Steelheart – Brandon Sanderson
Mr. Sanderson is in top form in his most recent YA novel, Steelheart. This 400 pager is the first book in the Reckoners trilogy, with Firefight, the second book in the series, is currently nearing completion and will most likely release some time in 2014. For a change, this series’ setting is a little closer to home, in that it takes place on Earth, albeit a slightly different one than we inhabit. A massive, bright red spectral body by the name of Calamity appeared in the skies, granting a selection of the population magical powers–this seems to be a clear connection to the Cosmere–which completely changes the world, and not for the better. Practically overnight, humans who’ve been given powers by Calamity–known as Epics–have destroyed society, rendering the USA into the Fractured States, where nearly all of the population is living at the mercy of one or another super-powered feudal
