Months after Steelheart's demise the city of Newcago is in a state of rebuilding. The Reckoners have come out into the open and joined forces with Steelheart's former guard hoping to keep the city free of epics. However Steelheart's demise has not gone unnoticed and Mitosis, an epic with the ability to make a seemingly endless supply of clones of himself, has arrived and is looking to kill David.
Marketed as a bridge between Steelheart and Firefight this novella simply does not deliver. In essence it boils down to an epic coming to town to kill David and is defeated, something which happens in the first chapter of Firefight as well. It simply offers nothing new and no character development at all. I can't help thinking Sanderson missed a trick by going with David's point of view again instead of Mitosis or a former member of Steelheart's guard which might have been interesting.
Whats more this novella simply highlighted most of the short comings from the first book. David as a character simply does not work. He is supposed to be haunted by his father's death and destruction of the world he knew by epics, instead he is a goofball obsessed with silly puns. This might work if it was a facade which cracked when he was under pressure but no such luck. Sanderson needs to stop trying so hard with humour because when he tries to force the issue it simply doesn't work. He also needs to stopping dumbing down his prose simply because it is a young adult book.
The only thing that worked for me was the way Mitosis is defeated is reasonably clever.
Overall a very disappointing read which I wouldn't even recommend to fans of the first book. 4/10.
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