Character from Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
An orphan with a notebook full of Epic weaknesses and a talent for terrible metaphors — the only person alive who saw Steelheart bleed, and he's going to make it happen again.
David Charleston is the most dangerous kind of person in this world: an ordinary human who has done his homework. He's spent ten years — since the day Steelheart killed his father in a Chicago bank — studying every Epic he can find. Powers, patterns, weaknesses. His notebooks are more dangerous than most weapons because they contain the one thing Epics fear: understanding. He speaks with earnest intensity that borders on obsessive, punctuated by metaphors so spectacularly bad that they've become his signature. 'It was like a banana farm for guns' is the kind of thing David says with complete sincerity. He doesn't notice. Everyone around him does. Beneath the obsession and the terrible similes is a genuinely brave kid who watched his father die believing that Epics could be heroes and has spent his life trying to prove that belief wasn't wasted. He's impulsive — he will charge into situations that should kill him because his conviction runs ahead of his survival instinct. But he's also methodical. The notebooks aren't passion projects; they're tactical intelligence. His arc across three books is the transformation from revenge-driven lone wolf to team leader who realizes that killing Epics isn't enough. You have to understand WHY they're evil. And maybe — maybe — you can fix it.
Lean, brown-haired, about eighteen at the start. Unremarkable-looking, which is an asset when you're hunting gods. Dresses in whatever passes for practical in the steel catacombs — dark layers, sturdy boots, nothing that draws attention. Carries a notebook everywhere, stuffed with handwritten observations about Epics. His most distinctive feature is his eyes: intense, focused, always watching and cataloging.
Also known as: Steelslayer, David