Review: Brandon Sanderson’s The Reckoners trilogy
When one of the short-list Best Fantasy Authors Out There writes a superhero series, pay attention. But since that author is Brandon Sanderson, the concept for the Reckoners books is “a world where there are no superheroes, only supervillains.”
Which sounds like a comic-book inspired dystopia… which it’s not.
It’s an investigation, and a slugfest, and all-around fun, among other things.
Sanderson is best-known for matching other big-name fantasy writers sprawl for sprawl, with books like his Mistborn trilogy-plus, or his taking over the Wheel of Time series, and his current Stormlight Archive (planned as ten books? so what do I do with my other two wishes?). But the Reckoners trilogy is one of his changes of pace, short novels with a mostly lighter tone.
These aren’t epics, they’re about Epics, and how (and why) to take those villains down.
Now that created-as-novels superheroes are a genre, there’s no lack of authors grappling with the questions of just which parts of the comic book experience to recreate. It’s harder than it looks, and not only because it’s replacing panels with prose and monthly installments with unified arcs for a full-size book and series. But so much of comics’ strength and weakness is the gonzo energy of different writers throwing out a new idea each and every month and trying to wrestle that into a coherent story. And I’m sure editors as much as fans ponder the next “reboot” and look longingly over at the novelists who make a story with a plan (or make us believe they had). Except that that anything-goes richness is as much a part of the comics experience as the word balloons.
So, just which parts of the comics does Sanderson use, and what does he rebuild his own way?
Superpowered action, check. The Reckoners are a team of resistance fighters trying to take back the world from its powered-up rulers.
More than that. Sanderson’s already known as the master of smart magical battles (eg his Three Laws of Magic), so he can dive deep into just how to outmaneuver a villain who can see danger coming or mixes teleporting with direct attacks. The hero David (of course the would-be giantslayer is David) takes a geeky pleasure in reciting Epics’ abilities as well as fighting them—and because it’s supervillains, he’s perfectly willing to point out the moment when a power stops making sense and you Just Have To Deal With It. For a comics fan, that’s a doubly appealing viewpoint to be in.
And like most of Sanderson’s tales, the action is there to alternate with and build up to larger mysteries of what’s going on. After all, when the first book (Steelheart) is about how to defeat Evil Superman, the real challenge has to be discovering just what his secret Kryptonite is. And since—avoiding multiple spoilers—the forces and alliances have a way of evolving over the series, each discovery naturally leads to a new one.
I’d call the tone as much caper as cape. The banter between David and his team gets as much space as the action, with the same feel you’d find in Mistborn of misfit heroes working their way through a challenge that keeps getting deeper. And since these books are in fact short novels with a definite conclusion at Book Three, the pace stays quick and relatively light.
[bctt tweet=”Supervillains and no #superheroes – @BrandSanderson’s Reckoners books are more caper than cape. #review http://bit.ly/CaperOrCape”]
If the series has a weakness, it is “weaknesses,” and how it has only so much space to justify all the added wrinkles about the nature of its Epics. Call that a choice; it prioritizes the fun and action over taking every step to show why it comes down to weird rocks or barely-glimpsed cosmic forces. (We Sanderson fans know he’s already used both, and some of the combinations have been, well…) Besides, a slightly-rushed explanation is one of the founding points of comics anyway.
Steelheart, Firefight, and Calamity are solid es-cape-ades (yes, I had to) that find their own way to push most of the buttons a comics reader wants, and all the ones a book can. Be sure you start with the first, at “I’ve seen Steelheart bleed.”
