Thursday 19 February 2015

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson


Epics have suddenly risen up all over the world. They want power, which shouldn't be too hard to obtain for them since they all have powers that a normal man or woman could ever posses. Plus, there is an unspoken rule that no normal person should try and defeat an Epic, they have all the power after all, what would be the point of trying anyways? 

An Epic by the name of Steelheart has taken over the city of Chicago and renamed it Newcago. Humans and Epics alike fear him, and nobody has ever been able to defeat him. Even though people think that Steelheart is basically invincible, David knows that every Epic has a weakness, even Steelheart. He is the only person still alive that has seen Steelheart bleed, and David has wanted him dead ever since he watched him murder his father ten years ago. Since then, David has been studying Epics, especially Steelheart, avidly to find their weaknesses in hope that one day he can eliminate Steelheart. But David knows that he can't do this alone, so he hopes to join the Reckoners, the only group of non-Epics that are willing to stand up to the Epics. 

Rate: 4 stars

One of my friends had recommended this book while we were out at a book store, so naturally, I bought it. And, I'm quite glad that she did recommend it because I really did enjoy it as you can tell from the rating above. There were also some plot twists at the end that I did not see coming, and to be honest, I wasn't expecting any sort of plot twist. These plot twist left me wanting the next book, which I hope to buy in the near future. Plus, there was lots of action. Overall,  Steelheart was a pretty good book.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

I think the prologue of Steelheart was actually well done, I don't normally like prologues, especially long ones, but this one was pretty much perfect. It gave us a good sense of what happened on the day that David's father died. I think it was necessary to have this prologue in the book because what happened on that day comes up in the book often. It made David's story make more sense.

Now for the characters. David was an obsessive character, he spent most of his life trying to find information about Epics, like I mentioned above. This understandable considering his past. Wouldn't you want to get revenge on the man that murdered your father in cold blood? He was also really smart, even though he didn't consider himself intelligent. I mean he figured out a bunch of things about Epics, including Steelheart's weakness. I also liked how he had quirks as well. It was kind of funny how would always come up with the worst metaphors possible, it was kind of like coming up with bad puns.

Then we had Prof. He was the leader of the team. Let me say, I was not expecting him to be an Epic. But, it all makes sense. He was able to transfer his powers to the other team members (except Megan), making them think they were using his inventions. And it was interesting to see that whenever he was using the powers himself, he basically turned into another person, and I wonder why that is. I was very pleased that he pretty much trusted David right away, even when others didn't.

The other members of the team were Tia, Cody, Abraham and Megan. Tia was basically the brains of the operation, she stayed back on missions and would give the other members info while they were on missions. I also liked how she had this addiction to Cola. Like I've mentioned before, I love characters with quirks. Cody was the very definition of goofy, we was always making these stories up and joking around. He, Abraham and Megan seem to go out on all the missions. Abraham was the Canadian with the French accent, not quite as quirky as the others, but he was probably the nicest out of the Reckoners.

Megan is a whole other story. I didn't expect her to be an Epic, let alone Firefight! David obviously had feelings for her, but I'm not exactly sure about her, I don't really know who she is anymore. Since she was Firefight, she would have been working for Steelheart, but she saved Abraham's life while on a mission and then we saw her listen to what David said to her when he thought she was dying. So she can't be all bad, can she? I have no idea what is going on with her, but I hope she turns out to be good. It was so surprising to see her turn up again, because David watched her die, but that was all just an illusion created by her. Hopefully we'll see what she is truely like in the next book.

Another thing I was surprised about, was Conflux. I didn't expect him to turn out to be a some kind of slave. I didn't expect Steelheart to just use him to power the city. It'll be interesting to see how he will play into the next book.

The ending was my favourite part by far. The huge battle scene was great and all the pieces of the story fell into the place (like how we found out about Prof and Megan). I was quite pleased that Nightweilder and Steelheart were killed. Even though we did not see too much of Nightweilder, I could just tell he was nasty. And Steelheart was just an arrogant, sadistic jerk. From the beginning, I thought Steelheart's weakness was going to be that he could only be killed by someone who was not trying to kill him, or crossfire. But I was proven wrong when David figured out that he could only be killed by someone who was not afraid of him. Steelheart ultimately ended up killing himself, since he was the only person alive who didn't fear him. 

I loved how this book wove a bunch (but not all) of loose ends together. Somethings I would like to see in the next book would be some more history on Calamity, why the Epics are Epics and Megan's true colours. I can't to see what will happen next!

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