Firefight

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

Currently consisting of five titles, the Reckoners is a young adult, superhero series set in a post-apocalyptic United States. The main series is a trilogy that includes Steelheart, Firefight, and Calamity; an additional short story, “Mitosis,” is set chronologically between the events of the first two books. More recently, Sanderson published Lux, an audio-exclusive story that takes place during the events of Calamity and follows a ragtag group of Reckoners in Texas. The original Reckoners books begin 13 years after the rise of the sphere known as Calamity—the original Epic who gifts humans with powers and is the cause of the dark corruption that arises from their use. Protagonist David Charleston is a non-Epic human whose father was killed by Steelheart. At the beginning of the main series, David has vowed revenge for this injustice, and his quest brings him in contact with the Reckoners. As the series progresses, David learns that the Epics are not evil; instead, they have unwittingly been corrupted by the powers from Calamity. This realization forces David to consider whether Epics can be redeemed, even as he continues battling the Epics who use their abilities to slaughter and rule.

At the end of Steelheart, David learns that Prof, his friend and mentor, is an Epic who has managed to resist the corruptive effects of his powers. With this knowledge, David sets out to save the Epics from themselves, and this quest fuels the primary conflicts of Firefight as David fights to prove that Megan has not yet been altered by the powers. At the end of Firefight, Prof is lost to corruption, and the events of the third novel, Calamity, continue the struggle, cementing the idea that facing one’s fears is the key to overcoming the powers’ corruptive influence. David also gains latent Epic powers that allow him to face Calamity, who is revealed to believe that humanity is corrupted by its very nature, not by the powers. Using Megan’s ability to hop between dimensions, David proves Calamity wrong, and Calamity gives up his hold on the Epics of David’s dimension. After this, the powers remain while the corruption fades, and this outcome suggests that people can choose to overcome the destructive power of fear to forge their own paths.