. But I can’t turn if off, because I’m more afraid of that. If I don’t fear death, isn’t that worse?”