Mistborn

I listened to the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson on audiobook, then gave Kimberly the books for her birthday. She finished the first in two days, and I’m sure she’ll soon be busily working on the others.

What a great set of books. They take place in a ruined, ash-filled world unlike any I’ve ever before encountered in a fantasy novel, and involve an inventive magic system that centers around metal, the most prominent use of which is the swallowing and “burning” of metal to obtain abilities. Allomancy, as it’s called, is like a bizarre hybrid of chemistry and magic. The set of metals is well-defined with specific properties for each metal, and the repertoire of known metals increases as the characters discover additional powers.

The characters were compelling, the plot engaging and the writing--while nothing extraordinary--never got in the way. The protagonist is a street urchin who finds out she is Mistborn, one of an elite group who can use all the metals to become unstoppable killing machines. I found her character progression from skittish teenager to woman of power mostly believable. There were a couple of times when her knack for surviving seemed to stretch credulity a bit much, even for a Mistborn, but that’s a minor quibble.

Along the way, the author seemed to take great delight in intricately mapped-out fight sequences involving Mistborn swooping through the air with daggers, which was okay with me for just about as long as it usually went on.

Mostly, I appreciated that Sanderson seemed to have an intricate, interweaving story mapped out before he started, and he stuck to it. The end rewarded the reader with a lot of long-awaited answers to some very fundamental questions about the world and its people. This is something I appreciate very much in a long story.

While I’m still trying to pronounce judgment on whether I actually liked the overall ending, it was one I respected and accepted. I probably liked the third book marginally less than the other two (partly because it dealt with religion I thought I smelled a bit of the author’s bias), but it was still a great read.