Steelheart (The Reckoners, #1)

While it's never actually stated, it's easy to assume that the world Sanderson's created here deviates from ours only at the point of Calamity's arrival. It's also reasonable to think that Calamity showed up either very late in the 20th century, or early in the 21st. The reason I care about this? Because I can't wrap my mind around the words "Calamity!", "Sparks!", and "slontze" having replaced ALL OTHER exclamatory expletives in just 10-15 years.

The story was interesting in the way that frayed jeans are interesting: comfortable, and the frayed edges don't impede either the function or the enjoyment... unless you keep messing with the frayed bits, worrying at them and drawing attention to them. Then they become much harder to tolerate. Sanderson's huge problem here wasn't that there was no logic or consistency in his "powers break physics" and "every Epic has one odd weakness" rules, it was that his characters kept pointing it out, practically rubbing the issues in the readers' eyes.

It's been a bit since my last book review, so I figured I get back into the habit with my favorite punching bag: Brandon Sanderson. But do not feel bad for him;like Rocky at the end of Rocky IV, he can take it.

I used to think that Sanderson's writing style could not be any simpler. My first reaction upon hearing that he was writing a few Young Adult novels was to cock my head to the side... confused, since I thought he all ready wrote what amounted to Young Adult novels. Turns out that he could get simpler in his writing style with shorter sentences and bad metaphors (more on that later).

Well, that's kind of insulting, I thought to myself. Then again, I'm not the intended audience. I am, after all, quite the sophisticant; and this is, after all, a novel about evil superheroes and the puny humans that try to assassinate them.

The novel is told from the perspective of David, an eighteen year old who has obsessed with getting revenge on Steelheart, an "Epic" that amounts to evil Superman who also happened to kill David's father. Steelheart now rules Chicago in perpetual darkness, changing it to a city of steel and renaming it Newcago. The only outside light the city gets is from the red glare of Calamity, some spatial anomaly that appeared right before some normal humans got superpowers and became "Epics".

David seeks to join a group of Epic assassins known as the Reckoners so that he will have the resources to implement his revenge scheme against Steelheart.

David is a goofy character, as demonstrated by the many, many terrible metaphors he uses. This is a conscious decision on Sanderson's part to help develop David's character, and it is mostly successful. It is also at times very distracting and jarring. Like a cat on a hot tin trombone during the high school marching band's halftime show.

Ultimately, the writing (aside from the aforementioned metaphors) is fairly focused. Not a lot of space is wasted on issues tangent to the plot. This allows the story to move at a fairly good pace to the inevitable final showdown with Steelheart(Yeah...spoiler alert rolls eyes).

Like most Sanderson books, this novel has a self-contained plot that reaches a fairly satisfying resolution. Also, like most Sanderson books, there will obviously be sequels. Two, to be precise... and they should be coming out within the next three years.

In our day and age where we get several high-budget movies of superheroes fighting for good and right, Steelheart offers a refreshing take on the superhero genre where the mere possession of superpowers appears to turn people evil. This adds a dynamic which is normally absent in superhero stories: the good guys really need to struggle to succeed.