Mistborn: The Final Empire
After writing about a series coming to an end in my last book post, I thought I would write about a series (or rather, trilogy) that I’m in the middle of right now.
I discovered Brandon Sanderson on Chad Orzel’s blog review of Elantris, actually. I read the review, though, “eh, maybe I’ll peak at it at some point,” and then saw that Sanderson (the author of Elantris) had actually responded to Chad. At the time, I guess it had never consciously occured to me that authors would go looking for reviews of their own work. Of course, it’s obvious in retrospect that they would, but I didn’t realize at the time how easy it was for them to find such things.
Anyway, Sanderson sort of suggested Mistborn as something that would redeem some of the “saggy” qualities of Elantris (read the post), and — intrigued as much by the author as by the review of Elantris and the suggestion of Mistborn — I found some Mistborn sample chapters on the author’s website. I was hooked, so I checked out the book from the library.
And I liked it! It was engrossing, fun, and I think mostly well-paced. Some of the castle intrigue was a bit long, but there was enough tension that the scenes held my attention. The twists and turns of the book were quite good, and the ending was quite satisfying, leaving the ominous threat looming overhead.
One thing that always plagues fantasy books, especially heavily plotted ones where there are twists and turns and jump surprises (see Harry Potter), is that there are times when one might go, “Woah, where did that come from?” It sucks, because then the suspension of disbelief breaks and you feel the heavy hand of the author. Thankfully, that phenomenon only really struck once or so in the book (near the end; I’ve ROT13′d the spoiler: jura Znefu pbzrf onpx, erfheerpgrq bhg bs abjurer), but strike it did, nonetheless. So not a perfect book, by any means.
But I still liked it very much. The world is very interesting and vivid, which I like. Sanderson manages to sketch the world quite well without feeling as though he’s spending pages on boring exposition and scene-painting. He uses broad strokes to set the scene, and then uses details introduced by the characters in order to fill in the smaller features. The magic system is quite cool. And the characters are mostly very well done, though the main character’s inner monologue is exasperating at times. I’m not a fan of inner monologue, as it’s usually a very blunt technique, but I tolerate it if I like the book otherwise, and I very, very much do.
All in all, a good, very modern, fantasy that hints at greater things to come.
