Skyward characters

Also known as Spin

Appears from the start

A teenager from the caverns of Detritus, the planet where the last remnant of humanity shelters underground while alien Krell raiders attack from above. Her father was a fighter pilot shot down during the defense of Alta Base when she was small, and the Defiant Defense Force recorded him as a coward who fled the battle, a verdict that cost his family its standing and left Spensa, her mother and her grandmother scraping a living outside the main cavern. Fierce, boastful and stubborn, raised on her grandmother's stories of Earth warriors, she wants nothing except to fly and to prove the accusation against her father false.

Also known as Chaser

Appears from the start

Spensa's father, a fighter pilot of the Defiant Defense Force known by the callsign Chaser. He was shot down during the Battle of Alta when Spensa was a young child, and the official record says he broke and ran from the fight. Spensa remembers a man who talked to her about the stars and refuses to accept that account of him.

Appears from the start

Spensa's blind grandmother, who keeps the old stories alive: the voyage of the fleet that stranded their ancestors on Detritus, and the tales of Earth heroes she recites from memory. She tells Spensa to listen for the stars, an instruction Spensa takes as a figure of speech.

Also known as Rig

First appears in chapter 2

Spensa's closest friend from the caverns, careful and analytical where she is reckless, and far better than she is at the technical parts of the pilot's entrance exam. He would rather be safe than heroic, and he has a real gift for machinery.

First appears in chapter 3

Admiral of the Defiant Defense Force, a hard veteran who flew at the Battle of Alta. She decides who is allowed into pilot training and is openly determined that the daughter of a man recorded as a deserter will never fly for the DDF.

Also known as Mongrel

First appears in chapter 4

The instructor assigned to train Skyward Flight, a retired pilot with a bad leg and a sour manner. He flew in the same flight as Spensa's father and is one of the few people who will speak of him at all. He insists on the DDF's own rule that any candidate who passes the entrance exam must be trained.

Also known as Jerkface

First appears in chapter 4

The cadet appointed flightleader of Skyward Flight, from one of the most privileged families on Detritus; his mother sits on the National Assembly. Formal, rule-bound and irritatingly correct, he and Spensa dislike each other immediately, and she refuses to call him anything but Jerkface.

Also known as Quirk

First appears in chapter 5

A cadet from the farming caverns with a gentle, folksy manner and a habit of quoting the sayings of a saint. She is the best natural shot in the flight and by some distance the least aggressive person in it.

First appears in chapter 5

A cadet from a comfortable family who reads widely and questions both the DDF's chain of command and the assumptions Detritus society makes about rank and birth. She is usually the calmest voice in the flight.

Also known as Amphisbaena, Amphi

First appears in chapter 5

A cadet with a scholarly streak and a taste for long words, steady in the cockpit and quietly convinced that he should have been made flightleader instead of Jorgen.

First appears in chapter 5

A brash, funny cadet who becomes Spensa's closest friend inside the flight. She is as hungry for glory as Spensa is and even less inclined to hold anything back.

Also known as Nedder

First appears in chapter 5

A large, cheerful cadet from a well-off family whose older brothers flew for the DDF before him. Very little troubles him.

First appears in chapter 5

An enthusiastic, talkative cadet who loves stories about flying and is delighted simply to be allowed near a cockpit.

First appears in chapter 5

A short, strong cadet from a distant cavern community, who says little and whose accent the rest of the flight struggles with.

First appears in chapter 10

An artificial intelligence aboard a wrecked starfighter that Spensa finds buried in a cavern outside Alta. The ship is far more advanced than anything the DDF can build. Its last order from a pilot long dead was to hide and remain hidden, and it insists at length that it is not truly sentient while displaying curiosity, vanity, and a consuming interest in cataloguing mushrooms.

First appears in chapter 14

A small yellow slug from the caverns that repeats sounds it hears, fluting them back. It attaches itself to Spensa and cannot be persuaded to leave.