Title: Steelheart

Author: Brandon Sanderson

My Rating:

Overview:

Steelheart is a YA distopian/scifi novel in which superheros, called Epics, are all villains.  After the appearance of a star called Calamity, people began inexplicably developing powers and turning evil. David is a teenager with an obsession to bring down the Epics and avenge his father was killed by Steelheart. He plans to join with the Reckoners, a rebel group of Epic assassins to take down the Epic that has taken over his city.

I have to say, I was a little disappointed in this book in all categories, so this review may come off more as a critique. However, I will say that I have started the second book since writing this, and I am enjoying it so far. Unlike most sequels, this one is actually better than the first.

Plot:

I thought that the concept of evil superheroes was unique. In a way, their powers make them weak, because they are completely overcome by them, which I found interesting. Despite the fact that there were a few twists and turns, I felt that the plot was a bit predictable and kind of boring. Not a lot happened in book 1… I know Brandon Sanderson’s writing pretty well, so I can’t write about this without comparing it to his other works. It just simply was not as good. This may be because of the genre and target audience, because I’ve only ever read his adult fantasies.

Writing:

This may be the category in which I was most disappointed. Brandon Sanderson is a FABULOUS writer! I know he is. However, the writing in Steelheart, was not great. It was kind of clunky. I have several theories as to why it came off this way.

First of all, the target audience is young adults as opposed to his typical adult audiences. I wonder if he felt the need to dumb down the writing a bit so that teenagers could access the content more easily. I think this is a shame, because I don’t think kids and teenagers need dumbed-down writing. Perhaps we should stray away from plots that are too complex, but the only way for readers to grow is to read above their current reading level. This is how we grow vocabulary. Also, if we’re dumbing things down in this book in order to better understand it, why go on and on about different kinds of guns that most of the audience can’t understand? David, the main character, knows A LOT about guns, and there is a lot of jargon that I did not understand.

Second, this book was written in first person. I feel like in order to keep with David’s character of a charming dork, he felt the need to write in a choppier way. It simply does not flow. The voice is confusing too. It switches back and forth between a serious, vengeful David to a goofy, likable David and it’s hard to reconcile the two, especially when the switches between these tones are so abrupt. There is also this sort of running joke about how David is really bad with metaphors, so throughout the book, within the description as well as in dialogue, David is making these clunky comparisons that don’t work. I know it is part of his character and one of his quirks, but throughout most of the book, until you get to know David, it just feels like bad writing. Also, the grammar Nazi in me cannot help but point out that David claims to suck at metaphors, but it is actually SIMILES that he’s talking about. I’m not sure what Brandon Sanderson was doing calling all of these similes metaphors. They clearly all used the words “like” or “as”!

Characters:

Alright, this is usually my favorite section, but not so much this time… The main character, David, is likable enough, but I felt that Sanderson was trying too hard to make him awkward and funny. Halfway through the book, I wanted to scream, “Enough with the terrible metaphors!” because they got so old. On the other hand, I really liked Megan! She was a great character and an awesome example of a girl that can be both tough and feminine. She was very intelligent too, and I loved that. She actually reminded me a lot of Annabeth from the Percy Jackson books, which is a huge compliment! (Side note, a lot of the writing seemed as though Sanderson was trying to write in a Rick  Riordan kind of style, but didn’t quite get there.)

Other than Megan, most of the other characters were incredibly one-dimensional. They had perhaps one or two characteristics that described them and that was it. It got to the point that I got frustrated that these characters were all being so predictable. Cody, for example, is a southern man who has Scottish heritage, so he has a southern accent, but uses words like “lad” or “lass”. Literally, all Cody ever talks about is his Scottish heritage. Now there is nothing wrong with one being proud of their heritage, but Cody doesn’t even know much about Scotland and has never been there, and acts like it completely defines him. I have Mexican heritage, but I’m not making references to Mexico every time I speak.

One last thing I’d like to add about characters… Brandon Sanderson had a very strange way of trying to throw diversity into this book. I give him props for trying. Not all of the characters are your typical white American that you see in most fiction. However, he writes about diversity as though he’s never experienced it himself. He does the thing white writers do (and I have been guilty of) where they only mention skin color if it is not white. This isn’t necessarily racist, but he keeps making mentions to a certain character’s “brown hands” or “dark skin” when, if it was a white character, he would have just used the words “hands” or “skin”. Like, I remember the color of his skin, you don’t need to remind me that he’s brown. On this vein, I just have to mention one, tiny nitpicky thing, that nonetheless bugged the crap out of me. There is a part in which David describes a picture as a photograph of “Ethnic children”. ….What??? First of all, this doesn’t even make sense, because everyone has an ethnicity, so technically everyone is ethnic. And if we’re defining “ethnic people” as those that are not white, why do we lump them all together like that? There are hundreds of cultures in the world, and to put them all together into one category is pretty much saying, “Because you are not like me, you are a part of the ‘different’ group’.” I find this ridiculous, annoying, and small-minded.

Overall:

This book was not great. I would not recommend it, except…. well, I’ve been reading book 2 (Firefight), and it’s actually pretty good! The characters are much more rounded and the story has become very compelling. I also like David a heck of a lot more now. Like, I kind of love him. So if you have the patience to read through a not-so-good book in order to get to something better, then I recommend it. Otherwise, don’t read it.