The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson: Mistborn: The Bands of Mourning

The third Mistborn novel in the "Wax and Wayne" subseries, The Bands of Mourning, is very different from the other two, in that our protagonists leave Elendel for the first time, travelling to the city-state of New Seran in pursuit of Wax's sister, who was abducted by Wax's uncle back in the first Wax and Wayne book. (I guess; I honestly did not remember this subplot, though I did remember Wax's uncle was evil.)

It's impossible to read a Cosmere novel (impossible for me, anyway) without thinking about "magic systems." Sanderson is praised for his "hard magic," where everything is meticulously thought through. This just doesn't work for me at all. I actually recently had the privilege of getting to briefly chat with Ann Leckie, author of Raven Tower, and I asked her if she could explain her approach to fantasy, and she said she approached it like a science fiction writer. And I was like, "Aha, that's why I like it!" She takes a fantastic premise but then thinks it through completely logically. It's a good example of what China Miéville calls "rationalized alienation": the difference from our world (what Darko Suvin would call the novum) is thought about in a methodical way. Compare the Harry Potter novels, with their "soft" magic system, which seems to have little organizing structure other than what J. K. Rowling thought would be good at the time she wrote a particular book.

Why, then, do I not like Brandon Sanderson, with his methodical magic systems? At least part of it is that for all their methodical nature, they still feel quite arbitrary. In Leckie's novel, there's an initial fantastic premise (anything a god says comes true, but this requires energy, which the god can acquire through worship), but that's it, everything flows logically from that simple initial conceit. Sanderson's metals, on the other hand, do not have a simple initial fantastic conceit. In the Mistborn novels, for example, there's three different "metallic arts" (allomancy, feruchemy, and hemalurgy), each of which has its own rules; there are sixteen different metals that can be used in these arts, meaning there's forty-eight different powers people can have. And each metal's use in each power feels arbitrary: why should zinc enflame emotions in allomancy but store mental speed in feruchemy? why should iron pull on metal in allomancy, but store physical weight in feruchemy? And that's without getting into when different powers interact; it all comes across as arbitrary. There's a system, I guess, to the extent that anything you can stick into a table (there's six pages of explanation in the back of the book) is a system, but there's no clear organizing principle to it all. The system doesn't feel "rational" or "logical."

My other issue is that it feels like there's nothing to it other than the system. Miéville says that the thing about rationalized alienation is that it's also something you can read metaphorically. Harry Potter's magic may be unsatisfying from a logical standpoint, but it's all about self-actualization, which makes sense in a YA series about teen protagonists. Ursula K. Le Guin is probably the queen of this; her magic is powerful because it lines up with the character's understanding of the universe. In being able to Name things, Ged says something about us as readers too. But what's the metaphorical resonance of burning nicrosil? You've got me. I like to quote Jo Walton's essay about "SF Reading Protocols" a lot, but I recently noticed something Jeff VanderMeer says in the comments on it:

I’m having some difficulty with this idea–as I read it–of the literal *versus* the metaphorical, since metaphor has so much to do with the subtext of a story. If you don’t have subtext, you have a pretty flat story–it doesn’t resonate. Metaphorical interpretation is key, on some subconscious level in a reader, between a text that is alive and one that, after a first reading, is dead. Some SF writers write “flat” in this regard and some do not–some resonate.

Is VanderMeer talking about Sanderson? Not that I know of. Has he ever read Sanderson? I've no idea, but he certainly could be. So when people in this book start to talk about what happens if someone invents this or that allomantic power, or combines this, or does whatever with their feruchemy, I tune out, because it's all meaningless magical jibber-jabber (what I sometimes call "thaumababble," the fantasy equivalent of technobabble).

My other issue with Sanderson is that for as much as the magic systems are (supposedly) deep, the worldbuilding often feels shallow. This was a particular problem with the first Mistborn trilogy, which were all about liberating an oppressed people from an enslaving empire, but where absolutely no thought seemed to have been put into the oppressed people, or even what it's like to live under oppression; one was sort of left thinking Sanderson didn't know anything about imperialism or colonialism beyond what he had read in other similarly shallow fantasy novels. (Like everything in a Brandon Sanderson novel, there's ultimately a magical explanation for this, but it still feels shallow when you're reading it.) Sanderson and his fans like to criticize Harry Potter for its not-very-thought-through magic systems and worldbuilding, but honestly, Mistborn feels fairly similar to Harry Potter to me in that it often feels like things other than the magic system are made up when we need them, and no sooner. I never really believed there was a whole world outside of Elendel in "Era 2" until this book actually sent us into it; even having done so, one feels like there's exactly the bits of New Seran we need to support Wax and Wayne's story, and no more.

The Bands of Mourning: A Mistborn Novel by Brandon Sanderson

Originally published: 2016
Read: March 2026

Okay, this has become more of an essay about Brandon Sanderson and the Cosmere in general than an actual review of The Bands of Mourning, and one that probably reveals more about my own interests and obsessions than the actual book. So how is the book?

Well, actually, it's pretty good. If you can put all that stuff I just complained about aside (and there's a degree to which you can't—though it's even more likely that you, the person who is reading this review, don't care about any of this at all), it's probably the Mistborn book I've found the most interesting and the most successful. That is to say, I did find The Alloy of Law good fun but honestly it also felt to me like The Alloy of Law wasn't really trying to do very much other than tell a basic crime caper. Bands of Mourning, as I said, takes Wax and Wayne outside of Elendel... but it also brings outsiders into Elendel, as we get our first hint that there are people on this planet outside of a small region, with their own society and their own agenda. If you think what's interesting about speculative fiction is the creation of "epistemic crisis" (this is my take, at least), then this is a decent example of it, and it's probably the thing I'm most interested in seeing future Mistborn novels develop.

On top of that, I found this book had the most interesting depictions of the characters thus far. I find Wax himself a little one-note, but Wayne is always good fun with his sideways but strangely logical way of looking at the world, and this book has a lot Steris, a character who (to be honest) I did not even remember from previous books, who Wax is marrying for financial and social reasons, not love. There is a little bit of a tendency for us to be told Steris acts a certain way as opposed to seeing her act this way, but once the story gets underway, we do get to see her do a lot of stuff in her own way, and I found it enjoyable. I also like Marasi, though I feel like she doesn't get as much interesting stuff to do as the other three characters. Sanderson's end note says Marasi, Wax, and Wayne will return in the next book, but I hope the lack of Steris is just an omission as opposed to an indication she won't play a central role in the fourth and final book of this sequence.

As always, the use of the allomantic powers is probably the thing I am least interested in here, as well as the greater mythology. Wax actually dies for a bit, and talks to God(!) about suffering; this actually reminded me a lot of a similar discussion in Orson Scott Card's The Worthing Chronicle, which I reread recently, and I found the points here similarly unconvincing. (Is this because both Card and Sanderson are Mormons?) But put all that aside, and look for a book about some decent characters doing interesting things, and this is the best Mistborn novel thus far.

Every nine months I read another novel of the Cosmere. Next up in sequence: Mistborn: The Lost Metal

The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson: Mistborn: Shadows of Self

The fifth Mistborn novel and second Wax and Wayne novel is fairly different from the previous one; while The Alloy of Law was a short, fun adventure that largely stood alone, Shadows of Self is longer and more invested in the "lore" of the Mistborn world in a way that Alloy of Law was not.

Shadows of Self: A Mistborn Novel by Brandon Sanderson

Originally published: 2015
Read: July 2025

Consequently, I liked it less. As soon as an omnipotent voice turned up and began narrating to Wax stuff about the conflict between Preservation and Ruin, I knew that this one wasn't going to do the stuff I enjoyed. I think the weird thing about the Mistborn novels is that Sanderson sets up this incredibly complicated system about allomancy... but seems largely uninterested in it, it's just background to all this other stuff that makes my eyes glaze over. Imagine if the Avatar shows had all this stuff about bending as background but the benders weren't even main characters in the show. I just don't get it. 

People praise Sanderson for his worldbuilding, but I feel like that mostly comes down to the "magic systems" themselves; what the books don't really do, I think, is compellingly explore how the magic would change the world. Here, the Mistborn world has advanced to the nineteenth century... but it's basically our nineteenth century, just some people are allomancers. I don't really see how allomancy has actually affected the structure of their society, and as a result, the magic rings hollow.

Wayne is great, though. I love Wayne. Wayne keeps me going.

Every nine months I read another novel of the Cosmere. Next up in sequence: Mistborn: The Bands of Mourning

The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson: Mistborn: The Alloy of Law

The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel by Brandon Sanderson

Published: 2011
Read: August 2024

Knowing what I know of Brandon Sanderson fans, I suspect this is a minority viewpoint, but this was my favorite Mistborn novel thus far. Set centuries after the original trilogy ("Era 1"), the fourth book takes place in a nineteenth-century kind of setting, with trains and industrialization. Shorn of the need to carefully establish all the rules of allomancy and feruchemy that I quite frankly do not care about and can never be made to care about, the book just gets on with having a fun adventure. 

This one doesn't dive deep into the "lore" of its world, it just focuses on two characters fighting crime together, and their interactions were for me the primary delight of the novel. The mystery itself is pretty so-so (there are basically no suspects, then they figure out who did it), but I always enjoyed reading about Wax and in particular Wayne and what they were up to. For a Sanderson novel, it's quite short (less than half the length of any previous Mistborn novel!) and quite focused. It still has some weird choices (it has rotating third-person narrators, but this isn't clear until about one third of the way in, which means our first jump to a new perspective is quite jarring), and I always feel like Sanderson puts more effort into the magic systems than making the politics and economics of his worlds convincing, but I had a good time here, and if its other books are like this, I will enjoy "Era 2" of Mistborn much more than I did Era 1.

Every nine months I read another novel of the Cosmere. Next up in sequence: Mistborn: Shadows of Self

The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson: Elantris

Elantris: Tenth Anniversary Author's Definitive Edition

by Brandon Sanderson

This is my fifth Cosmere novel, but Brandon Sanderson's first. I read Warbreaker first, and you can definitely see how Warbreaker is a rewriting of this: a city of gods who don't do anything, a princess in an arranged marriage arrives in a foreign city, the man she was to marry isn't what she thought, the princess recruits disaffected merchants to her cause in one-on-one meetings.

Edition published: 2015
Originally published: 2005
Acquired: March 2021
Read: November 2023

I liked Warbreaker better. The chapters here about the prince and the princess are okay, if plodding. (More on that in a bit.) But the chapters about the religious fanatic dude were interminably dull. You would think a Mormon would be able to write a religious fanatic with more nuance.

I think the big problem I am having with Brandon Sanderson novels is that they all feel very... incremental. A tiny bit of progress is made in each section, again and again and again. There are very rarely any big moments that seize you, it's just a very slow very steady climb to the end. There are things that should be big on the way, but something about the way he writes mean they never feel big; he doesn't seem to know how make the energy of the novel ebb and flow in a way that propels the reader forward. It's just plod plod plod until you get to the end—which as always is a totally uninteresting reveal about the magic system. Wow, the prince guy figured out how to write magic words! This is the kind of thing that in Le Guin would be the thematic, emotional, and character lynchpin of the novel... but here it's just a thing that explains all the elements of the "magic system" you never wanted explained to begin with.

Every nine months I read another novel of the Cosmere. Next up in sequence: Mistborn: The Alloy of Law

The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson: Warbreaker

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

After gifting me the Mistborn trilogy in order to get me to read it, my sister then gifted me another novel of the Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker. I guess these take place in the same fantasy universe, but on different planets with different (shudder) "magic systems." (Seriously, has anything ever made magic less magical than the term "magic systems"?)

Originally published: 2009
Acquired: July 2021
Read: February 2023

As I remembering feeling about Mistborn, I felt this had some good ideas and would be solid raw material for a better story. The idea of two sisters that have to switch places is a good one, though I don't think Sanderson is adept enough at characterization to make as much of it as someone else might have. The magic system is a bit too convoluted, and as in Mistborn, too much of the climax comes in the form of revelations about its mechanics... but who cares? Also you can't use CamelCase in a fantasy novel, it's just not right! "BioChroma" is a terrible, immersion-breaking term.

It is cleverly put together, though. I did like the reveal that the comedy rogues who are always telling you how terrible they are are in fact actually terrible—if you've read Sanderson's Mistborn, you expect them to turn out like the criminals in that book, actually nice people at heart, so it's a neat use of his own past work to foil your expectations. I did kind of like the character of the languid god who wants to do more. The sequence where one sister is rendered homeless is pretty harrowing.

But it's all... a bit of a plod, you know? Almost seven hundred pages of small type, and I'm not convinced it needed to be that long, it often feels very repetitive.

Every nine months I read another novel of the Cosmere. Next up in sequence: Elantris

Review: Mistborn: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

Originally published: 2008
Acquired: July 2020
Read: January 2021

The Hero of Ages: Book Three of Mistborn

by Brandon Sanderson

After enjoying, if not loving, the first two Mistborn books, I found book three to be a dismal slog. The whole book seems to be oriented to do things I don't enjoy. While the first two books used chapter epigrams from in-universe to hint at a mystery, and to reveal characterization, the third book uses them to explain away seeming inconsistencies in the narrative and provide exposition about the mystical forces manipulating our heroes. ("Well Ruin had enough power to do x, but that might make you think he should have done y, but in fact he didn't have quite enough power to do that because of z." It made me think of this DM of the Rings strip.) The problem is that I've always been interested in the people and the politics of this series; the godlike entities have never interested me for their own sake. This volume, however, seems to think I'll find vast cosmic entities interesting just, uh, because? This might be what other people read fantasy fiction for, but I just can't get into it.

Instead of paying off character and thematic threads from the first two books, the book seems more interested in paying off mysteries of backstory that I didn't even know were mysteries! Like, one of the big reveals of this book is "where did the kandra and koloss come from." I didn't know that the kandra and koloss were supposed to come from anywhere! They're weird fantasy creatures, this is a fantasy novel, why would I think they come from anywhere any more than a dog comes from somewhere in a piece of mimetic fiction? But there's an explanation that ties it into the novel's "magic system." So many things get explained that I never wanted an explanation for. Especially reading it in conjunction with Brandon Sanderson's annotations, I started to come to the perception that this book Was Just Not Written For Me. At one he writes something like, "Many people have written me want to ask what would happen if a Mistborn burned duralumin and aluminum at the same time." This is a question it never would have occurred to me to ask in a million years. Having seen it asked, I cannot possibly imagine how it could have an interesting answer. He's writing his book for these people, not me. The book is filled with explanations of how the "magic system" coheres.

What I wanted was more character stuff, especially for Vin and Elend. There are hints of it, but really their arcs seem to have ended in book two. I can see how you could use the material here to have a final character point about "being a good leader" for Elend: he keeps wrestling with the question of what sacrifices are ethical for a leader to make. But he wrestles with it, and then that throughline just vanishes; the climax of Elend's story has nothing to do with, and it never gets paid off. Vin has even less to do, I think.

In my review of book two, I complained that Sanderson doesn't always marry the immediate things his characters are doing to the big-picture ideas running in the background. Book two pulled it off in the end, but this is even more a failing in book three. Supposedly the fate of the world is at stake, but for most of the book it feels like you're reading about someone trying to get into a cave. There technically are stakes to this, but you never feel the stakes enough to care.

It's not all bad. Two of my favorite characters from the previous two books were TenSoon and Sazed, and both of them get good payoffs here, especially Sazed. Sazed's final reveal is an effective one, because it doesn't just pay off a worldbuilding mystery, but it also pays off a characterization point that's been emphasized through all three novels. Sanderson is capable of uniting plot, character, and world satisfactorily. I was very impressed by that moment, and I wish he could have had more like it.

Review: Mistborn: The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

Originally published: 2007
Acquired: July 2020
Read: December 2020

The Well of Ascension: Book Two of Mistborn

by Brandon Sanderson

The second Mistborn picks up a year after the first, and clearly the conceit is to consider the question of once you defeat the evil overlord.... how do you create an effective government to rule in his place? The book follows Elend and Vin's attempts to transition from well-intentioned renegades into viable government. It doesn't go well. I enjoyed this aspect of the book.

The problem, I think, is that it's also a book about someone who is embracing a magical destiny. This ultimately turns out to be a subversion, too, but I feel like the book's two purposes pull against each other rather than work together. Vin thinks she's supposed to go on a quest... but she spends month not going on the quest because to do so would disrupt the political plot line.

Like last time, I think Sanderson does a good job with the slow unspooling of character. The changes Elend and Vin go through are handled well; I continue to like Sazed, and this book gives Breeze some great scenes as well. I think Sanderson balances the cast better than in book one. That one had too many crew members who did too little; here, the ones who aren't interesting just aren't there very much, instead of constantly turning up in scenes to "humorously" quip at each other. My favorite, though, was OreSeur, Vin's kandra who is legally loyal but perhaps not always emotionally loyal. His conversations with Vin and eventually transformation were a real highlight of the book.

In my edition, the story runs over 700 pages; I do kind of feel like it could have been at least 100 pages shorter... but that's easy for me to say. And the putting of pieces into position is effective, because once the enormous climax came, I was totally invested; the defense of the city is great stuff with lots of great moments for all the key characters. The revelation of what's really been going on is well handled, and makes a great cliffhanger ending. So getting to the conclusion is a little rough at times, but once Sanderson reveals how the political plotline and quest plotline actually do coincide, the book pulls it off.

Review: Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Published: 2006
Acquired: July 2020
Read: September 2020

Mistborn: The Final Empire

by Brandon Sanderson

My sister has been after me to read Brandon Sanderson-- her favorite fantasy writer-- for years, and finally she bought the Mistborn trilogy for me to force me to read him. I found it hard to get into at first; the exact focus of the book was difficult to discern. Was this is a quest book about defeating a Dark Lord? The back cover of my Tor Teen edition made me think so, but no. Was it a heist novel? Seems like it for a bit, but no. I couldn't calibrate my generic expectations for what felt like too long. Once I figured out what the book was-- this long-term plan for rebellion alongside the growth and development of Vin as a character-- I came to really get into it and enjoy it. I also liked how, though not a quest novel, it played with the conventions of a quest novel, given what we ultimately learn about the origins of the book's Dark Lord. (Whose identity I called, though I don't know if I would have picked up on the clues without Sanderson's ostensibly spoiler-free chapter-by-chapter on-line annotations.) But if it's not a heist novel, then I think it doesn't need the large cast of characters with a diverse set of skills, many of whom never contribute much and who don't distinguish themselves. I did really like Vin, though, and Kelsier turns out to be pretty interesting... and my favorite character was Sazed, the loyal and thoughtful companion.

People-- such as my sister-- praise Sanderson for his worldbuilding. I agree that he has very thoughtful worldbuilding, and I enjoyed the ways he thought through some of the consequences of allomancy, with ideas such as the metal "roads" between cities, and how people avoided metal jewelry, and so on. But the way this was communicated was confusing, especially at first. Was allomancy a widely known skill that shaped society (as many details indicated), or something talked about in hushed tones (as Vin's lack of knowledge indicates)? I thought it confusing that the idea of Mistborn was introduced first, and then the idea of Allomancers was introduced, given that Mistborn have all the powers, and Allomancers have one each-- it's like Avatar: The Last Airbender beginning by explaining who the Avatar is, and then going back to explain what bending itself is later. And thank God for that metal chart in the back of the book, because I found all the pushing and pulling, internal and external stuff hard to keep track of.

All of this makes me sounds grumpy. But though I had trouble getting into it, I enjoyed it more the more I read it. The reveal of Kelsier's true plan was a good one, and the last chunk of the novel had me on the edge of my seat. It's a solid fantasy novel if not a great one, and I am willing to keep reading based on the assumption that given this was Sanderson's second published fantasy novel, he must have got even better as time went on.

Review: Shadows Beneath by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler

Hardcover, 366 pages
Published 2014

Acquired October 2019
Read December 2019

Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology
edited by Peter Ahlstrom

When I was teaching my science fiction creative writing class this fall, I found myself skimming the transcripts of the podcast Writing Excuses for writing exercises to do in class, or just insights. I still haven't really listened to the podcast, but I found it interesting enough to see if they'd done a textbook: there's definitely a market for a good sf writing textbook as far as I can tell. They haven't exactly, but they have published this, and I was intrigued enough to pick up Shadows Beneath.

Shadows Beneath contains one short story apiece by each of the podcast's four co-hosts. In addition to all the stories, though, each is usually accompanied by:

• transcripts of brainstorming sessions (from Writing Excuses episodes)
• early drafts
• transcripts of critique group sessions (also from WX episodes)
• "Track Changes" versions between the first full draft and the final draft
• essays about the process of writing the stories

It's great stuff. It made me wish I had assigned this as a textbook, and if I ever get to teach the class again, I might just. The strength of the book is that it lets you see experienced writers get at some of the more ineffable parts of the writing process. How do you go from an idea to a story? How do you decide what's important in the revision process? It made me think we ought to have spent more time on brainstorming and revision in class.

It's also of benefit that these are just four very solid stories. Of Kowal, I expected that on the basis of other work I've read by her, but I'd never read anything by Brandon Sanderson or Dan Wells before, and the only thing by Howard Tayler I've ever read (Schlock Mercenary) is awful.

Kowal's "A Fire in the Heavens" is neat, but hard to discuss without spoiling what I think ought to remain unspoiled. But suffice it to say, it's a good example of a "first contact" story. The revision is really neat: there's a lot of small alterations that improve the story (things like having the main characters pick a port from a map, rather than just blunder into the closest one), but also a big chunk added into the middle of the story (that it's impossible to imagine not being there, but it worked pretty good without it).

Wells's "I.E.Demon" was my favorite, a fun story about a group of soldiers in Afghanistan who discover that their new I.E.D.-neutralizing device actually runs off demonology... when it malfunctions. Quick and breezy and delightful in the way it thinks through the implications of it all. The revisions are useful, too: there's an abandoned first draft that takes way too long to get to the point, demonstrating how important it is to get a short story to its crisis point quickly. (It also shows the importance of voice, going from third to first person.)

Tayler's "An Honest Death" was pretty good, though I found the ending a little rushed. A company making immortality drugs finds itself being shook down by Death! The story's told from the perspective of the CEO's security guy, as he tries to figure out if that's really what's going on. Like "I.E.Demon," it has strong use of voice and character; I believed in this guy. The concept is neat, even if it took me a couple reads to get the ending. Again, the revisions were instructive.

Sanderson's "Sixth of the Dusk" was my least favorite; I more admired it than enjoyed it, though that might have just been the headspace I was in. Reading the revisions substantially improved my opinion of it, however, as it was interesting to see how Sanderson made the piece much more thematically rich through revision with just a few alterations to most of the story-- and completely redid the ending to bring things full circle in a much more compelling way. The alien biology concepts were really cool.

Incidentally, I think you can classify all four stories here as science fiction, even if they seem fantasy-ish in some ways. There's no magic in "A Fire in the Heavens"; it just takes place on another world with different astronomical principles. "I.E.Demon" has a demon in it, yes, but beyond that it functions like one of those old sf "problem stories" proceeding from the premise that demons are real; a competent man has to be clever to get out of a dangerous situation. "An Honest Death"'s ending makes it clear that we're not looking at Death Death per se, but a more sfnal take on the idea. And thought "Sixth of the Dusk" apparently takes place in Sanderson's Cosmere fantasy universe, on its own, it seems to be science fiction: everything can be explained by weird alien biology and extraterrestrial technology.

And the title is aptly chosen. It's a phrase from Sanderson's story, but it applies fairly literally and also metaphorically to all four. There's literally dangerous things below the surface in the stories by Wells (the demon), Tayler (Death), and Sanderson (sea creatures), and all four stories are about something that was simple but turns out to be much more complicated.

But the title also describes the book's insight into the writing process: as per the cover, we normally just see the poised little boat on the surface, sailing perfectly, and miss the shadows beneath: the false starts, the bad ideas, the arguments, the self-doubt. I've published over 150,000 words of fiction, but I still felt like I learned something from reading this book about how writers write, and I suspect you will too.