cleverpun’s 2019 Reading Journal: May · 9:41pm Jun 11th, 2019
Firefight by Brandon Sanderson
Firefight is the second book in the Reckoner’s trilogy. I read the first back in Februrary. Spoilers for it follow.
After defeating Steelheart in the first book, the Reckoners have continued on with their same old plan: kill Epics. Plenty have come for them after they took down Steelheart, and the last few were carrying prismatic flower petals. Prof, the leader of the Reckoners, intends to go to Babylon Restored—what used to be New York—to confront the Epic sending all these assassins after them.
In Babilar, the Reckoners encounter the Epic that rules the city, Regalia. While her machinations are not clear at the start of the book, it’s obvious that she is up to something.
Firefight is a book that feels very transitional in nature. It’s very slowly paced, and a huge portion of the book is devoted to characters training or hanging around or talking.
This isn’t a bad thing, and indeed is just the sort of thing I like. But it stands in very stark contrast to both the previous book and the next book in the series.
There are some good scenes. As usual, Sanderson is adept at describing action sequences and making an engaging world. The scene where the main character must attend a party was particularly good, both in terms of comedy and character development. A few of the Mauve Shirts introduced have some decent scenes as well, and we get a deeper look into the pasts of the other members of the Reckoners.
Unfortunately, like the first book, the story doesn’t foreshadow its main reveal. Calamity, the large star in the sky that appeared when everyone got their powers, is actually an Epic, and it is what grants powers to other Epics. Further, they also discover an important fact; whenever an Epic confronts their own weakness, they can suppress the innate desire to be a supervillain that all Epics have. The climax of the book in general feels a bit rushed and underwhelming.
I don’t regret reading this one, mostly because of Sanderson’s skill with prose. But once again I felt let down by the broader plot and story details.
Calamity by Brandon Sanderson
After the end of Firefight, the Reckoners are trying to find a way to rebuild. Their plan in the last book was at best a Pyrrhic victory. While Regalia died, and David managed to bring Megan back to their side, Prof succumbed to his Epic tendencies and became a supervillain.
The Reckoners follow this new threat to Ildithia—formerly Atlanta—now a moving city made entirely out of salt. They must find a way to not only confront this new threat, but also a way to use the information they learned in the last book to bring more Epics back to sanity. After all, simply killing them all is impossible, and there must be some way to return them to the side of good.
This book feels more like what the previous one should have been; a return to the plans and action sequences of the first book, but with a new perspective and goal for the main character. Whatever flaws this book has, it does do a good job of finally moving the main character away from being a bland, blank slate protagonist, and of contrasting that with the arc and events of the first book.
Unfortunately, this book also makes the same major misstep that the first two did; it dumps a huge reveal/twist on the reader without nearly enough preparation or foreshadowing, and that reveal is so monumentally ill-prepared that it undermines the rest of the book. And just like the first two books, the reveal is about the nature of Epics; Calamity is not only the one granting Epic powers to everyone, but it is also an extra-dimensional being. Its entire purpose was to come to Earth, grant powers to people, and then leave. But it stayed, and by staying it corrupted the powers it gave away with its hatred of our dimension.
Again, I don’t regret reading this book. Sanderson is a good writer, and the action scenes and descriptions remain fun to read. But I can’t fully recommend this series when it makes so many plotting missteps and has such a hard-to-like character in the protagonist spot.
Next up: The Magician King by Lev Grossman
That’s all fair. I didn’t really like the Reckoners, and I’m a huge Sanderson fan.
I do really like a lot of the powers though. Especially Megan’s.
I didn’t actually find Calamity being an entity particularly surprising, not sure why. Partly because when the ones who know most about it start talking like it’s an angel of judgement I’m willing to take them seriously and it was clear Calamity had SOMETHING to do with the epic powers.
I also really liked how the ‘wings’ were actually the solar panels of the ISS.
5073110 I think the problem is that Sanderson was coasting on the idea of non-traditional supers. Superheros and supervillains are easy to make interesting, mostly via their powers. And there is plenty of cool, interesting powers to be found here, and their implications and effects are explored quite a bit. It's the stuff around all that where the novel lets things down.
Calamity being responsible for the powers is something I'm willing to accept. It's the part where it's an Outside Context Problem with no setup that I take issue with.