Friday, January 17, 2014

Book Review: Steelheart (Reckoners #1)

Title: Steelheart (Reckoners #1)
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Rating: 5/5
Genre: SciFi/Fantasy, Dystopian, Post/Apocalyptic (Young Adult)
Publication Date: September 24th, 2013

Story Notion: I need more, right now.

Plot: (from Goodreads)
There are no heroes.

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.

Review:
I adored this book and Sanderson is definitely one of my favorite authors at this point, really he was after I read his first book last year and went 'I need all of his books now.' Anyway, I didn't even realize this book was young adult until after, and it didn't occur to me it was 'dystopian,' probably because I thought of it very much more as apocalyptic and post apocalyptic.

Besides that, onto the book itself. I loved all this characters and I adored some of the stories and things Cody said probably much too much, I found myself trying not to burst out laughing. And, of course, David, Megan, Abraham, Prof, and Tia. They're fantastic characters and everything is very intense, it doesn't stop moving, I couldn't put this book down. I finished it in about a day.

I think one of my favorite things about this book is that David, the main character, cannot make metaphors or anything like that to save his life. It was probably one of my favorite recurring things, I found myself laughing to myself more then I care to admit about some. Also the pure just comic nature of some of the Epic's powers made me oddly happy, I'm sure other people found it annoying or a rip off or whatever, but I really loved it, especially in a novel instead of comic, it was different.

Overall, I really love Sanderson's writing and I really liked David's voice and how he changed over the course of the book, I felt it was very different to what normally happened with people thrown into a situation like the one he found himself in and I feel oddly proud of him for that. To sum it up, I'd recommend you check this out if you're into this kind of book, it is truly fantastic and I really need to get my hands on the rest of his books I haven't read already.

Also, there's a short story/novella available for ebook stuff called Mitosis, that kind of gives you a little snap of what the consequences are for the end of Steelheart and it's completely fantastic, I loved it a lot. It's to be read after Steelheart, to just enforce that.

2 comments:

  1. I read Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy last year maybe the year before, and I felt exactly the same - I wanted to read more by him - but I never got around to it, so hopefully I can get my hands on this book soon! :) x

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    1. Haven' read the Mistborn series yet, but I have it near and it's almost at the top at this point, I've had so many people say to read it. :)

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