If that was what Sanderson was going for, then mission fucking accomplished, dude, because while grammatically mostly sound, the first and second books of this trilogy aren't written very well. any of 'em, if I am not mistaken, maybe except for 'Abarat', but that's by Clive Barker, so it's pretty good by default). I've also read somewhere that he intentionally dumbed down his writing for these books because this is aimed at a mostly teenage audience and they shouldn't be overwhelmed by them fancy words and stuff (I can't really comment on whether this is something that is usual for Young Adult novels, because I haven't read. I haven't read anything else by him, so I can't compare this to his usual work. It tries really hard to be gritty and edgy to the point where it comes across as almost comical and Sanderson's style doesn't really help. The prologue of the first book is pretty awful. Lucky for him, he stumbles across the Reckoners, humans who fight Epics, and joins them in their effort to bring down Steelheart.įirst impressions of 'Steelheart' (the book. He also killed David's father ten years earlier, so David is out for revenge.

David Charleston lives in Newcago, which is reigned over by the Epic Steelheart, pretty much Superman but evil and also able to turn things into steel. The novels are set in the near future/alternative present where the emergence of a weird red star called Calamity gave physics-shattering superpowers to a number of individuals all across the globe but all of these so-called 'Epics' have proven to be sociopaths at best and full-on murderous psychopaths more often than not. Also I hadn't read anything by Brandon Sanderson before but he's a very popular author, so since this seemed like an easy thing to get into (just three novels in contrast to his other works), I was like 'Yeah, why not? Might as well check it out.'. I first heard of these novels when Tom Vasel reviewed the board game The Reckoners three years or so ago and while I wasn't interested in the game per se (because duh, coop, bah!), I thought that the concept sounded interesting. the 'Reckoners'-trilogy by author Brandon Sanderson, comprised of the three novels 'Steelheart', 'Firefight' and 'Calamity' (plus a short novella called 'Mitosis' that is set between 'Steelheart' and 'Firefight' but I haven't read that one).

The reckoners books