It isn’t every one of his novels, but there’s a definite trend of books in which a team of underdogs who are practically powerless compared to their tyrannical overlords are able to successfully defeat a “god” with clever tactics and a whole lotta heart. What I’ve come to learn about Sanderson’s writing is that he really likes to play with the notion of a world in which Evil has already risen, and has all but won. Being a YA novel gives this book advantages in terms of pacing, quickly transitioning from frantic gunfights to plots and meetings and back to bullet mayhem in a rather short time. That isn’t to say his other books are less pleasurable merely that they take almost too long to get to the point.
This is an action-packed book, and it is a pleasure to read in contrast with Sanderson’s denser “adult” fantasy titles. He had destroyed Chicago at the beginning of the collapse, and in a magnificent display of power, transformed much of the city to steel, renaming it Newcago and ruling it thereafter with an iron fist.
Steelheart takes place ten years after Calamity in the domain of an Epic after whom the book is named. Practically overnight, humans who’ve been given powers by Calamity–known as Epics–have destroyed society, rendering the USA into the Fractured States, where nearly all of the population is living at the mercy of one or another super-powered feudal lord. A massive, bright red spectral body by the name of Calamity appeared in the skies, granting a selection of the population magical powers–this seems to be a clear connection to the Cosmere–which completely changes the world, and not for the better. This 400 pager is the first book in the Reckoners trilogy, with Firefight, the second book in the series, is currently nearing completion and will most likely release some time in 2014.įor a change, this series’ setting is a little closer to home, in that it takes place on Earth, albeit a slightly different one than we inhabit.
Sanderson is in top form in his most recent YA novel, Steelheart.
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