Reckoners series

Reckoners Series

Cover of Steelheart, the first book in the series.
1. Steelheart 1.5. Mitosis (short story) 2. Firefight 3. Calamity
Author	Brandon Sanderson
Language	English
Genre	Fantasy
Publisher	Gollancz (UK), Random House Childrens Books (US)

The Reckoners series is a fantasy series written by American author Brandon Sanderson. Three books are planned in the series: Steelheart (published 2013), Firefight (forthcoming 2014), and Calamity (forthcoming). In the post-apocalyptic world of the Reckoners series, random people have gained superpowers. These actions of these new super powered individuals, known as "Epics" have caused the collapse of traditional governments.

World of the book series

Steelheart is the story of a world full of superheroes who are called Epics. Or actually, supervillains. They took over the world with their powers and rule cities like Newcago, where ordinary people try to survive. One such supervillain is Steelheart, an Epic with invincible powers, who killed the father of an average teenager named David. But every Epic has his own weakness, and it's David's goal to find Steelheart's weakness and take revenge for the murder of his father. But in order to succeed he must join the Reckoners, a group of citizens that banded together to assassinate Epics. David has something valuable to offer; not a weapon but an experience. He has seen Steelheart bleed.

Books in the series

Steelheart

Steelheart
Author	Brandon Sanderson
Publication date	26 September 2013
ISBN	978-0385743563

The story is told via the perspective of David, an orphan teenager living in Newcago (formerly known as Chicago). Newcago is ruled by the extremely powerful Epic named Steelheart, who has created a society run by powerful Epics, with normal people living in normal jobs. Steelheart is apparently invulnerable, is able to fly, can hurl blasts of energy, and can turn inanimate matter to steel; he has turned all of Chicago to steel for kilometers around and into the ground. Compared to other places in what was the United States, Newcago is well run, with normal people generally having access to food, water, electricity, jobs, etc.

David's father was killed by Steelheart around the time of the collapse, and David has dedicated his life to learning about the Epics' power, so that he can get revenge over Steelheart. Near the start of the book, David makes contact with a group of Reckoners, a society of normal humans dedicated to killing Epics. The Reckoners are in possession of advanced technology which they say has scientifically been derived from Epic powers, most prominently the power to tunnel through inanimate matter using "tensors". David convinces the Reckoners to try to kill Steelheart.

The Reckoners create a plan to lure out Steelheart; the plan is to announce that there is a new powerful Epic named Limelight, who challenges Steelheart to a fight. To make Steelheart take the challenge seriously, they stage two attacks. First they blow up the power plant. Next they try to attack a powerful Epic named Conflux, who is known to be a gifter who can transfer his power to non-epics. The attack doesn't go according to plan, and Megan dies, but they do succeed in kidnapping Conflux. Its revealed that Conflux was a captive of Steelheart, kept prisoner and used to power the city and the weapons of Steelheart's forces. With the capture of Conflux, Steelheart accepts the Reckoner's challenge.

When they meet Steelheart, they try many ways of breaking Steelheart's invulnerability, without success. The professor uses the Tensor to fight Steelheart directly, to stall him. The powerful Epics Nightwielder and Firefight go after David. David is able to kill Nightwielder, but Firefight turns out to be Megan, who is an Epic illusionist with reincarnation ability who had infiltrated the Reckoners. Because of David's love for Firefight, and because Firefight had become less evil because she has not been using her powers regularly, Firefight lets David go. David joins the professor in the fight against Steelheart, but the professor is killed, and Steelheart takes David's gun to kill David. But David has guessed that Steelheart's vulnerability is that he can only be killed by someone who does not fear him, and has rigged the gun to trigger an explosive, which kills Steelheart (since Steelheart doesn't fear himself, he can kill himself).

It is revealed that the Professor is an Epic who had avoided turning evil by gifting his powers disguised as technology. One of these powers is the ability to heal rapidly, and using this on himself he revives in time to stop the explosive blast from killing David. Once Steelheart's human employees see the Professor recover they leave, since they believe normal humans can't fight an Epic.

Mitosis (short story)

Mitosis
Author	Brandon Sanderson
Publication date	December 3, 2013
Media type	ebook with DRM (no physical formats for sale)
ISBN	9780449818435

This short story takes place between the Steelheart and Firefight books. In it, the Reckoners are controlling Newcago, attempting to restore a Human-Governed society. An Epic named 'Mitosis' comes looking for David, wishing to know the truth behind Steelhearts death, as he does not believe that a human could have defeated Steelheart.

Firefight

Book 2, Firefight, is expected to be published in Fall 2014.^[1] On January 30, 2014 Sanderson announced he had finished the first draft of Firefight and sent it to his editor, explaining it needed a lot of revision before production could begin.

Calamity

Calamity will be the third book in the Steelheart series.^[2]

Reception

Steelheart debuted at #1 on the New York Times Young Adult Bestseller list for the week of October 13th ^[3] and gained favorable reviews, one commenting, "Like many of his other novels, Brandon Sanderson created a whole new world so imaginative, deep and different; a world that completely immerses you in it effortlessly". ^[4]

References

External links

• Official Steelheart webpage