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: 2016
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

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.