Mistborn: The Final Empire

The first time I read these books, I sprinted through the entire trilogy in a week while I was sick in bed overseas. I liked them then, but I'm glad I come by for another round. I'm always more observant on a second read, but I feel like Sanderson's attention to detail and consistent foreshadowing gave me a lot to latch on to as a repeat reader. A few spoiler-free thoughts:

Pros: Final Empire is fun. It's a fun premise, it's fun to read, and it's fun to imagine. The pace is good, even relentless at times, but not overwhelming. The 500 pages feels full, but about the right length for the amount of plot he has crammed into here. The magic system feels consistent but also a little wild, like they haven't figured it all out yet, which is good. The protagonist is easy to cheer for without being a saint, and her identity crises are engaging. The tone is also that of one large heist, closer to Ocean's Eleven than Lord of the Rings, which is a great twist on the genre. On the whole, Mistborn is worth your time if you like fantasy at all. For my money, this is Sanderson's best work.

Cons: Maybe it's just because I finished reading Stephen King's excellent “On Writing” last week, but I noticed that I don't love Sanderson's prose. Sometimes it's a little melodramatic or hackneyed (especially bits of dialogue, but maybe that's intentional). But it's always, always in the past tense. I feel like this takes me out of some of the scenes, since it leads to boring and repetitive sentence structure. This is the worst for fight scenes; he has all this great worldbuilding, these interesting characters you care about, and all of the fights go like: “Kelsier jumped on the crowd. Then Kelsier pushed off of a soldier. Kelsier smiled, and then swung his knife at another soldier.” It's not that big of a thing, but it is frustrating since all of the other pieces are there.

I think this might be because Sanderson is an outline writer. The great advantages of this are consistent foreshadowing and a sense of finality at the end, like he's wrapped up all the loose ends he wants to. Anyone who likes George RR Marten or Pat Rothfuss will also appreciate that it keeps his publication rate MUCH higher than the industry average. But it does also make him seem like an encylopedist sometimes: “I have plot point A and plot point B that need to be connected, let me write the scene to tied them together.” His transitional scenes and lines are so FUNCTIONAL, they sometimes feel like means to an end instead of something interesting in their own right.


SPOILERS FOR WHOLE TRILOGY

On the sentence structure in fight scenes, don't get me wrong: that closing duel when Kelsier kills the Inquisitor is still awesome, top to bottom.

On foreshadowing: The development/teasing of the kandra was done well, as was Kelsier's actual plan, and Vin's relationship with Ruin. (Also, how did I not notice the Ruin / Reen name similarity? Both the voices in her head have similar names, kind of a fun observation.

Pros: I read somewhere that Sanderson said the entire premise of Mistborn is “what happens after the good guys win?” I think that still really holds up, looking forward. Beating the Big Bad Guy is usually the climax, but I like that it's only a third of the way in. You can see the humanization of the Lord Ruler coming, when the thieving group has to actually govern an empire. I don't think there's ever really any true pity developed for him, considering his brutal cruelty and subjugation of a people, but I like that the main characters are forced to see the world from his height and recognize what a challenging thing it is.

Also, I thought the twist about Rashek really being the Lord Ruler was a good one. It's hard to have the plucky protagonist defeat the Big Bad Guy without it feeling gimmicky and unrealistic. If they were really so big and bad, then one book's worth of training shouldn't let our nobody hero beat them. (For all its other flaws, I thought the Eragon series actually handled this well).

Cons: Eh, after reading Nora Jemisin's Fifth Season trilogy, every other fantasy story about a subjugated people group just doesn't ring quite as true to me. That's not especially a knock against Sanderson - he depicts the brutality and killings enough to get the message across - but it doesn't quite have the same bite.