Mistborn: The Final Empire

Reread Dec 2020: I love rereading favorite books. I gain a new insight and greater appreciation on each read through. This time around I am blown away at Sanderson's meticulous planning. I love how he weaves in all the little hints to let us know exactly what is coming and still we readers don't connect the dots until afterwards. I also completely missed that this was a partial heist story on my original read through! The ending still gives me chills. What a great way to start a holiday week.

Original review from 2016 below.

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For a thousand years the Lord Ruler has ruled the Final Empire as a god. Ash falls continuously during the day and mists rule the night. The Skaa people have been subjugated for so show more long they no longer have the will to fight back. Rumors of a survivor of the Lord Ruler's most brutal prison have emerged and hope is reignited. In the pits Kelsier "snapped" and came away with the powers of Allomancy, the power of a Mistborn. A brilliant criminal mastermind, Kelsier has turned his cunning to the ultimate plan: to overthrow the Lord Ruler and end the Empire.

Mistborn: The Final Empire is the first in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. The book gets off to a slow start. We are gradually introduced to the world of the Final Empire and it's peoples as the foundation for the story. It didn't take long for me to get fully immersed in this new land of ash and mists. Sanderson is an extraordinary world builder. The atmosphere is oppressive and relentless. Ash falls continuously from the sky, creating a dreary wasteland. Green grass, flowers, trees with leaves of any color but brown are unheard of though there are hints they may have existed at one time. You get the feel of a wrongness to this world. Magic is real but only usable by Allomancers, an ability passed down from the nobility to their offspring. The magic is defined by the ability to "burn" metals - that is a person with Allomantic powers can ingest certain metals and use them as wells of hidden strengths. Each metal is aligned with a specific ability, either physical or mental, and it either pulls or pushes. This concept lays at the core of the story and is the basis of some amazing action scenes.

The story is told primarily from two points of view: Kelsier and Vin. Both characters are highly likable. Kelsier, the Survivor of Hathsin, is the brilliant mastermind and crew leader to a gang of misfits he has recruited to take part in his scheme. Naturally Kelsier is a Mistborn, an Allomancer who can use all the metals instead of just one. His experiences of a past betrayal and surviving the mines have made him fairly set in his beliefs. He also serves as mentor to Vin, a street urchin that Kelsier discovered and is training in the Allomantic arts to assist with his gang's job. Vin, the street urchin, goes on quite a character arc. She starts off as a half starved, highly suspicious and very untrusting. Through Kelsier's training and while playing her part of the crew Vin transforms into a highly competent and capable heroine. They were both a lot of fun to read. Both have their motivations well explained and are deep and complex individuals. Vin stole the show for me. She was highly sympathetic from the start and I was rooting for her the whole time. I felt a pride for the character as she overcame her lot in life and continued to grow throughout the story. I believe there is much more for us to discover about Vin in future books.

About the only downside is premise of the story is fairly conventional and has been done before: a hero from the oppressed masses rises up to lead a rebellion and overthrow the evil empire. Star Wars anyone? Yet Sanderson's telling of it is masterful. The book has something for everyone. Lots of action, a unique and way cool magic system, intrigue, politics, conspiracies, romance, believable characters and a fully realized world. I will definitely be continuing this series.

Remember, there's always another secret. show less

I started listening to MISTBORN: THE FINAL EMPIRE by Brandon Sanderson as an opportunity to finally get around to reading one of fantasy's top authors. I knew nothing about the story or series other than that several friends I trust recommended it as the perfect place to start my Sanderson journey. I chose the audiobook format because it was readily available and had an almost perfect rating among reviewers.

Much to my surprise, given the ratings, it took me quite a long time to settle into the story and appreciate the narrator. Michael Kramer is not the most emotive of narrators. Neither is he very performative. Much of his narration has the same dry, emotionless quality as someone reading a grocery list. Yet, as I became more invested show more in Vin's and Kelsier's stories, Mr. Kramer grew on me. He will never hold a candle to James Marsters, Bronson Pinchot, Amanda Ronconi, Jennifer Ikeda, or Alana Kerr Collins as my favorite narrators, but he does a decent job.

The story itself also grew on me. Mr. Sanderson tends to shift narrators mid-scene, which is more than a little unsettling. It works for action scenes when all is supposed to be chaotic and difficult to follow. In fact, it is an excellent narrative choice for such scenes. However, he does this even in non-action scenes, which also takes some time to adjust.

Plus, Mr. Sanderson appears to be a big believer in allowing the characters to do the heavy lifting of world-building instead of devoting additional word count to do so. This means that your understanding of the Final Empire is only as good as what you can glean from the characters, their actions, and their stories. It is only once you build up a decent understanding of the politics and religions at play here, who the various characters are, and what they all have to do with each other, that you can finally settle into the story and let it entertain you.

Once you get to that point, THE FINAL EMPIRE becomes exciting and twisty. You finally care about the characters and their fates, and your desire for answers to all your questions keeps you glued to the story. THE FINAL EMPIRE is much more Kelsier's story than it is Vin's. He is the glue that holds the disparate stories together. His charm has a way of making even the craziest of schemes sound doable, and his past makes you hope he finally obtains the results he wants. Vin is the heir apparent, still growing into her powers and shedding her past, and there is no doubt that she has a much larger role to play in the series.

In the end, I came to appreciate THE FINAL EMPIRE more than I thought I would. Kelsier's choice of crew is way more entertaining than I expected and adds much-needed levity to the story. I also appreciate their "honor among thieves" code. The world of THE FINAL EMPIRE is not nearly as black and white as it appears at first, with the ending reveals exploding that notion, if still held, to smithereens. It seems Mr. Sanderson keeps his cards very close to his chest because I have no idea where the series is going or what will happen next. While my first Brandon Sanderson novel was not a mind-blowing experience, I liked it more than I expected and definitely plan to finish the original trilogy, if not the entirety of the Mistborn series. show less

It can sometimes be intimidating starting a new-to-me writer, especially one with a huge collection of series and books written. And perhaps even more so for speculative fiction, where the worlds are strange and may take some time to sink into.
So admittedly the first chapter didn’t really do it for me, but as we moved on and met Vin, the young girl with a tough life and some strange power she calls Luck, it began to grow on me and I realized that I did not want to stop reading. And at the same time, I didn’t want to read it too fast because that would mean the end of the book. This was an amazing read. It was exciting and immersive and had this kind of Ocean’s Eleven kind of feel in parts - not in the smooth, Vegas way but in that show more great camaraderie among the crew and how they all played unique roles that came together as a whole .
And Allomancy, I mean, how clever that is. To introduce this use of metals, metals we are all familiar with, yet use them in this almost wuxia kind of way (all that leaping about especially).
And well, as you can see, I did bring myself to finish it, much as I didn’t want this story to end. But Sanderson has so many books (including more in this Mistborn series) that will make this newfound fan thrilled for many more reads to come. show less

I really quite enjoyed this, actually. It had enough of the Yet-Another-Fantasy-Series about it to be comfortable and easily-digested, with heaps of newness to keep things interesting.

After having read [b:The Way of Kings|10063939|The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive, #1)|Brandon Sanderson|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515ojDVQ4iL._SL75_.jpg|8134945] and now this, what really stands out for me is the creativity of the worlds Sanderson builds. So often with world-fantasy you can deliver the world concept in one easy combined real-world reference. Often just straight-up medieval, of course, but Venetian has been very popular recently, as has Elizabethan grit (that birth-of-science-and-the-satirical-arts vibe) and getting your show more Ottoman on is always a nice way to add colour and movement. I personally favour tropical settings, which are often Asian-influenced.

The closest I could get to that with Mistborn would be: the Matrix done as serious world-fantasy. It's dystopian in that clinging-to-the-edge-of-slowburning-apocalypse way. It's about hope and struggle in the face of the force grinding you into the mud, possibly for your own good. And it's very, very real, but at the same time it draws from no single solid body of historical context.

It shares that jaw-dropping where-did-this-come-from? element with Way of Kings, but unlike that toe-breaking tome, it's punchy and neatly delivered, barrelling along with heaps of story-furthering action. The characters are (once again) really well delivered, having facets and flaws and plans that come unstuck and real, interesting lives. And if he is once again a little too paragraph-spewingly detailed about precisely how his magical system is used for kicking the arse of every Stormtrooper in the goddamn room, I found myself actually read the fight scenes as the book progressed and it became obvious that the intricacies of the magical system did indeed hide clues to wider concerns.

It's not choirs-of-angels holy-shit amazing, but it's a solidly good read - and while I'm going to happily go on to the later books in the series, I think it could probably stand alone. show less

And here we run into a flaw of the star system ... This book is well-written, the characters engaging, I could hardly put it down ... but at the same time, I hate it.

I hated the piss-poor representation. Male characters in this book outnumber the women probably 10:1 ... I can't count the number of significant male characters, but I can count the number of women: Vin. Elend's former fiancée. The gossip who turned out to be a spy. The woman who cut Vin's hair. The girl whose near-rape was the impetus for Kell's slaughter at the beginning of the book. Kell's dead wife. One amazing female character does not make up for the almost complete erasure of the gender everywhere else. I hate how prevalent rape and the threat of rape was in the show more book.

Let's talk about race. The races as constructed in current American society don't exist in this fictional world, yes ... but that just makes it easy to assume that everybody is white. "Or you could assume that everyone is black!" That's not representation; that's plausible deniability.

Let's talk about the perpetuation of that over-used trope, the outsider savior. Kell is, for all intents & purposes, not a skaa; Vin herself points that out to him. He is an outsider who saves the skaa (okay, I'll be fair — plays a pivotal role in saving the skaa) by scamming them into thinking he's a goddamn god. He's the good guy.

Meanwhile, it turns out the bad guy — the tyrant, the murderer, the egomaniac, the oppressor of the entire empire — was the member of an oppressed group of people. They had a prophecy about a hero coming to save humanity; a hero who turned out to be a member of the group of people oppressing them. Our villain refused to believe that his oppressor was their destined hero, so he killed the other man & took his place ... and ended up becoming the embodiment of evil, essentially.

Woo hoo, moral fucking complexity, people who've been oppressed can be bad people too! And maybe it would have felt more like genuine moral complexity to me if there had been more diversity, if there had been an effort to acknowledge the real world issues that the conflicts in this book were playing off of. Instead, it feels like white guy philosophical masturbation.

Let's not forget that the man who takes over the leadership — the man who ends up preaching peace and stability and becoming king — is also an outsider to the skaa, a noble.

The more I think about this book, the more uncomfortable it makes me. The thing that's pissing me off the most, though, is that there are aspects of the world-building that interest me enough that I still want to read the second book. Kind of. Actually, you know what, I just Wiki-ed the next two books and I'm done. show less

I can't remember being this violently conflicted about a book in quite some time. There are some areas where it's just so well done, with the author absolutely nailing it, and then others where I found myself grinding my teeth in frustration. I'm going to abandon my usual practice of writing short, pithy reviews and just drunkenly ramble on a few things here. (Still no spoilers, though.) That OK with y'all?

Language. About two and a half chapters into this book, I found myself asking, "Why does this feel like a kids' fantasy book?" It wasn't the subject material or the plot, both of which were clearly more sophisticated than Harry Potter and his ilk. While I would feel perfectly comfortable having my 12-year old read this (PG13-violent show more and utterly sexless) book, I don't feel as though it's necessarily written for him. Finally it occurred to me: it's the language. This book is one of the most simply written books I've ever read, using only the most basic vocabulary. That isn't a bad thing, as I'd rather read something simple and direct than something flowery and overwritten, but Sanderson's language is so simple here that it's almost as if he's drawing with the Crayola 16-set when other authors have the big 64. (One notable exception: having apparently become recently enamored of the word, he uses maladroitly three times. Maybe he was jamming some Weezer while he wrote.) I haven't read any of his other works (yet; Mistborn #2 is on deck), but I have to assume this simplicity is by conscious choice, and it's an interesting choice at that. I'm just not sure yet how I feel about it.

One language choice that I am sure how I feel about is Sanderson's decision to have his characters speak good old American English. The narration is similarly plainspoken, with a fair amount of American slang thrown in, rather than the twee, faux-Elizabethan style of a lot of fantasy authors. I like the approach. One of the most time-honored fantasy tropes is having all the characters thee and thou each other, with a few ne'er did yon stars of Yomama glimmer so resplendently, my suzerain for good measure. And I can handle that stuff, having been weaned on Tolkien and everything that came after, but I found Sanderson's decision to move away from that convention refreshing. I interpreted it as Sanderson saying, "The unspoken assumption here is that this book has been translated from whatever languages they speak on this made-up world, so why translate it to anything other than what is most understandable and comfortable for you to read? To couch this story in funky language is to insult your imagination by implying that you need that in order to realize you're reading a fantasy novel."

Setting and Plot. The setting is a typical high fantasy world - feudal-style nobility and peasantry; shadowy, powerful priesthood; mysterious evil lord, etc. - with some odd, almost steampunk flourishes thrown in. There are wristwatches. Men's formal wear is described as something more like Victorian coat and tails than medieval garb. Magic in this world is fueled by elemental and alloyed metals, which are described rather exactly, using percentages. It's a unique and interesting blend.

The basic plot is about as stock as it gets. If you're familiar with the Star Wars films, the Harry Potter or Percy Jackson books, Eragon, the Dragonriders of Pern trilogy, Dune, Ender's Game, or any one of about a million other works, please play along:

Dear [kid with weird name], I know you are only a [farmer / orphan / urchin / child of a minor noble], and this will be hard for you to accept, but you [have Great Powers / are the Chosen One / insert name of funky power here]. You are the only one who can [save the world / save the universe / defeat the Empire / restore order to the Force / kill the Big Boss]. Luckily, even though you just learned your destiny fifteen minutes ago, you will make up for lost time by quickly becoming better than anyone in the history of ever at [Quidditch / dragon riding / sandworm riding / Allomancy]. Any questions?

Needless to say, the book's plot could have been a ticket to Hack City, but it really isn't. Vin's growth and development are handled well.

Exposition. This is a fantasy book for the video game generation. By that, I mean that the book follows the general path of a first person video game: 1) Introduction to the world and the main characters; 2) A few early levels whose only apparent purpose is to teach the player how to use the buttons; 3) Quests of increasing difficulty, with progressive reveals of the Big Plot; 4) Fight with the Main Boss, including the inevitable twist; and 5) Denouement and teaser for the next installment.

Not that that's a bad thing! But I was really surprised at the way Allomancy (the main "magic" in this world) was laid out. In the two towering fantasy/sci-fi works of the 20th century (The Lord of the Rings and Dune), the supernatural elements of the story operated behind a sort of curtain or screen. The One Ring in LotR and the Spice in Dune both held great, mysterious powers, but the specific effects and extent of those powers were seen only in fits and flashes, and never understood completely by the characters or the reader. In contrast, fairly early on in this book, Kelsier takes Vin on a practice run where he explains how her powers work and what their advantages and limitations are, using plain language and real-world physics, and lets her fly and mess around and just generally exult in her magic. It left me, the reader, as well as Vin the character, feeling that even if I didn't understand this magic perfectly right now, I might at some point in the future, which was a very different feel.

OK, after enough rambling about things I feel ambivalently about, let's wrap up with one big win and one big fail:

WIN: Brandon Sanderson can write the hell out of an action scene. (And since the final quarter of this book is pretty much all action, playing directly into Sanderson's strengths, it kicks all kinds of ass.) The fights in this book are gut-wrenching without being overly gory, and the chases and sneaks are heart-stopping as well. Perfect combination of pace and detail. Amazing. Possibly the best I've ever read from an author in this genre, and if he's able to do that so effortlessly, so early in his career, it gives me hope that he can fix...

FAIL: ...the dialogue. In spite of being favorably disposed due to the use of informal American English, I eventually found the dialogue here really clunky. Everyone is too wordy. Everyone says one sentence too many. Over and over again, I found myself going, "Real people don't talk like this" and especially, "Real people who are supposed to be close friends don't talk anything like this to each other." Seriously, think of how you talk to your best friends in private, then compare it to this book. In addition, there was always that odd feeling of unneeded exposition, as if the characters were talking half to each other and half to the reader. It was unfortunate, especially in contrast to how slick and fast-moving and just plain awesome a lot of the other writing was.

All in all, this was a fun, kinetic read...with a few holes in it. It builds, it explodes, and the ending is really good. If half-stars were allowed, this would have been a 3 1/2. Good stuff.

Also, here are my reviews of the second and third books in the series, if you enjoyed this one! show less

More than a thousand years ago, the Lord Ruler saved the world from an evil known only as the Deepness. Since that time, he has ruled the Final Empire as Emperor and God. It is His benevolence that allows the millions of skaa to live – in poverty-stricken conditions as slaves to the noble houses. The nobility is even more blessed by the Lord Ruler; as descendants of His old friends, they are given the right to own skaa and live in luxury. Everyone knows that this is the way it has always been in the Final Empire, and the way it always shall be.

Everyone except Kelsier, the Survivor of the Pits of Hathsin. Two years ago, he became the first and only person to ever escape the Pits, and discovered powers that only a handful of people – show more nobles – have wielded before. It is with this power and the help of a few allies who are still willing to take a stand that Kelsier develops his insane plan: to overthrow the Lord Ruler and allow the oppressed skaa a chance at a life of more than slavery and death.

Vin grew up as part of a thieving crew, where every day was a struggle to find enough food and avoid being killed on a whim by another skaa. She knows that Kelsier’s plan is mad and doomed to fail. Yet Vin has powers too, and a curious nature her harsh upbringing couldn’t entirely quash. She joins forces with Kelsier’s futile mission because better to die trying than like millions of her fellow skaa, submissive and quiet.

This story is brilliant. The plot is familiar inasmuch as many fantasies follow a similar theme, yet is an excellent example of the uprising tale. The magic is well-reasoned and plausible. The writing is at times generous with description and others taut with excitement, and as the novel was originally written as either a stand alone or the first in a trilogy, the ending is satisfying while still leaving room for even better stories in its sequels.

Sanderson’s strengths lie in his exceptional world building, with an incredible magic system, and his equally as impressive knack for characterisation. Vin is wonderful throughout this story (and in the sequels). She has so much fight in her, and she spends a lot of time asking questions that I would definitely be asking in her position: why is she helping Kelsier? How can she pose as a noble? What is this magic she has the ability to use? Who can be trusted? How far? Kelsier is just as real, with a little too much ego, a little too much ruthlessness, and just enough genuine desire to help, and just enough love for his friends. show less