Firstborn, by Brandon Sanderson

  Firstborn feels like a golden era sci-fi story, not like a Brandon Sanderson book. Every author has these kinds of stories they just want to write down and get out of their head, but this read more like one of those old thought experiments where a character solves a '60s space opera problem with a singular solution in just the right moment. The idea of the story was really not expanded at all, the characters were not fleshed out, the dialogues felt wooden and even the moment of emotional catharsis was a bit dull.

  Bottom line: not really bad, but not good either.