Title: Steelheart
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Series: Reckoners #1
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: September 24, 2013
Genre: Fantasy; Science Fiction; Young Adult
Pages: 386
Format: Hardback
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 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.
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.
A classic tale of David versus Goliath, Steelheart tells the story of a boy who wants nothing more than revenge for his father’s death. Steelheart, one of the many Epics that have taken over the world, is now the dictator of Chicago. Impervious to everything and possessing magnificent powers, he is undefeatable. Expect David has seen him bleed. And he intends to do everything it takes to make him bleed again.
You know when you watch a movie like, let’s say, Transformers 4, and you just say, “Wow. This is such a guy movie.”? It’s all action, action, action, the frequent sprinkling of special effects, and the occasional humorous line. Occasionally there is a love story woven in for variety. But overall, while the action scenes are cool and exciting, the actual writing is, at best, meh. Let’s just say that Sanderson could definitely be the screen writer for the next Transformers.
While it was just interesting enough for me to finish, I was not into this book. It was a chore for me to read it. Sure, once I started reading it, it got a little bit less tedious of a job, but I still didn’t really enjoy it. The humor, or shall I say the attempt at humor, was strained, blatant, and cheesy. The main character, David, was confusing and not well formed. I couldn't match up his awkward personality and his strange infatuation with bad metaphors with who he kept saying he was: a boy obsessed with killing his father’s murder and vengeance-obsessed. That side of his character was not shown to the reader, and it was hard to believe that he was that boy at all. The other characters were also not convincingly real. The explanation for the story was, at best, hard to understand, and at worst, non-existent. I still don't know what Calamity is. And I read the book.
Long story short, I was disappointed. Sure the action scenes were badass, but that was all they were–action scenes. The characters, story, and conflict were all flat. They were rushed and mediocre, to the point that I wondered if the author really cared. I probably won't read the sequel.
January 6, 2015
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