Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills.
Nobody fights the Epics...nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.
And David wants in. He wants Steelheart - the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father. For years, like the Reckoners, David's been studying, and planning - and he has something they need. Not an object, but an experience.
He's seen Steelheart bleed. And he wants revenge.

Ever since reading his Mistborn trilogy and the book Warbreaker I've been hooked on Brandon Sanderson. The man is a God when it comes to writing. Not only does he write insanely well and beautiful, he's fast as lighting and seems to be churning out books by the dozen. He was also the author chosen to complete The Wheel of Time series after the passing of Robert Jordan and he did a splendid job there too (I must admit I actually prefer the 3 final books [#12, #13, #14] Sanderson wrote as his style of writing just suits me so very well).

But back to Steelheart. You may wonder why I'm talking about it again - a Danish review of it just went up this Tuesday after all. Well the thing is, good books deserve being praised - and this book is brilliant!

The whole setting in a near future with the world taken over by Epics, mortals gifted with all sorts of powers by Calamity and no one daring to fight - no one but David and the Reckoners.

Steelheart is filled to the brim with action and fighting and it never slows down - and neither does the reader. I absolutely loved every page of it and couldn't put it down. I love how similar the book is to many a comic book and yet how much Sanderson takes that universe of sorts and makes it his own. The book is incredibly well written, I just love the way Sanderson puts the whole together and makes it all work. Everything's been thought through and the characters are likeable, relate-able and understandable, and the plot is so well structured.

So in short: This book is fantastic and I urge anyone who might like science fiction, action, comic books, superheroes (and villains) and overall good writing, to read it.

STEELHEART Reckoners #1 by Brandon Sanderson ISBN13: 9780575104044 400 pages / Published in 2014

Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2015