[Spoilers] What did you think?

[Galavantes]

I think Brandon can pull it of logically. Brandon has explained earlier how he divide his worlds into the cognitive, the physical and the spiritual (?, not sure about the last one) The cognitive being buildt from the idea that every object has some sort of awareness. Therefore intent from humans can influence the physical world.

 

This book is not placed in the Cosmere, therefore the 3 realms construct doesn't apply here. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a logical explanation. it's just not going to have anything to do with Shadesmar, etc.

[Argent he/him]

True, but a world doesn't have to belong to the Cosmere to obey those - or similar - rules. I've always thought it likely that Brandon uses the three realms because that's how he himself thinks about his magic. More specifically, when he designs magic, he designs it in a way that accounts for intent, as if it were a real physical thing. We pretty much know that's the case for the Cosmere worlds, so it's not very difficult to imagine his non-Cosmere ones* could follow similar logic.

 

* Which I've started to think of as "alternate realities" - Alcatraz, Rithmatist, and Steelheart all take place in an alternative version of Earth.

[kateydidnt]

Any guesses or hints on the Prof's weakness? 

 

I didn't see it coming with Megan being an epic--in the elevator scene, I thought DAVID was exhibiting a power and didn't realize it.

 

I suspected someone on the team would turn out to be an Epic, not two of them. For some reason I was thinking Cody but I now realize it is because I read a scene wrong and interpreted his actions completely differently than it meant.

[Morsk he/him]

Any guesses or hints on the Prof's weakness?

I think it's that his force-field doesn't protect his face very well. When they first explain the jackets to David, they say getting shot in the face is still bad. That makes sense if it's a jacket, but it's not really a jacket. Plus when Steelheart almost kills him, it's by punching him in the face.

How about Firefight's weakness? She seems really annoyed by the dust in the elevator, enough to cover her face with a scarf, and flip out and almost kill David over making a lot of dust. Prof or somebody later says that the dust is mostly harmless, but Firefight/Megan seems to really not like it.

[Binnut he/him]

I really liked it! Was disappointed that the book was over so fast.

I'm usually really crappy at guessing twists before they are revealed. From reading above it seems that I missed some things but I did guess the following.

Prof. Being an epic guessed after his fight to save David and Megan. He had such control! At that point I thought that he had done research on himself to create the tensors. When conflux told them that gifting epics wasn't possible I realized the truth.

I suspected Megan of being an epic when we were told she could not use tensors or the other things. Then I forgot about it. When she died I felt that she could not, she was not finished... When we were told of the limits on gifting I became sure, she had to come back! I never suspected what she could do or who she really was.

When it comes to steelheart, I really thought that the crossfire would work.

Edit: Stupid auto correct

Edited September 27, 2013 by Binnut

[jbookworm100]

Hmmm. It was a good book to pass the time but the excitement I get when I read a Brandon's cosmere novel just wasn't there. Maybe because the story ran almost parallel to Mistborn? 

• Reckoners vs Kelsier's Specialized Team
• Steelheart vs Lord Ruler
• Skaa mindset vs Newcago mindset

I just feel that there wasn't much mystery here. The cosmere novels always gets me thinking new theories and assumptions on what happened or will happen, this one, didn't really give much in that field. 

 

Still I like the humor on this one. Cody's one of the best minor character Brandon ever created. And of course, there's the BAD METAPHORS! That was epic! XDD 

[dyring]

Liked it. While this is propably an odd comment to make since both are a sort of fantasy, this actually felt less realistic then the cosmere books, propably because the magic felt abit more "handwave" then in say mistborn, less bound by rules. The main rule here seem to be that there must be a weakness.

 

But as said, it was great fun, if not quite as good as say, mistborn, Way of kings or Elantris. Admittedly, part of this may come from a personal skeptisism of "alternate earth" fantasty.

 

I did get sure that Megan was an epic after the elevator incident, thou I expected her to be a "new" epic, not wanting to become like the others, and scared to be detected. I wondered about prof´s tensor dislike but never really thought he was an epic too. I did not think Megan was really dead, but I wasent quite sure....

[blank she/her]

I loved it. As much as I freaking adore the cosmere books there is something special about his non-cosmere stuff. 

 

Also I just thought it was awesome how he took the popular Superhero thing at the moment and flipped expectations. I know it might not have been intentional since he's been cooking up Steelheart since '07 but I got a kick out of it.

 

Throughout the book I'd been getting vibes that "Megan was a Epic, no wait - Prof's the epic, no no, it's definitely Megan - well they both can't be Epics!" ad infinitum. I really liked that they both were as it punched my expectations in the face a bit and they were knocked out cold when it was revealed that Megan was Firefight (a metaphor worthy of David if I've ever seen one).

 

Can't wait for book two, I'm really interested in how being an Epic changes their DNA and this stuff about Mitochondrial mutation after death is interesting. And why do their personalities change when they use their powers and...so many questions. damnation you Sanderson *shakes fist*

[LordCitrus]

Liked it. While this is propably an odd comment to make since both are a sort of fantasy, this actually felt less realistic then the cosmere books, propably because the magic felt abit more "handwave" then in say mistborn, less bound by rules. The main rule here seem to be that there must be a weakness.

No, it's not odd at all, once you think of the scale of what these guys can do (looking at you Conflux: telekinetic city-scale battery).

 

I'm still curious to what Meghan made the guards see though, since they said something along the lines of "oh the noise was just, you know".

[Oudeis he/him]

I would have preferred if it wasn't something in the magic that made epics evil. Personally, I think people are corruptible enough without needing that, and I've always preferred books that make points about human nature to those that don't. Oh well.

 

I think you may have slightly missed some points. Yes, the Epics were evil because of magic. But were many of the humans better? When Prof is free of his Epic evil, he's still a psychopath. David's lived his life feeling nothing but anger and rage. Epic innate evil is one feature of this book, but pure humans aren't put in a rosy light besides that. Even compared to the augmented evil of the Epics, Sanderson showed the humans to be pretty darn dark.

 

• I totally called Prof being an Epic, pretty early on, I forget where specificially but it was something to do with how he got the tensors. I assumed his story about "copying an Epic's powers" meant the tech was based off of him, then once I learned gifters were a thing I realized the tech was a smoke-screen, and that he was a gifter. When he told David to use the tensor even though it was broken I actually chortled. I actually assumed he was Digzone.
• Absolutely pegged Megan as an illusionist. Absolutely kicking myself for not taking the ONE EXTRA STEP of realizing she was THE illusionist, Firefight. When she died I was unsure if she'd perma-death or not until I recalled the list of prime immortalities and how one was self-reincarnation.
• My guess for Steelheart's weakness was crossfire, so imagine my disappointment when David guessed it in the bank and I realized there was no way it'd work. My second guess was that he could only be harmed in the presence of recently-broken steel. My longshot thought was that somehow he'd gotten the cut at the same time as the shot, but that it wasn't actually the bullet (shrapnel or something from the rocket launch), hence a red herring.
• I don't think dust is Megan's weakness. There was plenty of dust in the air in the elevator shaft, and she still used her powers fine. Her anger afterwards was all because she'd used her powers, and that made her more Epic bitchy. Smoke was the weakness of Refractionary, a similarly-powered Epic, and it's been established that Epics with similar powers occasionally exhibit similar weaknesses, but I'm still saying no on dust.

[Arcanist Lupus he/him]

I figured out that Prof was an Epic pretty quickly.

 

I didn't guess Megan's Epicness immediately, but I figured it out as soon as Edmund mentioned that you can't gift to Epics, at which point I knew that Megan was coming back.  Brandon really had me going there for a while.  I was amazed he had the guts to kill the love interest in a YA novel.  I didn't guess that Megan was Firefight.

 

I was firmly convinced that Steelheart's weakness was that he could be hurt by someone who didn't want to hurt/kill him.  I was sure that Megan was going to have to kill him, because she was the only one who didn't want to.

 

I briefly pegged Cody as the spy, when he went to place the blasting cap right before the climax (it felt like a setup where at a critical moment the wrong thing blows up), but Cody shot him and he blocked it, which invalidated my weakness theory.

 

 

Also, if Megan has a weakness, it has to cancel her regeneration (which is pretty dang powerful), not just her illusions.  I don't think dust would do that.

[Oudeis he/him]

There were a lot of inconsistencies. Like why people ostensibly more powerful than Steelheart would serve him, or why people like Faultline, who don't even have Prime Invulnerability, would challenge him. My guess was that Steelheart was just a figurehead. I thought he would prove to be some guy the REAL power put on the throne so that everyone would target him, not the real Epic. Since the second book was named Firefight, I had assumed the eminence gris was going to be Firefight.

 

Also, when Megan died, I hadn't pegged it as an invulnerability power; I thought it was some manner of illusion. There was absolutely no way, however, for her to illusion herself out of the firebomb of her body, and it threw me off.

[Cyrz]

• I totally called Prof being an Epic, pretty early on, I forget where specificially but it was something to do with how he got the tensors. I assumed his story about "copying an Epic's powers" meant the tech was based off of him, then once I learned gifters were a thing I realized the tech was a smoke-screen, and that he was a gifter. When he told David to use the tensor even though it was broken I actually chortled. I actually assumed he was Digzone.

 

I searched out this thread because I wanted to see if anyone shared my The Prof as Digzone theory. You say assumed, as if you not longer think they are the same- Have you dropped that theory? 

One thing that might go against this is that Diggers made square tunnels, while Reckoners made round ones. 

I'm also thinking that his weakness would be related to the Diggers going mad- There was no real solid explanation for that. If it's a result of any human using a gifted power, I would have liked to have heard of the Enforcement teams going made from being gifted from Conflux. On the flip side, we already have a reason for the Prof not to use his powers (Retain his humanity), so that also being his weakness seems to be cheating. Perhaps it would be better if all gifted humans go slightly mad- Maybe that's the "Oh, you know" was in the Elevator, "Oh, you know, this signs of madness slowly destroying our Sanity"

Megan being an epic- I had her tagged as a possible one when the tensors didn't work for her, and I think the Elevator pretty much sealed it. I thought that was really well done- After having thought I had her "hidden reveal" already figured out, I stopped looking for one.

 

The one thing that didn't work for me was Night wielder still able to phase through walls when exposed to UV light. 

 

I thought the Reckoners would have more Epics, honestly- I was looking for one to be the Tensor, one to be the Healer, and one to be the Jacket Forcefield, and the Prof's technology to be more along the likes of making any Epic a Gifter. I had Tia as the Healer. 

 

I was also a Crossfire-style proponent- That he was only invulnerable if you wanted to hurt him. And I had Megan killing him- She pulled the trigger because she was a good soldier, but she honestly didn't want to. Which, perversely, would be exactly why her shot would kill him. 

[Oudeis he/him]

Answering on my phone so not sure how to quote...

Prof could still be Digzone, but I can't think of why, once revealed, someone wouldn't have said that it was the case. It's still possible, and I guess in those few tense moments it might not have come up, but I'm SLIGHTLY less positive than I used to be. I just expected, "Limelight, eh? I guess I like it better than 'Digzone'."

I think whoever Digzone is, gifted the power too strongly and that's how they learned that too-strong powers make humans go crazy. So Conflux was always careful to give out little enough power to keep them (mostly) sane.

Honestly, a full third of the Epic-haters turning out to be Epic was almost too much for me (even with one being a traitor). It was dangerously close to the stereotype of "All gay-bashers are closeted". And of the pure humans, one is in love with a High Epic, and another is a Faithuful, and who can say how deep Tia's relationship is with Prof but they are close enough that she keeps his secret. Honestly Cody was the only one in the whole group that truly wanted every last Epic dead.

[Arcanist Lupus he/him]

In theory, there are other cells of Reckoners.  If that is actually the case, then the number of "closet Epics" would be significantly less than 1/3.  It would be a normal organization founded by a repenting Epic, with an Epic spy thrown in.  It makes sense that the spy would try and get placed in the cell with the founder of the Reckoners, if possible.

[happyman he/him]

I have mixed feeling about the Reckoners being lead by an Epic.

 

On the one hand, it makes sense, it really does.  With that amount of raw power sloshing around in the world, it stands to reason that the most important fights would be between Epics.  I even said as much when commenting on the book before it came out.

 

One the other hand, it does seem a bit like cheating.  David only succeeded because he allied himself with a repentant Epic?  Hm.

 

Maybe it won't be so bad after all, though.  The Epics might be brought down/tamed/fixed/whatever by a combination of efforts, both Epic and non.  That's a result that might be worth getting.

[Oudeis he/him]

In theory, there are other cells of Reckoners.  If that is actually the case, then the number of "closet Epics" would be significantly less than 1/3.  It would be a normal organization founded by a repenting Epic, with an Epic spy thrown in.  It makes sense that the spy would try and get placed in the cell with the founder of the Reckoners, if possible.

 

But we have no way of knowing how many Epics are hidden in the other cells. You're right, this cell might be an outlier. It also might be typical. Maybe every cell has several Epics in them. Theoretically, it's even possible this is the only cell with any humans, period.

 

Obviously that's unlikely, but the fact remains that we aren't sure. I guess you're right, it's possible, even likely, that the ratio among ALL the Reckoners is geared more towards humans, but the only facts we have are two Epics out of six members.

[Sparks]

But we have no way of knowing how many Epics are hidden in the other cells. You're right, this cell might be an outlier. It also might be typical. Maybe every cell has several Epics in them. Theoretically, it's even possible this is the only cell with any humans, period.

 

Obviously that's unlikely, but the fact remains that we aren't sure. I guess you're right, it's possible, even likely, that the ratio among ALL the Reckoners is geared more towards humans, but the only facts we have are two Epics out of six members.

 

For some reason the idea of Reckoner cells being staffed by closet Epics makes me giggle.  It's like Bruce the Shark's Fish Anonymous club in Finding Nemo - "Humans are Friends, Not Fun!" "It's been 15 days since I killed a human..."

 

In regards to Prof being Digzone - the biggest hole I can see with that theory is that Digzone used to (does?) work for Steelheart, and should have been recognized. When Steelheart floated down to Soldier Field he should have been like "Digzone?? W. T. H."

 

Tia has to be girlfriend / close relative of Prof. And she's likely the real reason why Prof's a good guy now. It's interesting that those two came up with the idea already that using Epic powers = evilness but yet they haven't been spreading it around like I'm sure David will be. I wonder what their reasoning was...

[Oudeis he/him]

In regards to Prof being Digzone - the biggest hole I can see with that theory is that Digzone used to (does?) work for Steelheart, and should have been recognized.

 

I hadn't thought of Prof being recognized... but it was shown a few times that he personally hates Steelheart. So, they certainly SEEM to have some history. But you're right, if he were simply Digzone, Steelheart would recognize him. (Maybe Steelheart did, and just assumed it was Digzone with a new name?)

[junior]

Tia has to be girlfriend / close relative of Prof. And she's likely the real reason why Prof's a good guy now. It's interesting that those two came up with the idea already that using Epic powers = evilness but yet they haven't been spreading it around like I'm sure David will be. I wonder what their reasoning was...

 

There's no real point in spreading that information around.  Most of the epics probably don't care.  Prof presumably has a reason for his lifeline.  Conflux probably feels guilty about killing his wife, and the use that he's been put to (i.e. spreading his power among lots of people) helps to keep him sane.  And Megan might have an interest in keeping her humanity depending on how she feels about David.  But how many other epics even care?  One of the things about your own humanity is that while it's gone, you don't miss it.  That goes double if the people calling you insane are all a bunch of weaklings who are obviously jealous of your superior power and might.

[Kurkistan he/him]

I thought the tensors made their user an Epic to some degree, allowing David to access some tangential power-set for illusions in the elevator shaft. Didn't peg Megan 'till the end. My Sanderson-senses are dulling, it would seem.

[Andrew C]

Had no idea about Firefight at all. Then started rereading and looking for the subtle hints.

 

I still have no idea what her character was trying to achieve in the events of the story. Why try to dissuade the Reckoners from killing SH when you had ample opportunities to kill them all one by one in their sleep (suppressing the gunshot noises) and create illusions of them to fool the others?

[Arcanist Lupus he/him]

Had no idea about Firefight at all. Then started rereading and looking for the subtle hints.

 

I still have no idea what her character was trying to achieve in the events of the story. Why try to dissuade the Reckoners from killing SH when you had ample opportunities to kill them all one by one in their sleep (suppressing the gunshot noises) and create illusions of them to fool the others?

 

Prof's cell is implied to be one of many Reckoners cells.  She probably stayed on (at least initially) so that she could learn about the other cells.  Plus, I think she did want to kill Epics, just not the ones in Newcago.

[Gloom he/him]

Prof's cell is implied to be one of many Reckoners cells.  She probably stayed on (at least initially) so that she could learn about the other cells.  Plus, I think she did want to kill Epics, just not the ones in Newcago.

 

I would mostly agree with this, but would amend it slightly to 'just not the ones that were stabilizing society'.

 

FF was from the Portland area, and that area was decimated by epics. She may have felt that those epics that kept society stable, even if it wasn't good, were a necessary evil. The targets the Reckoners looked for prior to David joining them were those that were nasty but had little impact on the stability of society.

[Gamma Fiend he/him]

I definitely enjoyed it. Was a pretty fast read (a couple of sittings) and while it did have that 'Mistborn-esque' feel, it is still it's own great work in itself.
I had a feeling there was a spy in the group, and figured it had to be Megan, and was suspecting her or David having latent Epic powers after the elevator shaft, but definitely didn't see her being Firefight.

My theory while reading of SH's weakness was believing he can be hurt. Not like, just knowing he has a weakness, but just believing he can be hurt.
When David's father hurt him, it was while he was trying to protect him, because he believed Deathpoint would've killed or hurt him. Same could be said that's how SH blew himself up, because he knew he could be hurt. But only he knew that, so that's why nobody else could actually hurt him.

Of course the aftermath, and WoB, has blown that theory apart. But it was a good ending. Cody's dialogue and the David's bad metaphors had me laughing, and I can't wait to read Firefight.