Brandon Sanderson’s newest young adult novel, Steelheart, takes an old idea, superheros, and gives it an interesting new twist. After Calamity, a strange phenomena the even the characters don’t understand, ordinary men and women began to develop extraordinary powers. They are called Epics. Once given these powers the Epics use them to take over cities and terrorize their human subjects. This is where the main character, David, comes in. Determined to get revenge for his father’s death, David is searching for the only people who still fight the Epics, the Reckoners. The Reckoners study the Epics, searching for weaknesses, and eventually assassinating them. David knows they are his only chance to take out Steelheart, the Epic who killed his father. And he knows they stand a chance because he has seen something no one else has. He has seen Steelheart, the supposedly invincible Epic, bleed.

While I think that Steelheart has a good plot line, it took me a while to get into the book. When I don’t care for the main character, it is hard for me to just sit down and read the book. David’s character didn’t evolve with the story as much as I would have liked. At times, he annoyed me because he constantly talked about revenge and how Steelheart must die. There wasn’t a deeper level to the character. Unless you count the fact that he was completely captivated by Megan. But there was very little depth to their relationship. Frankly, I thought David could do better. The thing that interested me the most was trying to figure out why Megan was so cold and defensive towards David. And the Reckoners, Tia, Cody, and Abraham, were nothing special. All three of them were static characters and only seemed to be there to help move the plot along. I didn’t feel as though Sanderson put very much effort into introducing these characters to the reader. Throughout the book, I struggled to picture them interacting with the events that occurred and I never had a very clear idea of their personalities. The one character that satisfied me was Megan. Sure, half the time she was obnoxious and rude, but she was complex. The reasons she acted the way she did weren’t right there on the page. I enjoyed trying to figure out her character, and it gave me hope that the rest of the series could be better.

Despite Steelheart’s flaws, I couldn’t help but root for these characters as they went through their various struggles, triumphs, and mishaps. The climax was one of the best I’ve read in a while. This idea has a lot going for it and I can’t wait to see what Sanderson turns the rest of the series into. That being said, I’ll definitely be reading Firefight when it comes out this fall.