Book Review: Steelheart
Blurb: 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.
After my last book review I was eager to get back into reading Fantasy books again so I looked up all the Fantasy author's I could think of and realised that I have never read a Brandon Sanderson book! Steelheart was the first one I came across at the Library and as it was Book One in a trilogy I thought I'd give it a go.
Plot
You can tell the author has spent an incredible amount of time on creating this world. Although set in a very real city, the affects of Calamity have transformed this city entirely to make it, and they way people live in, it completely unrecognisable and it can be appreciated how much thought has gone into this. Despite this being a Fantasy novel, it was easy to accept how the people of Newcago adapted to live "After Calamity" and Sanderson has a great way of drawing on people's survival skills whether it be through heroics or desperation.
What Sanderson does undeniably well are the action scenes. His way of placing a reader right among the characters, keeping you moving along at a fast pace but still being able to keep up with multiple things happening at once is what kept me gripped to this book reading chapter after chapter with no sense of time.
The rest of the book was good but I did feel it moved at quite a fast pace and there were aspects of the story and the characters that I would have preferred to have been expanded on further. For example, after the Prologue, we go straight to the first time David meets with the Reckoners. The scene itself is action packed and keeps the same pace as the prologue and although throughout the book David's admiration for the Reckoner's is obvious, I would have liked a bit more hype about the mysteriousness of the group before meeting them to justify David's opinions of them.
Characters
Again, maybe due to the fast pace of the plot, I found it hard to connect with the characters straight away. Although this did change before the end of the book, I can't say that I have a particular favourite in mind. I'm trying to work out why I didn't feel a connection with any of the characters, particularly the Reckoners, and I think it's because although their backstories were somewhat revealed, there were no subplots for any of them or any real character arcs other than maybe David's.
Writing Style
The story is told in first person with David as the narrator. One thing I will say is that I love Sanderson's writing style. It is written as if David is talking directly to you, as the reader, or as if he is thinking out loud at times. That seems obvious and self explanatory if it's his point of view but it's more of a conversational tone, which was fun at times, particularly when he is trying to think of metaphors to explain situations which conveyed and out into perspective his young age and naivety at times in contrast to the seriousness and danger he was getting himself into.
The language and words used throughout the book such as "Slontze" reminded me of some sort of old American gangster movie which I really loved.
Book Cover
I like the book cover. The teal-ish colour of the font and the sky stand out well and overall it sets a good image for an epic fantasy novel.
Overall Conclusion:
I enjoyed this book and would consider reading the rest of the trilogy but unfortunately for me personally, I wouldn't rush to do so. However I would recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy books where the epic and the ordinary collide. If you like books set in the real world but where supernatural powers and events have taken over, this may be for you.
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