Brandon Sanderson’s New Book Officially Solves His Biggest Sci-Fi Mystery, 8 Years Later
Overview & Key Takeaways
Blightfall introduces a new villain to the Cytoverse
Brandon Sanderson’s YA sci-fi series Skyward takes place in a far future where most of humanity is confined to isolated preserves run by aliens. After unlocking psionic powers dubbed cytonics, humanity begins to explore the stars and conquer the worlds of more peaceful species. At some point during the series of conflicts dubbed the Human Wars, Earth vanished, and humanity was conquered by an alien alliance called the Superiority. Sanderson established much of the series’ foundational lore for the Cytoverse in the 2008 short story “Defending Elysium,” and the Human Wars and life on Earth are effectively ancient history as of the beginning of Skyward, which was released in 2018.
Over the course of four books and three novellas co-written by Sanderson and Janci Patterson, humanity is able to defeat the Superiority and earn their freedom to explore the stars once more. Now Patterson is kicking off a new Cytoverse trilogy with Blightfall — and addressing one of the biggest remaining mysteries of the series in the process.
This article contains major spoilers for Blightfall
What happened to Earth in the Cytoverse?
“The question about Earth was my favorite of the hooks that were left from the previous series,” Patterson tells Polygon. “It had to be pretty hidden or they would have found it.”
Blightfall follows the Skyward Flight team as they escort a group of Defiant Defense Force diplomats to a preserve planet as part of their attempts to reunite humanity. They find a world surrounded by strange debris and a settlement being used to train elite soldiers. Fans who read the book’s description back in 2023 asked why the new series wasn’t going to address the fate of Earth, and Patterson has kept quiet to try to avoid spoiling the big reveal at the end of the novel.
Image: Delacorte Press
The Skyward Flight team is attacked by a space station deploying drones. When they land on the planet, they discover teens competing in the Ascension Games, showing their combat skills in a gladiatorial arena for the chance to leave the planet and fight humanity's enemies. The games are being run by varvax, aliens who are part of the Superiority, so Skyward Flight assumes they’re dealing with a Superiority splinter group. But the truth is far stranger.
IV-128 (or Ivy) is a centuries-old artificial intelligence tasked with saving humanity from the Superiority during the Third Human War. Her solution was to transport Earth to nowhere, an extradimensional space that cytonics access when using faster-than-light travel. This process did not go smoothly. North and South America exploded, creating the debris field that shot out of nowhere to surround Blightfall. Only 12 million humans survived the process. Since then, Ivy has been gathering as many people as she can and cryogenically freezing them to build an army to use against the Superiority. While the Skyward Flight team and the survivors on Earth are horrified with what Ivy did, she doesn’t understand why they’re not grateful that she accomplished her task.
“I wrote the first draft before ChatGPT was a thing, but the book dovetails really well with what’s been going on,” Patterson. “She basically stole Earth based on a failed prompt. It’s just kind of a coincidence that suddenly that seems a lot more realistic than it did when I wrote it.”
Image: Random House Children’s Books
Blightfall was shaped by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. On Blightfall, the primary languages spoken are English, Ukrainian, Hebrew, and Arabic.
“I think that destruction of culture is always bad, no matter which side it is,” Patterson said. “I just wanted to say, ‘Here are these languages. Everybody lives. Nobody gets eradicated.’”
Ivy will continue to be a major threat in Blightfall's sequel, Songrise, which is expected to release next year. She and her forces represent the worst of humanity that the Superiority sought to contain, even as the Defiant Defense Force tries to build a new future by cooperating with other species.
“Humans were the oppressors in the past, and we have a long sad history of doing this on our own planet,” Patterson says. “What’s going to happen now that we’re free? Are the DDF really prepared to be very respectful of other cultures? Are we capable of having a different outcome this time? That was my jumping off point.”
