Steelheart

How it reads

Steelheart is science fiction (superhero dystopian science fiction, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in a big city setting, in the future, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are justice, power and politics and redemption. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It opens a series. It ends on a cliffhanger, so have the next book ready. At 400 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.