Mistborn
All of those people who were telling me to check out The Name of the Wind a few years ago spent the last year telling me I needed to pick up Mistborn.
I knew I'd get around to this series eventually, especially after the
last novel won a Hugo. What I didn't realize was how entirely the book
would manage to take over my life. I accidentally stayed up until one in
the morning reading, which is something I very rarely do.
Mistborn is excellently paced with a lot of really cool action scenes and some interesting characters. But the best part is the system of magic, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. The main character, Vin, is an allomancer, someone who can extract special powers by swallowing and "burning" different metals. I really like how much thought Sanderson put into allomancy, from pairing pure metals with alloys to create similar powers to placing realistic restrictions on those powers.
The book also operates a bit like a puzzle. The premise of the book is that the Chosen Hero failed. A thousand years in the past, a power rose up to take over the world and it, unfortunately, wasn't stopped. So now the characters are living in a dystopia and doing what they can to make life better for themselves and others. Each chapter opens with a blurb from the Failed Hero's journal, and it's fun to follow along and try to piece together why, exactly, he failed. This was all very well-balanced in that I managed to stay a step ahead of the characters, but the narrative was still a step ahead of me. Sanderson parceled out information at a perfect rate to keep things interesting without being frustrating.
That said, and as much as I love this book, there is one point of frustration that's bothering me more in hindsight. Mistborn suffers greatly from The Smurfette Principle. In a book with a dozen important characters (the story is partially inspired by the heist genre), only one of them is female. It would have been nice if there had been one other woman mixed in with the good guys who could help mentor Vin, especially since a large part of her job hinged on her ability to impersonate a noblewoman. (On the bright side, it looks like this is being somewhat remedied in the second book, with the introduction of Tindwyl.)
But even with that minor complaint, the story is sound. The world of Mistborn is incredible, and I'm glad there's a few more books to continue this story.
Mistborn is excellently paced with a lot of really cool action scenes and some interesting characters. But the best part is the system of magic, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. The main character, Vin, is an allomancer, someone who can extract special powers by swallowing and "burning" different metals. I really like how much thought Sanderson put into allomancy, from pairing pure metals with alloys to create similar powers to placing realistic restrictions on those powers.
The book also operates a bit like a puzzle. The premise of the book is that the Chosen Hero failed. A thousand years in the past, a power rose up to take over the world and it, unfortunately, wasn't stopped. So now the characters are living in a dystopia and doing what they can to make life better for themselves and others. Each chapter opens with a blurb from the Failed Hero's journal, and it's fun to follow along and try to piece together why, exactly, he failed. This was all very well-balanced in that I managed to stay a step ahead of the characters, but the narrative was still a step ahead of me. Sanderson parceled out information at a perfect rate to keep things interesting without being frustrating.
That said, and as much as I love this book, there is one point of frustration that's bothering me more in hindsight. Mistborn suffers greatly from The Smurfette Principle. In a book with a dozen important characters (the story is partially inspired by the heist genre), only one of them is female. It would have been nice if there had been one other woman mixed in with the good guys who could help mentor Vin, especially since a large part of her job hinged on her ability to impersonate a noblewoman. (On the bright side, it looks like this is being somewhat remedied in the second book, with the introduction of Tindwyl.)
But even with that minor complaint, the story is sound. The world of Mistborn is incredible, and I'm glad there's a few more books to continue this story.
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