STEELHEART (THE RECKONERS BOOK 1) REVIEW

AUTHORS:- Brandon Sanderson

PUBLISHED:- 24 September 2013

HARDCOVER:- 386 Pages

SUMMARY:- Ten 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 will.

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.

MY THOUGHTS:-

NON-SPOILER:-

What would happen if your favorite superheroes were to turn evil and take over the world and subjugate humans? Well, we get those answers in this story, perfectly laid out by Brandon Sanderson. A futuristic world dominated by superpowered beings, non of them benevolent in the least. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Well, according to Sanderson, it does. In this fantastically laid out story, we follow David and a group who call themselves ‘The Reckoners’, a group of delightfully quirky and dangerous characters, in a world where regular humans are regarded as nothing more than expendable slaves and animals, ‘The Reckoners’, dare to stand against the superpowered beings called ‘Epics’. Ever since his father was killed by an Epic, ‘Steelheart’, David has wanted nothing more than to kill this God of an Epic, Learning and gathering information about every epic he could, and ever since the reckoners started killing them he’s wanted to be one of them, so when he gets the word that the reckoners are coming to his town, NewCago( formerly Chicago, Now Ruled by Steelheart) he joins them.

SPOILER:-

Ever since ‘Calamity’ appeared in the sky, regular humans started developing superpowers, and not a single one turned those powers towards benefiting society, instead, they decided to rule it and subjugate regular humans. There are hints towards the end of the book that there may be an explanation behind how every epic turned evil but I think that’s a story for the next installment in the series. The abilities are unique to every Epic, some as simple as being able to float a few feet from the ground to be able to destroy cities. The epic may be all-powerful but every epic also has a weakness as unique to them as their abilities, like a man wearing a suit and one shoe could be lethal to an epic, obviously, I am exaggerating, but not by much.

We follow David and a resistance group called ‘The reckoners’ in the cold, remorseless, and coated in perpetual darkness steel streets of NewCago (formerly city of Chicago), ruled by ‘ the most powerful epic in the continent’, (as stated, many times in this book). The noir themes dominated this book with Tommy guns and people in hats, but a lot of advanced technology too, so, a futuristic noir, if there is such a thing. The concept of the origin of epic powers is a mystery and unclear, in a way author gives you a chance to formulate your own theories about them, I know I had a few when I was reading the book. It's unclear whether its science or magic at work here as the powers of many epics are said to ignore the laws of physics and on the other hand, they have all these epic derived techs they use, there may be an explanation about it all later in the series which I am looking forward to.

The epics like to be called by the Flamboyant and whimsical pseudonyms that they have adopted, which sometimes range from great to outlandishly funny like 'Pink Pinkness'. But as you notice all the death and destruction that follow in their wake, it stops being humourous. Like an Epic named Deathpoint, being able to vaporize people by just pointing at them, seems like a silly name, but he is introduced as the first epic we encounter in the book, he starts vaporizing people at random leaving nothing but bones, particularly the part where he vaporizes a baby being held by his mother, the distraught mother desperately tries to hold the bones of the baby together as if that would bring him back. I found it dark, disturbing, and gruesome, and that's what hooked me to the story in the first place. The inevitable showdown between 'The Reckoners' and Steelheart and his minions had me on the edge of my seat the whole time.

The story is heavy and dark, there's this lightness and humor to it that keeps you wanting more, like Davids's terrible attempts at analogies, which in his head may make sense to him but never work for others, and he keeps having to explain afterward his analogies are a great source of humor. Each character in the story is unique, detailed, and seems real. I especially love the characters of Cody and Megan.

To be honest, this book had me since I first read the prologue and I definitely wasn’t disappointed at the end of it, there are so many questions still left unanswered but this is a series and Brandon Sanderson wouldn’t be a great writer as he is if he started giving every mystery away in the first book of the series. All in all this series is worth your time if you are a fan of the superhero genre.

CHARACTERS:-