Cytoverse

Detritus is a dead world buried under the wreckage of a hundred fallen starships, and the humans caverned beneath it live by one hard truth: to survive, you climb into a cockpit and you fight. The Cytoverse is Brandon Sanderson's science-fiction setting for the Skyward books — a stranded remnant of humanity, penned in under a debris field by an alien coalition called the Superiority that has judged our whole species too aggressive to be let loose among the stars. So the young pilots below do the only sane thing: they aim upward anyway. At the heart of it is Spensa, daughter of a flier branded a coward, who claws her way into war-college and befriends a half-buried, wisecracking AI ship. The core quartet — Skyward, Starsight, Cytonic, Defiant — carries her from the caverns to the galaxy's turning point, uncovering what cytonics truly are: a psychic gift that folds space and reaches into a shadow-realm called the nowhere. Around the spine, the Skyward Flight novellas, co-written with Janci Patterson, hand the controls to her wingmates, and the newer Riftwake stories fly the setting onward. Expect quick dogfights, quicker banter, and a stubborn refrain of self-belief against everyone insisting you stay grounded. Begin with Skyward and read straight up.