Yuffie's Book Reviews

Mistborn: The Final Empire - by Brandon Sanderson

--Published Book--

THE MAGIC SYSTEM

This was a really cool book! Brandon Sanderson is known for his creative and well-thought-out magic systems, and the one in Mistborn was no exception. In this world, there are people called Allomancers who can "burn" metals they've ingested and gain some superhuman power from them. So the Allomancers carry around vials of alcohol with shavings from different metals (tin, brass, copper, steel, etc.), and when they need some ability, they drink it down and start burning various metals.

Steel lets you "push" on another metal object. Iron lets you "pull" on them. So you can drop a coin on the ground and Steelpush on it to make you fly into the air. Tin enhances your senses. There's another one that gives you super strength. Watching someone with all the metal powers fight is just ... MINDBLOWINGLY awesome! I didn't think Sanderson could beat the epicness of his chalk drawing battles in The Rithmatist, but Mistborn's fight scenes blew me away. The most epic fight scenes I've ever read.

In this world, Allomancers are divided into two groups: you can either only use just one of the metals (Misting), or you can use ALL of them (Mistborn). And the story follows two Mistborns, Vin and Kelsier, as they try to tear down the oppressive government.

THE STORY

The premise of the book is your generic rebellion story: oppressed slaves/lower class (called skaa), want to overthrow the evil Lord Ruler and reclaim the city. What was unique about this was the book started from the very beginning of the rebellion--when the rebel leader, Kelsier, brought his trusted friends together and literally took out a white board and started brainstorming ideas for how they could overthrow the government. Usually in dystopias, the MC joins the rebellion after it's gained some momentum, but Mistborn took us through the whole process step-by-step. It glossed over some of the finer details, but it was cool to see how people even start thinking about and planning for a massive rebellion.

The MCs, as I said, are Vin and Kelsier.

Vin is a 16-year-old skaa orphan who worked in a thieving crew. She's a Mistborn and doesn't know it. Kelsier is 30-something and finds her using Allomancy, so he recruits her into the rebellion. I'll talk more about the characters later.

So Vin's job is to pose as a noble girl and infiltrate the nobility, spy on them and learn compromising secrets. This was the part of the story that I couldn't stand and keeps this from being one of my favorite books of all time. The entire world was so creative and unique--red sunlight, constant rains of ash, no flowers and leaves on trees were brown, Allomancy and all the different divisions, the Steel Inquisitors who have steel spikes rammed through their eye sockets--and then you get this cliched, generic subplot where the homeless street urchin starts wearing pretty gowns and goes to balls and dances with all the boys and falls in love with (read: kiddie crush she thinks is true love) on the son of the most powerful noble house because he annoyed her by ignoring her and talking all witty-like.... and then because he's always spending time around her, it's an insult to his former fiancee, who is the bitchiest of bitches and drop dead gorgeous and rich and powerful... gah. It was so tedious and droning to read. I can't believe something so cliche was in a Brandon Sanderson book.

But finally (FINALLY), that ended and we could focus on the action in the last 100 pages of the book. Of course, there were some insertions by Vin thinking about her love interest and trying to keep Kelsier from killing the kid (Kelsier HATES all the nobles, on principle). Vin is far from the most annoying protagonist, and she's not flitty or whiny or anything, but it was just annoying to read. The romance wasn't Instalove, at least, but it wasn't anything unique or even all that well-developed or believable.

The story ends posing more questions about the storyline and the world than were answered, leading the way to the sequel. I wish just a few more questions had been answered in this book, because with the characters bringing up all these unnecessary questions in the epilogue, I felt a lingering sense of dissatisfaction--an itch I couldn't scratch.

THE CHARACTERS

Vin--16, homeless, severely abused (beaten by her brother and crew leaders, almost killed by her schizophrenic mother), has extreme trust issues, tries to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible, sharp senses, and doesn't know how to joke around. She was an interesting character, and her sour personality makes perfect sense from the hard life she's lived, but she was so sullen and grouchy and paranoid all the time. Part of me sympathized for her, and part of me hated reading from her pov.

Kelsier was the other pov character. KELSIER. He is the badass of all badasses, holy crap. I've never seen such a badass character before. I fell in love with him from the prologue. He is charming, charismatic, energetic, light-hearted, REALLY AWESOME MISTBORN (seriously, you need to watch this guy fight in the climax. It was insanely epic!), motivational, hard-working. He's goofy and makes a lot of stupid jokes, and I think nearly every character has called him a madman or insane or other such synonym. Kelsier is go big or go home.

But he's no overpowered Gary Stu. He suspected his wife, Mare, betrayed him on a thieving job, and they both got sent to the notorious Pits of Hathsin. no one who is sentenced there ever returns--except Kelsier. He escaped! And he has disfiguring scars all up his arms to prove it. But with his doubts about his wife (who died in the Pits), he still loves her and fights for the future she always wanted. He HATES the nobility with a burning passion and has zero guilt at slaughtering scores of them. His dream was to kill every last one of them. It's such a stark contrast with the pleasant, goofy face he puts on normally. And that goofy side isn't even a front. It's just another part of him. He's optimistic, and he hates the nobility. They're both parts of him, equally, and that's pretty cool characterization.

The character who ended up being my favorite was Kelsier's brother Marsh, who, unfortunately, was given very little "screentime". He made the BIGGEST sacrifice out of anyone, save for the people who died, but really they don't die on purpose. Marsh did something on purpose that would completely change his life and make it a really bad life, for the sake of the rebellion. And what made that even more endearing was that he was on bad terms with Kelsier, because Marsh also apparently loved Mare back in the day, but Mare loved Kelsier and married him. And Marsh still sacrified EVERYTHING for Kelsier. Mare even DIED for Kelsier, and while Marsh bears a grudge, his love for his little brother trumps all the hate. Or maybe it was love for Mare. Or maybe something else entirely. We can't say for sure because Marsh showed up a little at the beginning, went MIA for the most of the book, and then showed up again at the end, bringing forth a huge plot twist with how much he sacrificed for this rebellion.

Marsh is my all-time hero, and it shows just how powerful a character can resonate with the readers if you make the character sacrifice enough.

THE WRITING

It's Brandon Sanderson. 'nuff said.

His action writing is phenomenal. Other times it's a little weaker (and definitely with romance). But the action makes up for it.

Really, you read a Brandon Sanderson novel for the action and the magic system, and in Mistborn, he didn't miss a step. It was awesome. The romance and the infiltrating-the-nobility subplots were cliched and generic, which is why I can't give this book five stars. But because of the genius fight scenes and magic system of Allomancy, I'd definitely recommend Mistborn.

4/5 stars