BOOK REVIEW: Calamity By Brandon Sanderson (Reckoners #3)

Calamity is a 2016 Young Adult novel by Brandon Sanderson. It is the third and final book of the Reckoners Trilogy. Calamity was published by Gollancz on 18 February 2016 you can look it up by its ISBN - 057510466X. The previous books were Steelheart (Reckoners #1 and Firefight (Reckoners #2).

SPOILER CHECK: THIS IS A DEEP DIVE REVIEW OF CALAMITY AND AS SUCH WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. OK so if you have not read the first two books STOP and go read them first or this will ruin many of the things that make the story great.

WHY I BOUGHT IT

Well obviously because it is the third part of a story I would really like to know the end. The Reckoners trilogy so far has been one of the most novel (puns) takes on the superhero genre in books. The only series on a par would be Wearing The Cape series by Marion Harmon which if you like this series you'll probably enjoy that too though it is a different look at a world full of superheroes.

WHAT I THOUGHT

The beginning of Calamity is almost the exact opposite of the start of Firefight back then the team wasn’t exactly celebrating but it was building something. Calamity sees the team in despair once part of a national if not global Reckoner network and now literally the only people left standing.

The overarching message pounded into us from the first two books is that Epic = Evil a message reinforced by both the Prof and Megan that is what the Reckoners believe even if we as the readers know more because we see more.

Seeing David as the head of the team is actually an interesting plot twist as he is clearly the risk taker. He now has to sit back and run things and take care of his team I think his status as operations might be part of the reason that he spends a lot of the novel putting so much pressure on Megan to keep testing her powers despite the strain it puts on her sanity. I could talk about why this is BS when he is ignoring his Epic nature but there is another section for that.

Megan is awesome as always completely kickass and so strong within herself she is a full rounded character in many ways that David is not when you throw in her crazy, crazy powers she becomes even more interesting.

The other characters really were not much more than window dressing this time in my opinion which is a shame because usually Sanderson likes to have an ensemble cast in his stories with real personalities, quirks and history.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

I went into this wanting to know a few basic things and I felt like I was teased with these things every two or three chapters. It took so long for things to get where they were meant to go it got boring in places, boring is not a word I would ever associate with the writing of Brandon Sanderson.

David lying to the team about his Epic status. I get part of it being down to all that has happened but he didn't even tell Megan the woman he loves. I can't buy his “it doesn't mean anything” in the early book he knew full well what it meant for him being pretty much the foremost expert on Epics around.

David riding Megan about using her powers more added with the lying is something that really I find annoying and actively made me angry while reading through the book.

It is never really explained why Megan is less violent than most other Epics which we see while she is with the Reckoners, then when she goes to work for Regalia and also when she rather briefly talks about when she first became an Epic. Plus Conflux was selfish not particularly evil.

On the book itself I just felt like I wanted to try my hand at editing because parts of this book felt like filler, or my precisely a filler arc for those of you who like me watch anime. There was a lot of repeating the same old thing time after time, like “if only I could control X power, or master that technique”. David’s nightmares, him going back to Megan or speculating endlessly how she could Deus Ex Machina her way to save the whole damn world. It just felt like the characters were placed in stasis with no real room to grow for nearly the entire book which is so different to the first two.

CONCLUSION

I don’t want to sound like I am pounding on the book because I am not but there are things I am disappointed by probably down to the fact that I am comparing it to the previous two and other books by Sanderson that I have read.

BOOK REVIEW: Firefight by Brandon Sanderson

Firefight is the second novel of the Reckoners series written by Brandon Sanderson. The series is published by Gollancz and was released on 8 January 2015. The ISBN for the book is 0385743580. I purchased this book.

PLEASE NOTE: There will be spoilers of this and the first book in the series Steelheart. So don’t read further if you haven’t read the first two books of the Reckoners series AND the novella Mitosis.

WHY I BOUGHT THIS BOOK

Steelheart (Reckoners #1) really took the idea of super powers and our traditional ideas of heroes and did something original. Add to that the lore of the world he created meant I was always going to head back once I realised it was a series.

WHAT I THOUGHT

Wow I certainly wasn’t expecting that when I heard about Firefight being released for the first time probably back in December. I was really looking forward to visiting the world of the Reckoners again and to learn more about Epics. I’m not sure how I feel about losing two of the central characters right off the bat. We may not have learned a great deal about them for the first book but then that is the point of a second book right to take the time to look at the other characters within a central cast instead we kind of discard them.

After a brief prologue of sorts in Newcago where the novella Mitosis is mentioned (so maybe check that out first if possible) we move to a whole new city. I find David frustrating some of the time I can understand why he does what he does and other times I just want to throw the book down in frustration.

Too many times he says one thing and do the complete opposite. It becomes frustrating but overall I think he is a likeable character. Perhaps it is a way of showing that he is feeling a little lost after realising his revenge against Steelheart. Also he has had to deal with the fact that he was only able to kill Steelheart through the direct help of two Epics. I just wish he would take the time to assess his thoughts on things like his approach to dealing with Epics and whether he ever intends on actually carrying out an order he gets given.

We also have to talk about Epic weaknesses which were introduced in Steelheart but were really a theme in Firefight. I bring them up because I think if you read Steelheart and Mitosis by the first third of this book you should know what the nature of all Epic weaknesses is at least the theory of it while of course not being able to know what it exactly is without a fair history of that particular Epic.

It can be frustrating when something seems so evident to a reader but that characters don’t get it especially in this case where the characters have access to all the same information that we readers do.

The things I liked about this book was the way that the Reckoners went about trying to learn about how things work in Babylar it is nice to see the methodical approach instead of just running in there with no plan even if it seems that Regalia was always two steps ahead. I have to admit that in the end her plan was complete genius and pretty difficult to stop.

The thing that bugged me other than David’s character ticks was the whole tease of David being made into an Epic. As soon as the scene started I knew this was one of those book teases where a writer proposes something that would fundamentally throw everything you know about a book or main character on its head only to lead up to edge then say no no no only kidding.

EDIT: On a whim I tweeted at Brandon Sanderson with a question. I asked him what David’s Epic name would have been should he have gone through with it and he replied that we have already heard that name in the books so far I have an idea of what it might be though it doesn't give much insight into what his powers might have been which is a shame I find myself wondering if David would qualify as a High Epic or not but we'll never know as I doubt we'll be going in that direction in the last book of the trilogy Calamity.

I finished the book being eager to find out what might be happening next in the world of the Reckoners. The last book in the Trilogy will be released next year and is called Calamity.