Book Review: Steelheart, by Brandon Sanderson

My daughter has been pressuring me to read this book ever since she read it a few weeks ago, and I finally got a gap in my schedule. I figured it would be good; Brandon Sanderson continues to improve with age, and this is one of his more recent books. And he’s not one to “dumb down” his YA fiction, so I was not surprised that I enjoyed it.

“Steelheart” runs on the premise that some stellar anomaly(? we really aren’t told much about it) appeared in our sky, and soon thereafter people began developing superpowers. However, the use of these powers turned all these people into supervillains. There are no superheroes, and the world quickly fell under their tyranny.

Set in “Newcago”, the future Chicago run by an “epic” named Steelheart, David is a youth whose father was murdered by Steelheart ten years ago. David himself barely escaped the massacre, but he escaped with a secret–Steelheart can be hurt. Ever since then he has thought of nothing but revenge, and has compiled exhaustive research on epics, their weaknesses, and on Steelheart’s organization. He lacks only one thing to put his plans for revenge into action: support.

That support arrives in the form of The Reckoners, a band of ordinary humans who are able to stand up to the epics, and are determined to exterminate them all. David just has to find a way to join them and convince them his plan will work.

Sanderson has a gift for puzzles, and there are a lot of them in “Steelheart. ” He’s also one of the braver writers who will give you everything you need to figure it out for yourself. And I did figure out quite a few of the puzzles, sometimes several chapters ahead of the reveal. But for every one I got right, there were at least that many I didn’t. Sanderson has a knack for layering puzzles on top of his puzzles, and having the biggest reveals coming in the midst of the action when you don’t have time to stop and think through the ramifications of those reveals.

That only works, of course, if he can keep you suspensefully turning pages, which he does. He knows how to ratchet up the tension and keeping you glued to the book.

Steelheart was a fun read, and a good start to the series. I’ve been told by several people that the next book blows this one out of the water, so I look forward to testing that. I also think I’ll go back some day and read the book again, studying how Sanderson writes. His style is clear, concise (fans of the Stormlight Archive may find this surprising), and evocative. I need to take a close look at how he does it.