Calamity
by Brandon Sanderson
Series: Reckoners #3
Published: February 16th 2016
Genres: Dystopian, Supernatural, Young Adult
Format: Hardcover (417 pages)
Source: Purchased
When Calamity lit up the sky, the Epics were born. David’s fate has been tied to their villainy ever since that historic night. Steelheart killed his father. Firefight stole his heart. And now Regalia has turned his closest ally into a dangerous enemy.
David knew Prof’s secret, and kept it even when the Reckoners’ leader struggled to control the effects of his Epic powers. But facing Obliteration in Babilar was too much. Prof has now embraced his Epic destiny. He’s disappeared into those murky shadows of menace Epics are infamous for the world over, and everyone knows there’s no turning back. . . .
But everyone is wrong. Redemption is possible for Epics—Megan proved it. They’re not lost. Not completely. And David is just about crazy enough to face down the most powerful High Epic of all to get his friend back. Or die trying.
Calamity was my least favorite in the series. At least the characters stopped pointing out the bad metaphors that David kept spewing even though he tragically kept saying them. When the metaphors stand on their own, they were less annoying and sometimes even a little funny.
David spent an annoying amount of time in denial about things, but I did love the sarcasm in Calamity. My favorite is this explanation of how hard it is to be evil and powerful:
Life was so unfair. You couldn’t both destroy everything around you and live like a king.
– Brandon Sanderson, Calamity pg 104
I think the best character by far was Abraham. I aspire to talk just like him. He says at one point “David, in all kindness and peace…(pg 164)” Who talks like that? I want to talk like that. But I would probably just say things like, “In all kindness and peace, stop talking David.”
This series asked such interesting questions. I couldn’t stop thinking about them because they had no easy answers (or so I thought). Steelheart, the first book, asked, “Do only terrible people get powers or do powers make everyone terrible? Would I be a good person if I had unlimited power?” Firefight, the second book, asked, “Is there power or weakness in fear?” And like a good little book, Calamity does answer all these questions. I just found the reason to be kinda lame because it was too easy for such thought provoking questions. View Spoiler » I think overall the message of the book was what being a hero really means. It means facing your fears selflessly for those you love. That’s how you overcome power and the temptation of greed. And it means anyone can be a hero.
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About Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson was born in 1975 in Lincoln, Nebraska. As a child Brandon enjoyed reading, but he lost interest in the types of titles often suggested to him, and by junior high he never cracked a book if he could help it. This changed when an eighth grade teacher gave him Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly.
Brandon was working on his thirteenth novel when Moshe Feder at Tor Books bought the sixth he had written. Tor has published Elantris, the Mistborn trilogy and its followup The Alloy of Law, Warbreaker, and The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, the first two in the planned ten-volume series The Stormlight Archive. He was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series; 2009’s The Gathering Storm and 2010’s Towers of Midnight were followed by the final book in the series, A Memory of Light, in January 2013. Four books in his middle-grade Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series have been released in new editions by Starscape, and his novella Infinity Blade Awakening was an ebook bestseller for Epic Games accompanying their acclaimed Infinity Blade iOS video game series. Two more novellas, Legion and The Emperor’s Soul, were released by Subterranean Press and Tachyon Publications in 2012, and 2013 brought two young adult novels, The Rithmatist from Tor and Steelheart from Delacorte.
The only author to make the short list for the David Gemmell Legend Award six times in four years, Brandon won that award in 2011 for The Way of Kings. The Emperor’s Soul won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novella. He has appeared on the New York Times Best-Seller List multiple times, with five novels hitting the #1 spot.
Currently living in Utah with his wife and children, Brandon teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University.
My name is Jessica. I love to read Young Adult and classic literature. I’ve been a book blogger for six years and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I’m a very curious reader. Writing about all the questions and thoughts I had while reading a book is the best hobby ever.
Is this the last book of the series? If so, that’s too bad that the answers were lame. :/