REVIEW: STEELHEART (Novel) by Brandon Sanderson

I’ve never read Brandon Sanderson‘s books before. In fact, I didn’t realize that he is a very popular sci-fi/fantasy writer until I started reading this book. What’s sad is that I’ve had the ARC of this book since Comic-Con in July and I had only just started reading it when I saw that it was released at my store. I’m pathetic, I know.

All that aside, I really enjoyed Steelheart. I mean, really enjoyed it, from the prologue to the epilogue, and I’m really excited to read the rest of the series. There’s plenty amount of action, drama, suspense, and humor involved, especially in the 1st person point-of-view that it’s written in. (It often reads like there’s no 4th wall, which kinda makes you feel like you’re part of the group).

There are plenty of books written in 1st POVs, but sometimes the characters can sound too pretentious or too modest or even too selfless in that they talk more about how they want to save their family or their friends. In this book, David, the main protagonist, is none of those things. He delves in his desire for vengeance, he reminds us he’s still a teenage boy with hormones as he talks about a girl that he likes, and he even points out the way he tends to lose focus on the goings-on around him, many times quite funnily. You might even think him to be a bit ADD, but really, he’s just a regular young male – a bit wreckless, a bit silly, a bit angry, a lot smarter than he realizes, and hardly mopey.

Yeah, I like him a lot. He just reads more refreshingly realistic in comparison to many other young male characters that I’ve been reading about in other YA books (not saying that I don’t like any of those guys, either, but it’s good to have a guy know when he’s being silly and not really caring about that fact). Oh, and the metaphors he uses… they are awful! But coming from David, they are hilarious and they really just made me like him more. It’s like he doesn’t even need a sidekick to do all the dorky, funny stuff. He can be his own sidekick in that sense.

The supporting characters are interesting as well, especially Prof, the leader of a group of rebels that David wants to join and convince to take down the powerful and tyrannical Epic (humans with superpowers) named Steelheart.

Then there’s Megan, an apparently attractive looking young lady (according to David’s eyes) that’s part of the rebel group. She doesn’t mind killing Epics, but she doesn’t seem to be in line with David’s ideology either.

I felt the ending very satisfying to me, closing up the book fittingly without leaving me frantic with some kind of huge cliffhanger that I’ll have to suffer a year waiting to read more about. With that said, there’s still enough there to really excite me for the next book. If this is how Brandon Sanderson writes, I think I’m going to have to find that Brandon Sanderson train and get on it! Yes, I made a lame funny. I do that often.

Anyway, I think I’ve found a series that I would love to add onto tfgeekgirl.com. I will definitely be buying the book as well, especially since I plan on seeing him during his book tour!

Check out the book trailer for Steelheart below.