The Mistborn Trilogy: A Review

I love talking to fellow book lovers about books.  When you've read the same, you can talk for hours about characters, plots and the like and when you are in need of a new read, they can give you recommendations of good books.  That's how I learned about the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.  A number of my friends have read the series and praised it as one of the better fantasy sets that they have read.  After finishing the trilogy, I must agree with their assessment.

The trilogy includes The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages but there are later spin-off books that take place within the same world.  This review is focused on the trilogy. 

Image via Google

Image via Google

In the first book, The Final Empire, the reader is introduced to a red and black world.  The Lord Ruler, seen as god, reigns over the populace of Nobles and the Skaa, the lowercase slave-like people with his police-like Obligators and Inquisitors. Ash falls daily from the sky, obscuring the sun and causing a layer of perma-dirt.  The skaa are forced to work in the ash while the nobles supervise.  Intermingling is forbidden and any mixed offspring will be killed.  At night, dark mists rise over everything.  Most people are afraid of going out in the mist, unless that is, they are mistborn.  Mistborns have the ability to burn certain metals within their stomachs and in doing so gain superhuman abilities/powers.  People who are mistings are able to burn on of the many allomantic metals, but mistborn can burn them all.

The scene is now set.  In the first book, we meet a group of thieves who, through a twist of events and the ambitious idea of a man named Kelsier, take on the task of overthrowing the Lord Ruler.  There is so much that I could say here, but I really don't want to get into the nitty-gritty and accidentally spoil part of the book. In sum, as they proceed forward with their plan, certain factors lead them to question whether the Lord Ruler should have been overthrown in the first place.  Does he in fact stand for a greater good?  And is there something worse waiting to attack?

Likes
As with the last few fantasy epics I have read, I found myself really enjoying the creativity of the world.  I felt like I was falling through the pages and into the ash covered world.  I could feel the skaa's frustration and I wanted to help them fight for their freedom.  I found, too, that the world itself was very unique from the fantasy series that I have read before.  Like the world found in the Death Gate Cycle, I can't say that I can compare it to anything I have read.

 I also really liked the characters.  I really wanted to follow their story and learn how it ended.  They were very distinct with their own quirks.  I found myself attached to young Spook in the third book.  He doesn't play as big roles within the first two books and when his perspective came around, I was cheering him on.  TenSoon, a creature called a kandra (they can ingest dead bodies and in doing so become a copy), was also one of my favourite characters.

Dislikes
Of the three books, the second was my least favourite.  It was like the interim period and there was a bit of a lull in the plot and I felt like I was waiting a long time before we really got into the main events in the story.  While I still enjoyed the book, it was not as engaging as the first and the third.  I know that some people are not a fan of books that switch perspectives every chapter or so, and so that could also be seen as a negative.  However, this strategy worked well for Sanderson's story and I can't see how he could have delivered the story as well without the changing points of view.

Overall
I think that this series has favourite potential.  I'm not a big "book favouriter," and my two main criteria are (1) would I read it again/have I read it again or (2) has it left my brain spinning, in awe and in a contented place.  This series satisfies the latter.  While I could predict at times certain events, there were many more that surprised me until the end.  And the way it ended.  Whoa.  Whoa-whoa! A definitely recommended for fantasy lovers.