Jared! You’re alive!
I was starting to get worried again. If you hadn’t surfaced by this Friday I was going to start messaging your wife to figure out what’s been going on. Pretty sure I could convince her to strap you to your computer and withhold food. I look forward to your review of the Tennis Shoes series. It’s been a long time since I read those.
Title: Calamity
Series: The Reckoners; Book 3
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Teen
ROTS Setting: EU, Near Future, Super Powers
Synopsis: David barely escaped New York and Prof has given into his darkness. And the remaining Reckoners think that Prof has gone to Atlanta….in Kansas. The connection between Epics, their weaknesses, and their fears will play a crucial role in the coming fight. Will they save Prof from himself even if it means killing him? Or will they die trying. Let’s not forget Calamity, the source of all Epics and their powers.
Recommendation: Teen. It’s epic….what more is there to say?
The library finally got it in. I was, of course, one of the first few in the system to get it due to my early hold on it. I don’t want to waste anytime getting this out there so I’m pushing back some of my other reviews.
Where to begin…..here is a brief synopsis of the first book in the series.
Steelheart (The Reckoners #1) begins shortly after super powered humans begin to appear. Each one a villain. A young boy watches his father and a room full of people get slaughtered right before his eyes. Barely surviving the encounter with Steelheart, Chicago’s new overlord, he becomes obsessed with discovering the villains weaknesses. Everyone has a weakness. Even gods.
With that out of the way let me just say, I just love this series. It’s an easy read that has good characters that I both love and find annoying. The plots are simple but still filled with plot twists and adventure. And who doesn’t like the idea of regular people taking down super villains. There is something dark to the whole story but also hope and redemption.
David is the main character. Most importantly he’s a balanced character. He’s annoying but perfectly annoying. Not good or bad annoying. Perfectly annoying. It’s hard to hate on him too much because he’s so well done.
In this book the character development, for both David and the other secondary characters, picked up right where they were left in Firefight and continued to grow in a steady, predictable fashion. That might sound a little boring, but it was nice because I wasn’t trying to figure out where they were headed. They were rock solid so my attention was focused on the events and where all of this was leading to.
The plot was pretty good. It did feel rushed at the end and not just because the events were happening quickly. Up until just before the end the characters still didn’t know what was going on. It felt like a turtle walking along and then suddenly pushed off a cliff. There was also a part in the middle that should have felt perfectly Reckoners but it was kind of boring because the characters knew what was happening but the reader just had to plod along peeking over their shoulder and hope it was explained.
That sounds a little harsh but those were they only issues I had with the whole book. Everything else was top notch. Read this book……which means you’ll need to read the whole series. It’s worth it.
Robert
Reading Over The Shoulder 