Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn: The Final Empire (Cosmere Universe) (Mistborn, #1)

by Brandon Sanderson

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, the Mistborn series is a heist story of political intrigue and magical, martial-arts action.

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier "snapped" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

This saga dares to ask a simple question: What if the hero of prophecy fails?

Reviewed by sa090 on

4 of 5 stars

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Pretty big book to get through tbh, it's been a while since I read something this big so it took a while to get through but overall I'm pretty satisfied with my experience with a few certain hiccups along the way.

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I find this book difficult to talk about without spoiling it but I'll try my best. I always hear great things about Sanderson and this is the first book of his that I ever read so I'm having a pretty good idea of why he earns so much praise with his writing. I wish I actually wrote down the quotes I liked because damn were they so many here and I don't want to ruin the beauty of them while trying to guess and remember but I'm definitely going to do this for the sequel novels.

There are a lot of things that I loved in this book and the major one would be the usage of Allomancy, such a unique and complex magical system that I would love to see more of. I'm really glad that even though he at first just showed me some of its applications with how some characters used it, he later on basically taught me more about it with Vin's journey. The Pushes and Pulls with the apposing metals and how each one affected something with all the rules and whatnot puts Brandon Sanderson in a tier higher than what I first thought of him and gives a very clear idea about why he earns all the praise he gets.

Another thing I really enjoyed was seeing Vin grow up from the weak and broken girl we started it with into one badass warrior who I'm sure is going to grow even more later on. However, while I'm happy about this just like I said there is a certain thing that made me really dislike Vin at times and it was whenever romance was being the main focus of the series, I do understand where she's coming from, I really do but I kind of wish that she didn't appear so desperate and fragile in them at times because it made me associate her with the pathetic romance oriented Shoujo manga heroines and I definitely didn't want to see that in abundance, which thankfully didn't happen.

I'm sure that in the later books this element in the story will be addressed again and I don't really know how much of it will appear but I honestly hope that it's going to be a few instances (as evident by my writing I really dislike romance) while they deal with more important stuff. Important stuff like the lore of the world, Brandon Sanderson did an awesome job in this one with how he explained the Allomancy for example amongst other things like Mistborns... but he also gave so many hints about other secrets in their world that we didn't hear a thing about like more about the Eleventh Metal, more about the Keepers, the Deepness, how Allomancy started in the first place and especially why does their world look like it does at the moment

That last one is very important to me, his world building was wonderful in a few things while lacking in others and I'm sure it's because of what's being handled in the book at the time so I don't really hold it against him. Judging by the name of the sequel "The Well of Ascension" and the fact that an accompanying book called the "Secret History" exists to be read after the initial trilogy promises great things for the world building I crave to read about.

Other things I sort of disliked about the book would probably be that it felt stretched out at times with all their planning (justified but doesn't change what I think about it) and the passage of time wasn't clear cut at times either. However like I said other than these very minor issues I did enjoy it a lot and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. When is the film for this going to be released anyway? All the Allomancy action would look epic to see live :)

Final rating: 4/5

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 12 February, 2017: Finished reading
  • 12 February, 2017: Reviewed