Steelheart

The book I chose for second semester SSR is Steelheart by Brandon Anderson. This is a science fiction book that talks about Earth in the mere future. My favorite character easily has to be the main protagonist, David. David is a normal man trying to get revenge for his father that was killed by an Epic. Epic's are people with extraordinary powers that hold themselves above the law. The Epic, Steelheart, killed his father because his father stood up to him. The main reason I like David is because he won't give up. He does ten years of research on every Epic to find their weaknesses. He eventually tries to join a group that could kill him at any moment, but he wants to take the risk. As long as he gets his revenge, he will die happy.

Fault in Our Stars

For second semester SSR I read the book The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I’m the kind of person who will wait to read or watch something when it is popular so that my expectations aren’t to high. This is exactly what I did with this book. The story follows a teen girl, Hazel, who suffers from cancer as she begins to open her self up to knew ideas and experiences. Throughout the book she faces some of the normal challenges and circumstances many teens face. At the same time she experiences horrible sickness, a dying boyfriend, and many other unforeseen difficulties. The book shows how when we fear death we can’t enjoy living. Through the book Hazel must learn this and as time passes her perception of live begins to change. One of the subtle things the book shows is that it’s not how the story ends and what becomes of the characters but about what they experience and learned and how they changed accordingly.

Mountain Man

Gus, or Gustefer, as he is affectionally known by as his friends, was a painter turned Canadian samurai bat wielding warrior in the zombie outbreak.  He is the main character in the novel series Mountain Man by Keith C Blackmore. Gus is a dynamic character who changes throughout the series  of novels. He starts out as someone with very little confidence in himself who thinks he is only good at watching movies and painting. The outbreak makes him adapt and put the skills he learned in movies to the test. He goes through bouts of depression, alcoholism, and eventually insanity.  Various other charters promote change in Gus that ranges from positive influence to making him literally burn down the city.  In the end Gus turns out to be a reliable friend and someone willing to go great lengths to do the right thing, even if it means harming himself.

Mistborn Final Empire

Mistborn Final Empire is the book that I chose to read for my 2nd quarter SSR, it is a the first book in a series and follows a timeline where the main character, Vin, is a citizen under The Lord Ruler, who is known as such because he is said to have a "Sliver of Infinity", which is a piece of God, making him divine. Vin is taken in by a thieve crew, who treat her better than any other crew she has been in. My favorite character of the book, Sazed, is a friend of the thieve crew leader who acts as their servant at times. He is a scholar who knows hundreds of religions that he preaches to the main characters at every possible moment. He is very humble and doesn't like having attention drawn to him, but also has much latent ability not explored in depth until later books. His mysteriousness and politeness is what draws me to him at first, and how they hint at his powers as well. He is a static character in this book but in the later books he changes dramatically and questions who he is. This also attracts me to him because he seems like an unchanging person amid a changing world but he also goes through these changes, just later then everyone else, in the last book in the trilogy. Just showing how complicated a character he is because of his originally static character to the most dynamic person in the series.