Now his Reckoners series is for young adults and I am listening to the audio book of the first (and so far the only one released) novel Steelheart. I must say I am enjoying this. My 18 year old self would have loved it even more, but the first novel Steelheart is so far enjoyable even for adults. Apparently the plot has been auctioned by a studio and if it is made, I would strongly consider seeing it.
So shameless plugging away. The Reckoners is set on Earth after our world gets a new satellite which is called Calamity. So far its not 100% clear whether its an artificial satellite (that world's conspiracy theorists certainly seem to think either the US or EU put it up there) or a natural one, ie a comet or something that got caught in Earth's gravity.
One year later, people started developing super powers. These so called Epics aren't good. Its not a case of superheroes and supervillains, for the most part its only villains. From the wikia its stated that prolong use of the power corrupts them. Here we see Brandon Sanderson doing what he does with magic systems into superpowers. Epics can have their powers classified in various methods. Their powers have almost a mystic quality to them in the sense that each has a weakness, which either robs them of their abilities for short periods or just weakens them. Now reading on, some of the weaknesses make no sense from a scientific perspective. For example
Spoiler
Thus people on his wiki speculate that the powers of Epics are more magical rather than scientific in nature.
The main villain is Steelheart who has Superman esque powers and has made himself the ruler of Chicago, now renamed Newcago. The US government has pretty much loss control, and higher end epics are considered legally like a force of nature. So just as the law cannot ban floods, the law can't touch these Epics. As the years past, the US appears to be divided into little Fiefdoms ruled by Epics. The main protagonist is David, who is 18 years old (how else to appeal to the YA crowd) and is a bit geeky in the sense that he has collected information on the Epics since his dad was murdered by Steelheart.
David's notes has extensive knowledge on the capabilities of known Epics (Newcago has at least thousands of Epics) and speculation on their weaknesses. Now enter the aforementioned Reckoners. These are the only people trying to fight back against the Epics by luring them into a trap. Unfortunately they lack the means to take out the really high Epics like Steelheart. Ultimately this means that the resistance will be symbolic only. Enter David. As well as having notes on Steelheart, David has some knowledge buried in his head, knowledge which Steelheart tried his best to eradicate. David has seen Steelheart bleed. Its just not obvious why he has bled. If he can only convince the Reckoners to take on Steelheart.
