miduhadi 's review for:

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

3.0

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While reading this book, I kept feeling as if it was set in the same universe as Megamind. I liked the movie — and also this book but in a very meh sort of way.

Here are some thoughts:

Spoiler

The protagonist is a teenage boy who has spent a large part of his life, collecting info on the superheroes, epics, that plague his world. Instead of making the world a better place, they carved it into territories and subjected the non-powered humans to their dictatorships. The worst among them is Steelheart who also killed the protag’s dad, hence the lifelong obsession.

While the boy knows much about them — even more than an underground force of rebels in some cases — he is also wrong and learns otherwise as the story progresses. It made him more real to me.

The Scotsman who is also an Australian was a fun character. The author used his outlandish stories as direct humor while the MC came off funny without meaning to.

What I didn’t like included turning the MC’s love interest into an epic. Saw it and discarded this because it was too obvious. Her resurrection was needless too. It may have made a bigger impact — or any at all — had she stayed dead.

Felt the same way about the leader of the rebels when he was outed as an epic himself. Moreover, for a force that goes up against the epics so regularly, the rebels numbered what six people? Too much of a stretch that such a small group could do so much damage.

We don’t get much in the way of the different faiths that the denizens of this world may follow. But we do see a glimpse of people who believe good epics will come to defeat the bad ones. It could be that the author will place the MC in a group of such believers in the subsequent books?

So, yeah, we’ll have to wait and see.