Khurram's Reviews > Firefight

Excellent book. I have to say I enjoyed this one even more than Steelheart because of the great character development. Despite being 420 pages, the book is very fast-paced, and the pages just seem to fly by. The other thing is that all the chapters are quite short. The longest is probably 12 pages, more than to be about 5- 8 pages. So as soon as I finished one, I thought another one won't take long, so another one became another three or so. I think it is a credit to Brendon that he knows exactly the right point to finish a chapter to make a reader like me want to read the next one almost immediately.

The book is written from the first person perspective of David. After doing the seemingly impossible of killing Steelheart, David (much to his chagrin) is nicknamed Steelslayer and regarded with an aura of awe and wonder. It was almost the same way Steelheart was. This book follows mitosis, which shows the hard work of rebuilding and maintaining a city. The book starts with the Reckoners battling and trapping/killing another Epic. This is the third powerful epic to attack since the fall of Steelheart. Professor notices a pattern, including a powerful epic from his past. Now David must join a new team, in a completely unfamiliar (to the point of alien) environment in both its terrain and attitude of its people. To top it all off, his beliefs might not be concrete as they once were.

I do like the character development David being seen as a mystical and political favourite, but having no people skills. Give him a gun and a mission, and he is a legendary force to be reckoned with, but force him to talk out loud or take part in social situations, and we might have a problem. His conversations with Megon crack me up (especially the first one in this book), mainly because I thought there was actually someone almost as bad with girls as I am. However, with his analytical mind, tactical and weapons expertise, and no nonsense attitude, he is deadly as they come. Still, he definitely needs some hand to hand combat training.

Great book. The only fault I could find with it was that the last quarter of the book did feel it was rushed. I would have happily read another 200 pages of this story. I can grudgingly understand why the last couple of traps/battles were not described in full as it is from David's perspective, and he was not physically there at the time. I think these might be a couple of more e-novels like Mitosis. If this is the case, I hope they are a bit longer, and they could very easily be another characters perspective. However, I liked this book and can wait for the next part (always the mark of a good book). In fact, I already pre-ordered Calamity.