Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Set in a world dominated by ash-falls from volcanic eruptions Mistborn: the Final Empire takes place a thousand years after the evil emperor established his oppressive dictatorial regime. In this heavy-handed feudal society a band of thieves and con-men come together and arrange a heist to steal the treasury of the immortal Lord Ruler and take down the empire.
Staged as heist story the premise is delightful by itself and could be entertaining on its own with solid execution, a suitable plan and entertaining characters, which this book has. But Mistborn doesn’t content itself to leave the story there; it goes farther, wrapping mysteries of world, religion and cosmology around the clever magic mechanics, con-artistry, political manipulations, and clever sleight-of-hand heist planning. The execution of the plan sets off a cascade of events that leads to an escalating sense of urgency and raised stakes that builds throughout the novel culminating in a carefully balanced explosion of success and failure and satisfyingly inevitable plot-turns.
This novel shows Sanderson growing in his ability to develop characters. The characters are larger than life, with extreme manifestations of loyalty, courage and ego, but they are personally motivated in ways that the characters in Elantris were not. Kelsier is one of my favorite Sanderson characters, motivated by past trauma and proceeding to action with his particular mix of suicidally ambitious planning, determination and a rock hard core of anger. Vin’s character progression is grounded by her change in situation and while the transition is probably too easy we want to believe that she can overcome her deep-seated distrust of neglect and betrayal because she is made of heroic stuff. Her scars are never ignored throughout, nor are Kelsier’s, they motivate tension with others and the world around them that they react and respond to with varying levels of heroic success and failure. They are not the deepest or most realistic characters, but they are heroic, grounded in their personal stories and motivated to action.
Sanderson is not a flowery writer. I enjoy the works of a masterful prose-crafter from time to time, but I generally prefer an unobtrusive style that gets out of the way. In this book Sanderson does that well: the writing is simple; the language is clear. It doesn’t dazzle, but it certainly doesn’t get in the way.
What this novel does particularly well is set up an imaginative and detailed world with deeply thought out magic with ecological, sociological, political and religious consequences and excellently pacing the introduction to the world and to the magic system. Everything hangs together and in the end the history of the world, the character motivation and action, the mechanics of the magic system and the cosmology all come together for a very satisfying conclusion.