By Brandon Sanderson
Fiction
Wouldn’t it be amazing if people all around the world suddenly had a chance to have superpowers? As nice as it would be to fantasize about that, if you think about the implications logically, the world would probably be in a state of pandemonium as a result of these superpowers. What would be even worse you ask? Now that would be if everyone who had superpowers were evil. Sadly this is exactly the case for the people in the book Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson. Every superpowered person, also referred to as epics in the world of Steelheart, are filled with darkness and commit crimes that even the military and police cannot stop. The more powerful epics are like forces of nature, capable of wiping entire cities off the map and some can even withstand powerful explosives without so much as a scratch. As a small consolation though, every epic does have a weakness that can nullify their abilities.
As the story goes, the main character David is a person who has some personal beef with the epics, particularly an epic named Steelheart, he attempts to join a group called the reckoners, a group specialized in assassinating seemingly invincible epics by exploiting their weaknesses, and tries to employ their help to kill the epic Steelheart. The group is hesitant at first, but after hearing about a potential weakness of Steelheart, they begin setting up a plan to kill the epic.
The story itself is quite interesting and it moves along at a good pace, with cool and unique abilities at the disposal of epics, and the ingenious methods used by the main character and the reckoners to kill the epics, it’s always quite a thrill to read along a story like this. The fact that using superpowers, no matter which one you use, turns you evil in the world of Steelheart is also something that I haven’t really come across in other novels. Though I have heard and seen other superpowered world concepts, I think Steelheart is the more interesting and high stakes one compared to many other stories. I would highly recommend reading the book if you are looking for awesome action and thrills.
Staff Pick Timothy Fang, Member of the Orem Teen Library Council
