So, just to clarify: I found this series on a fellow book blogger's list of middle grade books, supposedly with 13-14 year old protagonists. Well, the protag is much older -- 18, going on 19ish. Out of school and on with his life, what there is of it.
This is an new adult series, and while I enjoyed it, and am still waiting for the third book, Calamity, and the first one is probably fine for your upper-level readers in 8th grade, by the second book the audience for this is definitely out of the middle grade range and into high school students, just based on the level of violence.
In any case, I learned not to rely on other book bloggers' lists! Some bloggers list books by criteria, but don't actually read them and don't really know what they're recommending. Not here.
Review: When Steelheart arrives on the scene in Chicago, in the middle of a bank robbery by fellow-Epic Deathpoint, then-10-year-old child David watches his father accidentally shoot Steelheart (he's aiming at Deathpoint, who's sneaking up to kill Steelheart) and knick Steelheart on the cheek.
Steelheart bleeds, the only time anyone's ever put a scratch on the impenetrable Epic. He promptly kills David's father, Deathpoint, sinks the bank and transforms Chicago into so much steel -- NewCago.
David escapes in the bank's vault, climbs out before the bank is sunk, and a first responder saves him by telling him to act dead. Steelheart then systematically kills everyone who saw or had a part in what happened, including the first responder who saved David.
Only David survives.
He swears he'll get revenge on Steelheart, find his weakness, figure out how his father managed to wound him, make him bleed, and kill him.
Fast forward almost a decade, and David's 19 now, gathering as much information as he can on every Epic to emerge. He hopes to find their weaknesses and use them once he joins up with the only resistance left, the Reckoners.
He still hasn't figured out Steelheart's weakness, but he's determined -- if he can earn a place in an elite cell of agents dedicated to killing Epics. Except, nothing is ever as it seems, is it? And David has no real idea who he's walking and killing with, until the very end.
Will it be enough to defeat the invincible Steelheart?
I really enjoyed this book, how it showed the reader everything you need to know to figure out how to defeat Steelheart, but left me guessing until the very end. Exceptionally well-plotted, for that reason alone.
I read this, the second book in the Reckoners series, and I'm re-evaluating the upper YA audience I thought perhaps the first one was written for. While the first one had a clear-cut villain, Steelheart, this one is much more amorphous, and it really is about killing people, hard-core strategizing about killing.
It's definitely new adult or adult, and I wouldn't really recommend this series for a middle grade library or classroom shelf, although it's probably fine for juniors and seniors in high school. Unfortunately, I'm out of "tabs" on this blog in Strikingly, so ... I'll make sure on Goodreads to put them both on the Adult bookshelf.
David is faced with a dilemma, when the Professor -- an Epic who thus far has led the Reckoners cell flawlessly by gifting his powers to their tech and his fighters -- takes the cell to Babylon Restored, also known as Manhattan, to kill the High Epic running that city, Regalia. The two Epics know each other, from before their transformations, and it's a game of cat-and-mouse. David suspects Regalia has ulterior motives, to totally turn Prof into a High Epic, but doesn't discover them until the very sad, inevitable last quarter of the book.
And to make matters worse, along the way, Megan / Firefight proves David right and Prof wrong, by successfully controlling her Epic powers and not turning into a megalomaniacal killer, but I won't say how she manages it, and in the end... well, let's just say I've already delved about 200 pages into the next book, Calamity, and if I write about it here, it'll spoil that one. So....
There's also the matter of the Epic, Dawnslight, which to me anyway, was super-revealing and kind of disturbing in what it reveals about Epics and the Reckoners' strategy of killing them.
As an adult, I'm looking forward to the conclusion of the story in Calamity, when I get it back from the library! I'm 7th or 8th in line. LOL!
