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spiffybumble 's review for:
Steelheart
by Brandon Sanderson
Steelheart: 10/10
By: Brandon Sanderson
Steelheart is everything a young adult urban fantasy should be. The term ‘pageturner’ is used far and wide but Steelheart adheres to the label so closely that you could finish it in a single day and not realize the time passed.
Steelheart is awesome. This book feels as if it were Brandon Sanderson deciding that instead of having a singular unique magic system, to take absolutely every single magic system he’s ever thought of and cram it into one novel in an easily understood and believable way. Steelheart follows the protagonist David in a world where a strange star appeared in the sky and gave thousands of seemingly random humans superpowers that corrupted their character and gave them a lust for control over others. These super humans, called epics, murder innocents at random, control cities, and have fractured all known governments and sent the world spiraling into a dystopia. David’s father was killed in front of him by Steelheart on the same day Steelheart took over Chicago by converting the entirety of it into steel and blackening the sky by the use of another allied epic. David ruthlessly studies the epics and knows that each one has at least one weakness, he absorbs every miniscule iota of information he can find in the hopes of one day joining the reckoners, the only group of humans left still fighting epics after ten years of living under their control.
This book is wow. This book is awesome. It is easier to talk about what this book did wrong only because it did so many other things right, but I’ll try and hit the big ones. First, it is BEAUTIFUL world building, everything affects everything else, true to Sanderson’s third law. Newcago and all of its functions are portrayed in miniscule detail, how would living under a blanket of darkness change the life of the civilians? What would happen if everything in Chicago was turned into steel? How would the food supplies be affected? Not only does the world building answer every question one might have, it does so unobtrusively and through the course of the story without three paragraphs of exposition dropped onto the reader. And secondly, all of the characters are at the very least believable and understandable. No one makes stupid decisions except the main character (which is a failure more of the YA genre than the Steelheart novel). Thirdly, the superpowers are all SO COOL! They make sense and create odd and unique scenarios. It really is awesome and I have difficulty explaining why. The plot is a basic revenge story but told so so much more fulfilling than near any action movie.
What’s wrong about this book? Well, very few things. The protagonist is very bland and forgettable, which is arguably so that you can insert yourself into the main characters. He also falls in love as quickly as a teenage male would, which is annoying but at least makes sense. Some of the twists are easy to guess but they still make sense within the context of the novel.
Steelheart is an absolutely fantastic YA novel and an incredibly good read for anyone outside of that demographic as well.
By: Brandon Sanderson
Steelheart is everything a young adult urban fantasy should be. The term ‘pageturner’ is used far and wide but Steelheart adheres to the label so closely that you could finish it in a single day and not realize the time passed.
Steelheart is awesome. This book feels as if it were Brandon Sanderson deciding that instead of having a singular unique magic system, to take absolutely every single magic system he’s ever thought of and cram it into one novel in an easily understood and believable way. Steelheart follows the protagonist David in a world where a strange star appeared in the sky and gave thousands of seemingly random humans superpowers that corrupted their character and gave them a lust for control over others. These super humans, called epics, murder innocents at random, control cities, and have fractured all known governments and sent the world spiraling into a dystopia. David’s father was killed in front of him by Steelheart on the same day Steelheart took over Chicago by converting the entirety of it into steel and blackening the sky by the use of another allied epic. David ruthlessly studies the epics and knows that each one has at least one weakness, he absorbs every miniscule iota of information he can find in the hopes of one day joining the reckoners, the only group of humans left still fighting epics after ten years of living under their control.
This book is wow. This book is awesome. It is easier to talk about what this book did wrong only because it did so many other things right, but I’ll try and hit the big ones. First, it is BEAUTIFUL world building, everything affects everything else, true to Sanderson’s third law. Newcago and all of its functions are portrayed in miniscule detail, how would living under a blanket of darkness change the life of the civilians? What would happen if everything in Chicago was turned into steel? How would the food supplies be affected? Not only does the world building answer every question one might have, it does so unobtrusively and through the course of the story without three paragraphs of exposition dropped onto the reader. And secondly, all of the characters are at the very least believable and understandable. No one makes stupid decisions except the main character (which is a failure more of the YA genre than the Steelheart novel). Thirdly, the superpowers are all SO COOL! They make sense and create odd and unique scenarios. It really is awesome and I have difficulty explaining why. The plot is a basic revenge story but told so so much more fulfilling than near any action movie.
What’s wrong about this book? Well, very few things. The protagonist is very bland and forgettable, which is arguably so that you can insert yourself into the main characters. He also falls in love as quickly as a teenage male would, which is annoying but at least makes sense. Some of the twists are easy to guess but they still make sense within the context of the novel.
Steelheart is an absolutely fantastic YA novel and an incredibly good read for anyone outside of that demographic as well.