Book Review No. 3: Steelheart

BOOK REVIEW #3:

The Reckoners #1: Steelheart

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Review:

Can you imagine a world with no sunlight? A world wherein someone can see and monitor your every move? A world ruled with great fear not knowing if you'll be killed today or the day after? A world wherein you struggle to find hope and somehow defeat the darkness but there's none and you can't? That is the world of Steelheart.


After having heard that this book received great reviews from New York Times, I decided to give it a try though I wasn't really familiar with the author. And I did not regret reading this because this book is one of its kind. It actually has a very captivating plot that would make you really want to know how he will defeat such great Epic. As I was reading the novel, I was so intrigued that I could not help but formulate a lot of guesses and truthfully, I could come up with a list of five to six guesses but what I could not really imagine is that even if he was able to "guess" the weakness of Steelheart, how would he even defeat him? This train of thought would make one unable to put down the book until he/she can finally solve the puzzle and that is what happened to me.


Epics, they are humans who used to be normal until the Great Calamity came and gave them gifts - powers. What was inside of the Great Calamity that gave random people powers, nobody knows. What the normal people do know though is that those Epics are becoming arrogant and taking over the ruling of the world. They used their powers to enforce what they want and to inflict fear, violence and death on the people. And one the strongest among them is an Epic named Steelheart.


Steelheart is ruthless, feared upon by common people and by Epics themselves. He killed people without mercy and one of his victims was David's father.
David was not able to do anything then for he was young but now that he is old enough, he wants Steelheart dead. But he can't kill him alone for the Epic is far too strong and no bullets or knives could scratch him, which is why he needed the aid of the Reckoners who were normal people who kill Epics. But the Reckoners would not accept him for Steelheart did not have any weaknesses and was impossible to kill, but Steelheart does have a weakness, David had seen him bleed and he surely would want to see it again.


It was such a great novel in my opinion, and the conclusion was really surprising that I was not able to get over it for a few days. In my case, I was actually able to guess Steelheart's weakness but I could not comprehend on how he would defeat him and how he did defeat him caught me by surprise.This is truly a marvelous novel. Although I haven't read the second book, I am looking forward to it surpassing its predecessor. All in all, I enjoyed this book and I will certainly follow the author, Brandon Sanderson, for more of his books.

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