Review: Steelheart (Reckoners #1) – Brandon Sanderson

steelheartTen years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills.

Nobody fights the Epics…nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.

And David wants in. He wants Steelheart – the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David’s father. For years, like the Reckoners, David’s been studying, and planning – and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience.

He’s seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge.

Rating: 3.5/5

Despite my rating, this was a really good read – I just took off a star because the narrator’s voice really grated on me, for some reason. This was more of a case where it’s not you, it’s me!

I have to admit, while superheroes dominate cartoons and movies, this is only the second book series I’ve ever read involving superheroes. The author did a great job in creating an original world, whereby each Epic has their own level of power and achilles heel, which can sometimes be a completely arbitrary weakness.

As despairing as it was, I loved how the author dealt with people’s inherent belief that those with more power will be benevolent saviours, instead of the destructive brutes they ultimately turned out to be.

The small band of resistance fighters and their inner workings was also intriguing – from their modus operandi to their special tech and team camaraderie. I’m always in favour of the underdogs getting their revenge.

The book also presents some interesting philosophical dilemmas, which I think are summed up perfectly in the following quote:

Ponder. Worry. Stay up nights, frightened for the casualties of your ideology. It will do you good to realise the price of fighting…I need to warn you of something, however. There aren’t any answers to be found. There are no good choices. Submissiveness to a tyrant or chaos and suffering. In the end I chose the second, though it flays my soul to do so. 

I totally called one of the people twists early on, but not the other. Things are set up fabulously for the sequel though – while David’s puppy love got on my nerves, the action-packed adrenaline rush of the narrative more than made up for it.

About these ads

One thought on “Review: Steelheart (Reckoners #1) – Brandon Sanderson

  1. I really enjoyed this book, but I would agree with you on your review. David’s adoration is almost awkward, especially for an author such as Sanderson. Great review!

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s