**REVIEW** Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

Release Date:  September 24, 2013
Published By: Delacorte Press
Length: 386 pages
Review Copy: Hardcover, Purchased

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There are no heroes.

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.

  This was a phenomenal read that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did.  Steelheart was one of those books that I was super excited about and then all of the hype started, and I find myself often let down by the pumped up book in the end.  However, with this books unique plot and Sanderson's supreme writing, I found myself entranced.  This book will make you rethink the idea of having super heroes and what they would mean for crime on Earth because the reality of this book is that the heroes are not here to help us.

  There was a solid plot with even more solid characters in Steelheart.  I loved how we got a peek at David's life before Steelheart's take over and basically the beginning of the end.  My problem (my only problem) lay in the pacing.  There was almost a flat spot near the middle of the book where I found myself not as sucked into the story.  I understand that not everything can be action and movement but this spot felt a little like filler and it left me feeling a little empty.  Luckily, this feeling did not last for long and the book picked back up and I found it slipped easily into a pace that held my attention once again.  The biggest advantage that I think Steelheart had was that it took the heroes we always thought we would have when the time came and used human nature to make them what we would most likely get: villains.  When it comes down to it I believe that the majority of the time, power corrupts and people just can't be who they used to be.

  David was one of those solid characters that I spoke about.  However, he was a little predictable to me at times.  To an extent, I expected more from the guy that he been plotting his fathers revenge for the past ten years.  I admired the amount of information that he was able to obtain about Epics and the determination that he had when it came to becoming part of the Reckoners.  Though I found I saw him playing the awkward teen in a different book, not the hero of this one.  That being said this does not mean he did start to grow, both in the book and on me by the end.  I think that in the last few chapters, David began to become the character that I wanted to read, the character that I could honestly see saving people from Epics.

  This book stays light in the romance department and I'm glad it did because it really worked for this book.  What Sanderson did was create the possibility for romance, and kept it open.  There is no denying that there is a spark and the metaphorically awkward David is attracted to Megan but there is just too much to do to think about love.  However, I would like to point out that this attraction has a HUGE twist thrown into it and it really made me think.  I would also like to point out that for the most part Megan doesn't express her attraction to David, and it seems that there is not an attraction from her end.  Megan is a strong female and is very focused on what needs to be done, instead of being a love sick girl.  I believe that it is even possible she was just there to serve the purpose of having a strong female that people could love.

  Despite the little slow spot in the middle of this read, this was still an amazing read.  Sanderson, has crafted Epics that are nothing like what anyone would have expected.  We all expect the "great power, great responsibilities," theory to come around but the cold hard facts are that with power comes greed and not everyone can fight that.  It is not a brutal and violent book but the point is clear, when it comes to power, not everyone will be fair with its use... if anyone.  I am seriously excited for Firefight because... Well if I tell you I could spoil it all!  Fans of dystopians and supers alike will enjoy this read and you should pick it up early enough to read Firefight when it comes.

  "It's not supposed to be this way," my father said.

  Steelheart turned, apparently surprised to hear anything from one of the room's cowering, whimpering peons.

  My father stepped forward, gun down at his side.  "No," he said.  "You aren't like the others.  I can see it.  You're better than they are."  He walked forward, stopping only a few feet from the two Epics. "You're here to save us."

  "Prof didn't approve hitting an Epic," Megan said.  "This isn't in he procedures."

  Cody chuckled.  "Killing an Epic is always in the procedures, lass.  You just haven't been with us long enough to understand."

  "He really is a monster," Megan eventually said.  "I know that he is.  I hate sounding like I'm defending him.  I just don't know if killing him is going to be good for the very people we're trying to protect."

  I'd often dreamed of doing incredible things.  I'd imagined what it would be like to work with the Reckoners, to fight the Epics, to actually do things instead of sitting around thinking about them.  With that shot, I finally got my chance.