A week ago, I was stood in Waterstones torn between buying the two Stormlight Archive books, or whether to buy this. In the end, I settled on buying this and the first of the Stormlight books, mainly because the Stormlights are so big I didn’t think I could carry two of them around for the rest of my shopping trip!!

And it turns out that this was a very good choice! It was much shorter than other Brandon Sanderson books I’ve read at less than 400 pages, but oh how I wish there was more!

I was enthralled throughout, Sanderson has a knack for writing books which don’t ever leave you with a ‘convenient’ place to stop, which meant that on more than one occasion, I had to force myself to stop reading when my lunch break was over!

The story was really fast paced, so there were quite a few times when I had to slow myself down to stop myself from skim-reading to get to the next bit. I think books like Sanderson’s should be appreciated, not just blitzed through and I had to keep reminding myself of that.

With such a fast paced book, it would be easy to assume that you can guess what’s going to happen next, but there were so many surprises, particularly towards the end where I just had to give up guessing because I don’t think I was right a single time!!

The book is set in near-future Chicago, after Calamity arrived and the city was plunged into darkness. Usually, when reading books like this, you’re seeing the story from the perspective of the people with ‘special powers’ (like Mistborn), so it was strange in this case that you’re actually seeing the book from the point of view of someone trying to bring about their downfall.

Ever since David’s dad was killed by an epic called Steelheart, David has been hell-bent on getting revenge. While building up a huge portfolio of knowledge regarding the epics and their weaknesses, David decides that the best way to get payback is to join a group called the Reckoners, a group of people who are taking out the epics one-by-one to try and free the people from their oppressive rule.

But when David finally gets his chance to join them, it seems like some within the team are not happy he is there, especially when he turns their agenda to align with his own personal vendetta.

I’m not going to get much further into the plot, because I don’t want to accidentally give away any spoilers, and since I’m so excited by this book, I think it’s quite likely that will happen if I carry on any further!

Apparently, book 2 in this series comes out in November, which is great news! There is a book 1.5, but only in hardback, not paperback, and it costs £9 for what is essentially half a book (only 196 pages). I think I’ll buy the kindle version at 99p instead to keep me going!

It’s going to be Sanderson-tastic for the next while, with the new Mistborn coming out in less than 2 weeks, and Stormlight sitting on my shelves to read too, I can’t wait!!