Summary:Steelheart

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This page contains a chapter by chapter summary of Steelheart. We hope this summary will make it easier to find specific areas of the book, as well as providing a quick plot refresher for anyone who doesn't want to take the time to reread the entire book. Similar summaries will be completed about future books in The Reckoners series.

Prologue

"I have seen Steelheart bleed."

David Charleston (who is eight years old at the time) and his father visit First Union Bank. The bank is an extremely large building fashioned with revolving glass doors and a multitude of cubicles and hallways. During their visit, David's father is speaking with a mortgage man and negotiating payments. In the midst of their conversation, David notices an epic dressed in a black business suit stroll casually through the bank's entrance. Initially, no one pays the man much attention. Then, the newcomer raises a finger, and with a nonchalant tapping motion, causes a nearby woman and her clothes to vaporize instantaneously into dust. Then screams begin to sound and the epic, who eventually introduces himself as "Deathpoint", continues to massacre people at random within the bank chamber. During his slaughter, Deathpoint remarks to the victims how he decided to rob a bank that morning and came to the realization that money is worthless to him, as he can take anything he pleases. And since killing humans is "extremely inconvenient", he decided to strike fear in the people instead, so that no one would dare challenge him from any future requests or favors. While Deathpoint continues to kill the people one-by-one, Steelheart bursts onto the bank's floor and asks Deathpoint, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?". Deathpoint is dumbfounded and fearful at Steelheart's arrival and begins to stammer. Deathpoint then tries to harm Steelheart by pointing a finger at him, but his attempted attack appears to be futile. Steelheart tells Deathpoint that he has claimed dominance over the people of Chicago and that Deathpoint may be a subservient epic to him. Then, enforcement and police officers arrive on the scene and begin shooting at the two epics. Deathpoint hides behind Steelheart in the midst of the fire-fight and prepares to try and kill Steelheart again, from behind. Before the officers entered, David's father managed to scramble into a nearby cubicle and obtain a pistol from one of the fallen bank guards. When all of the enforcement had been killed, Deathpoint raised a finger to Steelheart, directly behind him. David's father reacted instinctively, and shot Deathpoint cleanly through the forehead. He dropped and Steelheart turned to see where the shot had come from. In that moment, a huge realization came over David, his father, and Steelheart. The bullet had grazed Steelheart's cheek while passing by and blood was seeping from the small cut. Steelheart stared at his own blood in horror, and then proceeded to break David's father's ribs with an energy blast and shot him in the chest with the same pistol that had killed Deathpoint. Wild with rage, and in an effort to make sure no one would be able to speak of seeing the blood, Steelheart transfused every inanimate object in the entire building into steel. David, after seeing the transfusion, hid within the steel vault of the bank. The vault provided ample protection during the collapse, and a rescue worker was able to get him out later that day. So as to keep himself safe from Steelheart's knowledge, David fakes his own death while being removed from the remains. David leaves the scene when the rescue worker goes to search for more bodies, just in time, as Steelheart returns with Faultline to bring the building crashing down and bury it in a massive pile of dust and rubble. David then runs away from the site and vows to gain vengeance in the name of his father and to do all in his power to see Steelheart bleed again. Later that day, Steelheart performs the Great Transfersion, transforming most of Chicago, and part of Lake Michigan into steel. Steelheart later builds his palace on the lake.

Points of View

David Charleston

Other Characters

David's Father, Steelheart, Deathpoint, Faultline

Part One

Chapter 1

10 years later, David hurries through the understreets of Newcago, which is in perpetual darkness thanks to Nightwielder. He climbs up some stairs to the overstreets, coming out near the Reeve Playhouse. Quickly ducking into an alleyway, he starts to watch the Playhouse. He's relieved when people start pouring out, indicating he was on time, with a play having just finished. Fortuity, a High Epic with precognition powers, walks out of the building, dressed in a red suit with a cape, and with woman on each arm. David waits impatiently, based on intelligence from an informant named Bilko, expecting the Reckoners, a resistance group dedicated to killing Epics, to attempt to kill Fortuity. David's musings are interrupted when a woman in a red dress approaches Fortuity, distracting him from his present company and seemingly encouraging him to join her at a nearby dance club. The woman leads him towards a dark, empty alley which would serve as a shortcut to the dance clubs, when Curveball, an epic whose guns never run out of ammo, interupts them. As he keeps on gesturing back to the Playhouse, David guesses that Curveball is summoning Fortuity, and that if Fortuity went with Curveball, it would ruin the Reckoners plans. Wanting to not miss the opportunity of meeting the Reckoners, decides to help out.

Chapter 2

David runs up to the two epics and the woman and pretends to have been sent by Spritzer, the man who runs the playhouse. He tells Curveball that Spritzer said to call him back, to not bother Fortuity. They believe David and so David starts walking to the Playhouse with Curveball. Curveball asks David which team he's in, and David gives him a name of a known team leader, Eddie Macano, unaware that Curveball had witnessed his death the week before.

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four