Video review — tap to play
Calamity (The Reckoners Book 3)
Read the final book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Reckoners series by worldwide bestselling author Brandon Sanderson! When Calamity lit up the sky, the Epics were born. David’s fate has been tied to their villainy ever since that…
- Release Date
- 2016
- Length
- 434 pages
- Publisher
- Delacorte Press
We may earn a commission if you buy through these links, at no extra cost to you.
Our Review
About the book
The final book in the Reckoners trilogy follows David and his team as they confront a former ally who has turned against them, and as they try to understand Calamity, the strange light that gave ordinary people terrible powers.
Our review
The Reckoners trilogy goes out with a heist, a reveal, and an ending that arrives a little too fast.
Calamity has a terrific premise for a finale: the team must take down someone who knows all their tricks, in a city made of salt that keeps shifting. Sanderson builds the early chapters around planning and infiltration, which plays to his strengths, and David’s goofy metaphors remain an endearing signature. The central question of why the Epics turn evil finally gets addressed head-on.
Unfortunately the answer, and the way the story resolves it, feels rushed. Big cosmic ideas are introduced and settled in a handful of chapters, and some secondary characters barely get a goodbye. Fans invested in David and Megan will still find plenty to enjoy, but compared with Steelheart’s tight construction, this conclusion feels like it needed another hundred pages to breathe.
What we loved
- Ildithia, the shifting salt city, is a vivid setting
- David’s earnest, awkward narration
- Finally learning the logic behind the Epics’ corruption
Keep in mind
- The resolution is abrupt and leaves emotional threads loose
- Some of the mythology arrives as exposition rather than discovery
Read it if you like
Readers who finished Steelheart and Firefight and need closure, or who enjoy superhero fiction like Marissa Meyer’s Renegades.
The verdict
An entertaining but hurried finale that answers the trilogy’s big question without fully selling it.
