Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson: I am so HAPPY

December 08, 2016

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson: I am so HAPPY

Mistborn

Brandon Sanderson

What happens when the Hero fails to defeat the ultimate evil? Everything goes to Hades apparently.

In the country the Skaa people are slaves to any noble with enough coin to keep them mostly alive while in the cities they have three options. Work in factories until the day the die, beg on the streets, or join a thieving crew.

And holy cow! Is it depressing! Enter Keslsier a man who escaped a death sentence gathers as many thieves, conmen and Skaa rebels as he can to overthrow the Lord Ruler. Who is apparently the immortal, un-killable and hopelessly corrupted Hero.

In this world magic comes from ‘burning’ metals. Which means that certain people can burn iron and gain the ability to ‘push’ metal away from them (at least I think it was iron). Then there were people who could burn say pewter which would make them strong enough to lift giant rocks or jump from the top of a tower to the ground without breaking anything. Of course there are also people who could control all the ten metals.

And they're called Mistborn.

And it was absolutely amazing! I am in love and I need the second one immediately! And the third one! All of them! All the Mistborn! The magic was beautiful. The characters were beautiful. The World building was jaw-dropping. I am so incredibly pleased.

Characters

Vin: Tiny abused little Mistborn. (Which is not a spoiler BTW. It’s literally in the title)

Poor Vin was so beat up. All her life she was fighting to stay alive. First as her mother went crazy. Then her brother who beat her. Even her thieving crew who wouldn’t have blinked at her dead corpse on the street. Basically she survived by being invisible. It was incredibly sad to see how low her self-worth was. Then Kelsier came along and was all like ‘this one. I like her. I should show her what friend ship is ’

which was an adorable relationship.

Kelsier: The entire world’s reserve of sass personified.

I loved Kelsier soooo much. He was angry and tortured but he still laughed and joked and helped people. But amazingly as the book went on it’s reveled more and more that Kelsier is extremely manipulative. Seriously manipulative which was terrifying.

Do you guys remember when you learned that

*spoilers for a book that is literally almost ten years old*

Dumbledore wasn’t actually the perfect, selfless mentor character he seemed. That was Kelsier. And it was brilliant.

Elend: I’m really only talking about this guy because he’s the love interest. He didn’t insult me as much as some of the other love interests I’ve read but . . . He won’t be one of my favorites. Compared to some of the other characters Elend was just sort of boring.

Probably because of all the characters in Mistborn he was the only one without some kind of tragic backstory and he was really quite naïve compared to the rest of them.

Sazed: Somebody on Goodreads I believe it was Cait Grace from Paperfury described Sazed as a sort of super powered Jarvis.

I agree. Sazed had a different (spoiler censored) power as opposed to Allomancy but he was also so prim and proper all the time. It was hilarious.

Likes

World-building: It was so pretty! The cool thing about fantasy is that it can always be paired with pretty much every other genre ever. Mystery and fantasy, Romance and Fantasy, the list could go on and on. Mistborn was a surprising Dystopian Fantasy that I actually really loved. Usually Dystopian and I don’t’ get along because . . . I’m kind of fond of a world with (idk) hope in it.

But Mistborn either let the fantasy setting, or the sass of the characters distract from all the beheadings/stabbings/death.

Metal magic! It was lovely and I want it. I really liked the way Sanderson presented it in the narrative. As far as I can remember there were no (or at least relatively small) info dumps while still painting a complete picture of the entire magic system. Which was massively cool of course.

Everything about Kelsier: He’s my most recent favorite mentor character. He was all sass and smiles but oh dear lord he was a deceptive little punk. I adored him.

Those diary pages: At the beginning of every chapter there were these exerts from the diary of the Hero AKA the Lord Ruler. It was terrifying! Watching this strange, rather heartfelt man fight his way from one strange land to the next all the while knowing that he failed and become a worse evil than whatever nameless thing he’s trying to stop now.

It was almost depressing but hard to look away from like an explosion in a movie.

Dislikes

There were a lot of characters: and I mean a lot. High Fantasy always seems to be over saturated with characters but this one was particularly so. There were at least six or seven characters involved in the heist/rebellion and honestly I kind of . . . stopped trying to keep track of them after a while.