[Spoilers for prologue only] Guess Steelheart's Weakness Before you've finished the book

[Ryan]

I haven't finished the book yet. So please, NO SPOILERS for anything beyond the prologue.

 

I thought it would be fun to try to guess Steelheart's weakness. In public. That way it's embarrassing when I'm wrong.

 

My guess: David's father was trying to protect Steelheart when he accidentally injured him. I think that's the key: you can only hurt Steelheart when you're trying to protect him.

 

That would be a REALLY hard weakness to exploit...

[Miyabi]

uess: David's father was trying to protect Steelheart when he accidentally injured him. I think that's the key: you can only hurt Steelheart when you're trying to protect him.

This was my thought as well. I'm only like 60 pages in though.

[Andrew C]

(I have finished the book)

 

At the time of reading the prologue and the first few chapters, I believed noone could hurt SH unless they did not want to. 

 

I will not state anything in this thread about the accuracy of that guess.

[Morsk]

I've read it now, but I remember my Prologue-only thinking. I wanted it to be "the power of love" just because people started posting that it couldn't be because of Harry Potter similarities, and I've never read HP or watched more than the first movie, and I'm uncomfortable with the idea that all other stories have to exist in its shadow. (The same thing bothered me about Tolkein comparisons in the 1990s.) So I wanted them all to be wrong.

So "because David's father was trying to protect him" was my theory.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Morsk

[teonvin]

At first I really thought the bullet works because it passed through another person(or maybe even has to be an Epic) before hitting SH.

[name_here]

I guessed that Steelheart was vunerable to people who were not attempting to attack him, although I did think it somewhat unlikely that he never got caught in a stray blast before. But he'd been getting shot at with assault rifles immediately prior to taking a wound, so I rather doubted that anything about the bank negated his invincibility.

[Azul]

I thought his weakness was if someone thought he was a hero.

[Gloom]

I thought his weakness was jam...oh wait, that's Jasnah, nevermind

[dyring]

after the prologue my belief was that Steelheart could only be killed by someone who did not intend to hurt him.

[Silus - Shard of Flame]

I just finished the book, so I won't spoil it.  But I will say that I guessed it less than halfway through.  I doubted the accuracy of my guess several times throughout but turned out to be right.

[Bloodfalcon]

I thought the same as OP eventually, but at first I didn't think intent was concrete enough to be a weakness. Then, after hearing the "attracted to you" weakness and some of the wilder weaknesses were explained, I went back to that theory. Really thought we were going to be right after the whole "believer, non-believer" conversations. 

Those conversations were given much more screen time than I assumed a red herring would get, but... I was wrong. I also considered the fear idea at one point, but figured Steelheart would probably make a better attempt to LOOK scary as well. He is just always described as a pretty normal looking dude outside of being huge. His voice is loud or something I guess, but... weak attempt, Steelheart.

[Nitro]

I also guessed it half-way through the book. The more I read it the more I was re-affirmed of this. There are a few hints in the book, but I won't suggest what they are.

For those who've read the book, it was really after the power-plant. The secret room I felt was a dead give-away. He was creating propaganda to fear him. Why did he do this when people already feared him? Why did he need people to fear him even more? So I knew that was the key.

It was even more apparent when everyone had a well rounded theory surrounding all the other elements. I knew they wouldn't discover the weakness until the final moments of the book. I just didn't know David would do so by making Steelheart kill himself. I thought David would just no longer have any fear.

[ricardochigbata]

I'm halfway through the book. The part where David asks why Steelheart keeps the people alive.

It's my opinion that to kill Steelheart, the person has to be willing to die.

Or something.

[Moash]

I didn't really spend time trying to figure it out, but a friend of mine theorized that it was the death of an epic occurring near Steelheart.

[Grimm]

My guess from the prologue was that someone had to trust SH to kill him; so along the same lines you guys are saying about believing he is the hero. 

[Igolbug]

I thought that his weakness was kindness.

[Left]

I actually was sure that it was the whole thing about not trying to shoot him. And then Brandon went and smashed that with a shard hammer.... kind of depressing because I was so off, but nice because it meant that Brandon wasn't going to be obvious.

[Fedelpen]

I toyed with a few, and you've already named all of them. Believed steelheart to be a hero, was trying to protect steelheart, wasn't intending to hit steelheart (and regretted it). All great ideas. =) And really hard to get around.