I am having a hard time formulating my thoughts on this book. Objectively I think I would have to give it 5 stars. But subjectively I feel it's more of a 4. So ....

On the one hand this is a very well crafted story with all the necessary elements for a great book. The setting is captivating: people in the near future get super-powers and they all turn evil and enslave mankind, they are called Epics. The dramatic tension rises continuously. We have a group of human heroes trying to turn the tide. There is sacrifice and heroism, ingenuity and bravery. There is also some comic relief in the form of Cody, and a mysteriously behaving love-interest in the form of Megan. There's Prof the father figure and some mysterious artifacts her created to help the heroes. Our hero David is a nerd whose only interests are the Epics and their abilities and weaknesses and weapons.

But why is this story only good and not great? I am not quite sure. It seems to be missing a certain something. Maybe it's that the author is trying too hard to craft the perfect story (strong start, rising action, great reveals leading up to and during the finale). Don't get me wrong I love Sanderson's other books (Mistborn, Way of Kings). This one feels like he took all the examples he's been giving in Writing Excuses and tried to cram them into the book. Worst of these though incredibly funny is the protagonist's penchant for terrible metaphors. They are great but they are just a tad too much. Because people don't think about metaphors they use, except if they are writers.

I enjoyed the ending. There are a number of surprising twists and turns. Some of which I expected, some of which really surprised me. But all of them were properly prepared with hints in earlier chapters. Although I feel there could have been more concrete hints ...

I think my trouble with this book is that I didn't really warm to David, the protagonist. And for some reason I found myself skipping across pages, maybe the plot was just a tad to tense.

It's a solid 4 stars, if you love dystopian super-hero young-adult go read it :)