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So I... just finished reading the destruction of the power plant and here are my thoughts. -Ton of parallels between this crew and Kelsier's in the first Mistborn novel. Kelsier similar to Prof, Hammond similar to Abraham, Breeze similar to Cody but they all have enough unique elements to not feel like retreading old ground. - Super secret room charged with explosives is filled with negative propoganda? The only reason I can see for this is a reveal that Steelheart is actually attempting to be the lesser of two evils and while taking the wrong approach has the people's best interests at heart. The fact that Steelheart has still killed thousands of innocents makes this seem unlikely so I hope its just a piece of the puzzle that has yet to be revealed. -The frentic pace is great. Even the little breaks between action all have a propulsion to them giving the story this incredible momentum that is kind of a pain as I should be writing a paper right now instead of binging on this book. Oh well, wouldn't be the first time Brandon Sanderson contributed to a sleepless night. So yeah its pretty good. Despite having been writing for so long Sanderson's talent as an author really does seem to grow with each book. Stormlight is going to destroy WoT from a qualitative perspective.
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Sep 30, 2013 18:34
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Steel heart is clearly The Rock, because they don't need any cgi or camera tricks to make him bigger than he already is.
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Sep 30, 2013 19:33
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The Puppy Bowl posted:So I... Uh, not to be pedantic or anything but have you finished the book? Mouse over the following only if you have: Steelhearts weakness is being attacked by a person who does not fear him. The anti-propaganda was to make people fear him. As far as overarching themes through multiple books, anyone taking bets on Calamity being similar to Preservation/Ruin/Honor/Odium/Cultivation/Devotion/Dominion/Endowment? Hard to reconcile the earth setting with the cosmere stuff I suppose, unless you want to get into alternate realities.
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Sep 30, 2013 20:38
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Xachariah posted:Uh, not to be pedantic or anything but have you finished the book? Mouse over the following only if you have: Steelhearts weakness is being attacked by a person who does not fear him. The anti-propaganda was to make people fear him. Seeing as he said in the first line that he had just finished a certain part of the book, I would assume he hasn't finished it.
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Sep 30, 2013 20:45
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Xachariah posted:Uh, not to be pedantic or anything but have you finished the book? Mouse over the following only if you have: Steelhearts weakness is being attacked by a person who does not fear him. The anti-propaganda was to make people fear him. It wouldn't surprise me if this was Cosmere, but I'd find it a little odd, given that it's an explicitly alternate-Earth setting. I kind of hope not. But yeah, Calamity being constantly capitalised, and indeed almost personified, does make me wonder. That being said, I wonder if Calamity is actually an uber-Epic...
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Sep 30, 2013 21:11
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thespaceinvader posted:It wouldn't surprise me if this was Cosmere, but I'd find it a little odd, given that it's an explicitly alternate-Earth setting. I kind of hope not. Nah, steelheart isn't cosmere. I'm kinda assuming Calamity is a person, given that book three is 'calamity' and book two is 'firefight'... having it not be a person would break the trend.
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Sep 30, 2013 21:23
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Where are you getting the title of book 3 from, just btw?
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Sep 30, 2013 21:41
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Xachariah posted:Uh, not to be pedantic or anything but have you finished the book? Mouse over the following only if you have: Steelhearts weakness is being attacked by a person who does not fear him. The anti-propaganda was to make people fear him. Yeah I haven't finished yet but I am nearing the end. Just starting Chapter 36, Steelheart has arrived at Soldier Field. So, Megan died. How in the hell is this more Young Adult than anything else he has written? With all the perfectly perserved baby bones and everything it seems just as mature as anything else he has written. I'm really excited to find out that Steelheart's weakness and my theory of a believer being the one to pull the trigger seems doubtful since Sanderson explicitly stated it via the Professor. What was the deal with that motorcycle David sees which vanishes during the chase and now there is someone in the stands that only he notices? I'll have finished the book the next time I stop by to post any final thoughts and actually read all this redacted text.
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Sep 30, 2013 21:42
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Basically, it's YA because his publisher says it is. Nowadays as long as it's in the PG-13 range the line may as well be non-existent.
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Sep 30, 2013 21:52
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Maybe it's because I just finished Alphas a few weeks back, but the entire time, I couldn't see Prof as anything but Dr. Rosen from it. Which made for an oddly jarring scene when he saved David's bacon with the 'tensors'
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Sep 30, 2013 22:09
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Haha, that's exactly who came to mind for me too.Xachariah posted:In my mind as I was reading it I had Jesse Eisenberg as David, Woody Harrelson as Cody, Prof as David Strathairn, Angela Jolie as Megan, Omar Sy as Abraham, Henry Cavill as Steelheart, Hiroyuki Sanada as Nightwielder and uhm, couldn't place an actress for Tia. Can basically be summed up as Zombieland, Alphas, Wanted, Intouchables, Superman: Man of Steel and Rush Hour 3. Also subx posted:Seeing as he said in the first line that he had just finished a certain part of the book, I would assume he hasn't finished it. poo poo, I should read all the text of posts I'm replying to in future. Xachariah fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 22:15
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I never catch plot twists in advance, but I caught Megan as an Epic really quickly, though not that she was a "bad guy," and as soon as it was mentioned that the Prof didn't use his tensors, I figured out that he was an Epic, too (and confirmed once the idea of gifting was introduced). I like Steelheart, and I'll look forward to the next one, but it is not his best work. It's just so . . . Mormon, if that makes any sense. The terrible, terrible "swear words" drove me absolutely nuts, and Sanderson's really bad attempts at being funny just don't work at all except in small doses. It felt like Alcatraz. I loved that series and hope he finishes it sometime in the next decade (he apparently has the rights back to it), but that kind of nonsense humor really goes best in a nonsense world. Could be the YA'ness showing through, though. And it hurts that I finished reading the Worm webserial a bit ago. It's not polished very well (it is a rough draft, basically), but I absolutely love Worm, and it was just a much better read than Steelheart, even though Sanderson is one of my favorite authors. Still, Sanderson's misses are still so much better than most people's best work.
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Sep 30, 2013 22:59
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Steelheart was a nice little action book. I should have figured with Sanderson's talent for plotting that all of the questions I came up with would be answered by books end. Not a ton of substance but really active with enough character development to make you care what happens. All in all pretty good. Still, very similar to Mistborn: The Final Empire in its construction. The only thing that really bugs me is the idea that using an epic's powers makes you become a bad guy. I use the expression bad guy here because that seems to be how the mentality is explained. You just become evil by the most conventional definition. Defining evil in and of itself is a bit wonky but to then transpose those attributed into fully formed characters requires a degree of subtly that I did not see demonstrated in this book. Hopefully this concept is expanded upon in future novels to somehow explain this blunt hammer view of human psychology. Definitely worth the retail price and the fact that the next one is only a year away is pretty neat.
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Sep 30, 2013 23:18
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Yeah, I won't try to pretend Steelheart is as good at superfic, particularly post-apocalyptic superfic, as Worm - but then, Wildbow has 1.5 million words of superfic under his belt, where Sanderson has 100,000. 100k words into Worm, it wasn't this good. Plus, yeah, the swears got more annoying. I mentally found myself replacing basically every incidence of 'sparks/sparking' with 'gently caress/loving', and the book just worked so much better. Hardbitten military types and horribly oppressed teen factory workers just shouldn't sound that... cutesy.
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Sep 30, 2013 23:19
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Agree with you on the swearing. Made up curse words will only ever serve to pull a reader out of the reading. It's dumb and sci-fi writers need to stop using this played out tactic. Brandon, stop trying to make Slontze happen.
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Sep 30, 2013 23:24
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The Puppy Bowl posted:The only thing that really bugs me is the idea that using an epic's powers makes you become a bad guy. I use the expression bad guy here because that seems to be how the mentality is explained. You just become evil by the most conventional definition. Defining evil in and of itself is a bit wonky but to then transpose those attributed into fully formed characters requires a degree of subtly that I did not see demonstrated in this book. Hopefully this concept is expanded upon in future novels to somehow explain this blunt hammer view of human psychology. From the looks of it, using Epic powers make you more callous and unrestrained. Less outright evil and more a loss of empathy. No inner voice telling you that indulging your desires because you can is bad.
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Sep 30, 2013 23:31
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Yeah but the lose of empathy doesn't inhibit the logical mind that would state this is a temporary sense of disregard that will pass and I will once again be returned to a calm state. They aren't just completely stripped of inhibitions either because then all epics would behave more base and idiotic. Steelheart was smug, arrogant, and cruel in his final scenes but never unrestrained or raving mad. It just seemed more to me like they were taken over by different people then had personality traits removed or amplified
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Sep 30, 2013 23:52
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I'm basing it off Sanderson's inspiration for Steelheart. An episode of road rage. What if you had superpowers and were freed from your moral compass and sense of empathy. Epics are left only with the logical reasons not to commit an atrocity, and the problem with that is that people are illogical, while Epic powers also remove much of the normal fear of punitive considerations, because only Epics can successfully offer a threat of violence.
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Oct 1, 2013 00:32
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It seems like Epics who use their powers become above normal humans - because they are in terms of power - and don't see killing as a big deal. It's like normal people see bugs, if one gets in your way you don't care about squishing it, you just kill it or flick it out of the way.
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Oct 1, 2013 04:12
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My argument against that is a person's moral compass isn't an emotional reaction that can be removed from the equation. It's integral to the framework of a human beings psyche. I can't see how it can be influenced without being force-ably changed permanently like some form of mind control, which this obviously isn't.
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Oct 1, 2013 04:16
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So I've read Steelheart about 3 times this week. When is the next Sanderson book being released? 
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Oct 1, 2013 04:33
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Tunicate posted:Nah, steelheart isn't cosmere. Brandon has said that any books that take place on Earth are not cosmere. So Steelheart, Rithmatist and the Alcatraz books are all non-cosmere. Odette posted:So I've read Steelheart about 3 times this week. When is the next Sanderson book being released? http://brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson/ According to Brandon's blog post his next release is a short story set in the Steelheart universe, similar to how the Emperor's Soul fit in with the Elantris world. Then Words of Radiance in March.
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Oct 1, 2013 05:18
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Also that cosmere short story in the Dangerous Women anthology.
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Oct 1, 2013 06:36
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I'm wondering how gifting is really supposed to work. For Conflux it seems to require physical contact, but it didn't really seem that explicit with Prof. Also Knighthawk must be gifting or is otherwise just incredibly powerful. I'm guessing the mobiles are basically just bricks that people use as a placebo to generate especially vivid illusions, even to the point of projecting it across the world in parallel and using that as a form of communication.
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Oct 1, 2013 06:57
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I admit I bought Steelheart pretty much solely due to this thread's curse of spoiler bars making me go "...Okay, I'll read it, fine!" and I'm really glad I did. Thank you, people using annoying spoiler bars. ALLOW ME TO JOIN THE CLUB! I loved the book. I just finished reading it a few minutes ago so my impression may be colored by that a bit, but still. The prologue was among the best things Sanderson ever wrote in my opinion and the rest of the book is pretty much "Sanderson unleashed." It's like, take out his world-building and he goes balls-to-the-wall action scene and he does them very, very well. I was a bit lukewarm on the book around the power station part because it felt a bit too "routine" by that point, but the book went into overdrive pretty much straight after that. I went from liking the book to being sold on a however-long-he-wants series based on that ending. I was off on Steelheart's weakness. I totally thought that it was going to turn out to be something like "Your bullet has to kill someone before it can hurt him" and David was going to have to kill the Prof to kill Steelheart. I figured it would tie up the loose end with the "How do we prove we, normal people, killed him?" bit by having David kill "Limelight" and Steelheart at the same time. I liked the way the book turned out more than that though. Usually I feel cheated when characters turn out to be alive, but this time I just felt really intrigued when it happened and can't wait for his next book. Also, just for the record, I could not stop picturing Prof to be the professor from back to the future. This made every scene he was in hilarious in my head. The Puppy Bowl posted:Yeah I haven't finished yet but I am nearing the end. I think it's young adult because the writing feels a bit more direct. It's not like Sanderson goes full Robert Jordan in any of his novels, but with Steelheart I definitely got a sense that he was only throwing the bare minimum of narration necessary to frame the story. Could also be because of the length/real world setting, but I think there was a pretty strong difference from how no more than five lines of dialogue could go in Way of Kings without some sort of physical action being described to break it up a bit. Alternatively, I may be completely off base and be an idiot, but it's the impression I got.
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Oct 1, 2013 07:44
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The Puppy Bowl posted:My argument against that is a person's moral compass isn't an emotional reaction that can be removed from the equation. It's integral to the framework of a human beings psyche. I can't see how it can be influenced without being force-ably changed permanently like some form of mind control, which this obviously isn't. But it IS some kind of mind control, the effect is imposed, and lifts based on a conditional. A very natural sort too. When it's influencing you, you see the influence as being a natural and useful part of you, why should your plans be impeded by the opinions of some irrelevant animals? The influence also makes it more likely for you to use your powers freely and less likely to give your powers to someone, creating a feedback loop. Finally, while initially your newfound ruthlessness is applied to furthering plans and goals you made while not under the influence, before long you'd be making new plans based on your new state of mind. So what we have is that intensity and duration varies based on power usage. Up to a certain point it's still reversible, you could remember your intentions from an hour ago and maybe see the point of not using powers for a while. Going with long term or high magnitude powers and I'm not sure how long a cooloff it'd take to recover. Think of all the dumb things you've done in the past. You've done them because it seemed appropriate at that instant, even though all evidence points to the contrary before and after. It's like drugs or even a party mood removing inhibitions so everyone does something dumb. And they would do it again too, however it turned out last time.
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Oct 1, 2013 09:35
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That was a well thought out, extremely well worded argument that has convinced me and I believe elucidated me as to the author's intent behind this idea. I think I'm on the wrong internet.
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Oct 1, 2013 09:41
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veekie posted:Good thinks. I'd also like to add that it doesn't seem to be widely known that using powers makes you become a colossal dickhead. I'd liken it to emotional allomancy, where if you're not actively watching out for it you generally would have no idea you're being influenced, except in this case the parties being affected don't even know that it's a thing that can happen, making them much more vulnerable to it.
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Oct 1, 2013 14:07
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I thought it was a good nod too that Conflux gifted his powers out all the time, so he was a pretty nice guy. I did figure out Steelheart's weakness pretty early on, but didn't catch Megan or Prof being an epic. I think part of what makes it YA is that it is told from a single PoV. There's no hopping around from person to person. Everything is told from David's perspective
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Oct 1, 2013 16:55
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Has Sanderson said yet if steelheart exists in the same cosmere as the rest of his books? I know two of the worlds were as of yet unidentified.
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Oct 2, 2013 04:15
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Benson Cunningham posted:Has Sanderson said yet if steelheart exists in the same cosmere as the rest of his books? I know two of the worlds were as of yet unidentified. It does not; none of his stories set on any version of earth are cosmere.
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Oct 2, 2013 04:17
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His main cosmere. His Earth books will all come together as part of another cosmere. Stephen Leeds from Legion is the main character while this is just fleshing out backstories to characters his mental condition pulls out.
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Oct 2, 2013 05:46
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Democratic Pirate posted:His main cosmere. His Earth books will all come together as part of another cosmere. Stephen Leeds from Legion is the main character while this is just fleshing out backstories to characters his mental condition pulls out. I... wow. I honestly can't tell if you're joking, because Brandon is quite possibly just that insane.
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Oct 2, 2013 06:29
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Democratic Pirate posted:His main cosmere. His Earth books will all come together as part of another cosmere. Stephen Leeds from Legion is the main character while this is just fleshing out backstories to characters his mental condition pulls out. Dammit man you know Sanderson is always on the internet! Do not contribute to his madness.
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Oct 2, 2013 06:59
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It's too bad Steelheart isn't in the cosmere because I was thinking Calamity could have been Odium doing a drive by of Earth.
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Oct 2, 2013 18:04
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keiran_helcyan posted:It's too bad Steelheart isn't in the cosmere because I was thinking Calamity could have been Odium doing a drive by of Earth. An Odium fart that left a little something extra.
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Oct 2, 2013 23:14
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Yeah plus I am just sick into the cosmere concept and him being able to pull it off even with a publishing house and editor.
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Oct 3, 2013 00:00
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That said, Epic powers do sound just like the kind of power system Odium might generate.
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Oct 3, 2013 00:18
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Read the new book. I think it would have been much cooler if Megan was schizophrenic and only one of her personalities knew it had epic powers. It was pretty good. Definitely aimed at young adults, not overly complex. Interesting setting, hope he leaves the city for the next book.
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Oct 3, 2013 05:47
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So, I just finished Steelheart myself, and what a great ride it was! I personally was very wrong, thinking that his weakness had something to do with his powers working on dead tissue, but not live tissue. I remember the book specifically saying that the barrel of the gun shot by David's father was sticking into the ashes of the dead security guard. Or, I thought the weakness could have been him being shot through another person or Epic. Maybe I'm just really morbid!
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Oct 3, 2013 09:37
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