The Eleventh Metal

3.5 stars.

It was nice to go back to Scandrial as it was at the beginning of the mistrborn trilogy, with ash falling down from the sky and strange-behaving fog. It made me recall the good memories I had when I was reading the mistborn trilogy six years ago. I loved Kelsier back then as much as Ioved him in this novella. Now I don't recall if his story with Mare and the Pits was explained in the first book [I just looked up in the summary provided by Coppermind and found very little information given. However, on the page dedicated to Mare, the references lead to the first book]. Anyways, I would have loved to have more information about what happened in the Pits and why. On the other hand, I understand that the scope for which this show more novella was written did not allow in-depth information.
My rating is kind of low, because plotwise there's little happening (understandable since the low number of pages), but you know, with Kelsier there's always another secret and I wanted to have more of pre-Mistborn Kelsier. :D show less

The Eleventh Metal is a short story of Kelsier's past - his training as a full Mistborn and the origination of his mad plan for the crew. I think his teacher must have a piece of metal in him and was talking to Ruin, not just mumbling to himself. While not long enough to be satisfying, it's a nice snapshot of a foundational event. I wish I'd read this closer to my first read through of the original trilogy.

Read: September 2015

This is my first foray into the Mistborn series and I really enjoyed it. Although it's listed on Goodreads as book 0.5 it felt like I was stepping into a fully realised world with lots of back-story and world-building that I wasn't aware of; for example there were terms like Allomancy and Mistborn which were not explained to the reader. Despite feeling a bit lost at first this was a good short story. I liked the characters and the setting was very atmospheric. It has certainly moved the Mistborn books to the top of my to-read list as I want to know more about the world Sanderson has created here.

Rating: 4/5 stars

76 points/100 (4 stars/5).

Kelsier and Gemmel go on a mission of utmost importance: training Kelsier.

Well, I have no clue what just happened, but I was incredibly interested in it. I can just tell Kelsier is going to be a fun character to read about in Mistborn.

This short story introduced a bunch of things in such rapid succession that it was hard to figure out...well... anything at all. Lots of new concepts at breakneck speed. And, I fell in love with Kelsier instantly. I really just have no idea what happened at all. I suspect that if I went back and read this again after the trilogy, I would get a lot more out of it than I did before the series.

Never was a fan of Kelsier as a POV, even in SPOILER!!. The prose can be amateurish, characteristic of early Sanderson, relying on a lot of telling and not showing. Otherwise good fun, and Gemmel is an interesting character.

The Eleventh Metal is a short story originally written for the Mistborn Adventure Game (an RPG) that takes place before the events of the first Mistborn book. It gives us a bit more backstory about Kelsier and actually shows his own training, which is interesting enough.

Overall, it's not bad. It's just very short and doesn't really add anything in particular to the rest of the Mistborn stories.

Worth the read mainly because it's short, but also easy enough to skip.

Spring 2020 (March);
~ My Sisyphean Sanderson Challenge

A lovely little piece set before the first Mistborn Trilogy, which I was told to wait until after book 1 to read. There were some really lovely little gems hidden in here and I loved getting to see a closer look into Kelsier's past.