The battleground is Idilthia, once the city of Atlanta and turned to salt. David Charleston now knows the secret of Epic’s weakness and aims to bring Prof back from his madness and take the battle to Calamity itself. After Prof used his powers to absorb Obliteration’s bomb in Babilar, he has turned and has become one of the most dangerous High Epics in the country. Calamity, as with the two proceeding books, is a lot of fun and comes to a satisfyingly huge and (ahem) epic conclusion.Ĭalamity picks up not long after Firefight left off.

Of course, Brandon Sanderson being Brandon Sanderson he’s announced a new three book spin-off picking up some of the loose ends. My ridiculous Sanderson binge has come to an end, as had the Reckoners series. If you fancy a sci-fi tinged detective story you could do worse, but there’s better out there too.

Snapshot is a decent enough read, but definitely doesn’t pack the punch of some of his other short fiction. It’s got a couple of twists, but without much of a reason to care about the characters they’re robbed of impact. Still, the actual story wrapping up the interesting ideas isn’t particularly memorable. The differing reactions are very interesting some laugh, some cry, some kill themselves and some kill others. Sanderson doesn’t shy away from this inherent darkness, with the most interesting element of the plot being a badge which, when shown to someone in the Snapshot, makes them aware that they are, essentially, not real. The people within the Snapshot are, disturbingly, implied to be sentient and that every time the Snapshot is shut down they are essentially murdering thousands of conscious minds. What saves the experience is a playfulness with reality and perception, as well as Sanderson’s signature world building. The actual story itself, in terms of character and motivation, is fairly thin.

During a routine investigation, Davis and Chaz stumble upon a crime they weren’t meant to know about and take it upon themselves to investigate. This is set in the Reckoners universe, or multiverse, or whatever’s going on with that setting. Snapshot follows two detectives, Davis and Chaz, as they investigate inside a titular ‘Snapshot’, an entire recreation of a day in a city, used to investigate crimes in real time. Its high concept is a bit over reliant on exposition, compared to the relative elegance with which he creates entire worlds in stories like Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell or Sixth of Dusk, but it’s a fun bit of popcorn reading nonetheless. A new Brandon Sanderson novella is never a bad thing and Snapshot is a lot of fun, if a bit lightweight compared to some of his other efforts.

Snapshot brandon sanderson