Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another exciting adventure story filled with magic, fascinating worldbuilding and a tightly planned plot that culminates with a series of rapid-fire twists and reveals like we have come to expect from Brandon Sanderson. Shadows of Self picks up a year after Alloy of Law left off, it continues some of the plot threads and pays off story elements that had been built at the very beginning of the first book. The turmoil that was building in the city of Elendel as the social unrest and class tensions inherent in an industrialized city with wealthy nobility are stoked by the same shadowy group that Wax and Wayne tangled with in book one, but the events don’t follow directly from the Alloy of Law and many of the questions raised by book one remain open throughout. It is also more firmly tied to the first Mistborn trilogy and we are given some glimpses of the developments that happened between.
Darker than Alloy of Law but still geared as a more fun adventure than some of Sanderson’s more epic works. The book has moments of clever character humor and the cast remains fun and enjoyable throughout: on the archetypal side, but more nuanced and personally motivated than a lot of action characters. Wax and Wayne are entertaining as always and we are are given a look at Wayne’s childhood and learn some about what motivated him to go into the Roughs and that led him to become a Lawman as well as how he started working with Wayne. Steris and Merasi also develop: Merasi moving on from her initial star-struck crush on Wax and Steris gaining some humanity that makes her obsessive planning and social awkwardness endearing.
*Spoilers: Mistborn*
Sanderson’s work as a whole frequently explores the concept of deification. The process of human characters becoming or attaining powers that make them into gods. In this series we are given an interesting perspective on this as the gods of this world were all characters in the previous Mistborn trilogy. It is interesting to see these religions as they have developed over the intervening centuries and it is particularly interesting as we actually get scenes where Sazed in his new form as Harmony interacts with Wax. The situation of a fallible god manipulating his subjects raises questions about free will and predestination that are troubling in this world and it is interesting to see how Sazed has tried to deal with these problems. He makes a good character, but he doesn’t make a very good god. The answers to the problem of pain and the afterlife become unsatisfactory and borderline terrifying when given by a fallible human who is near omnipotent but not omniscient.