Brandon Sanderson
Completed 8/25/2016 Reviewed 8/25/2016
4 stars
Mistborn is another book club selection. I didn’t vote for it, but I didn’t mind it
winning. It has always been one of those
books I should get around to reading. I
knew it had a lot of praise, so I guess my expectations were a little
high. When I actually opened the books,
I found it difficult to get into, to the tune of about a quarter of the
book. Finally, I started to like it, adventure
revved up and most importantly, I felt like I was getting into the head of Vin,
the main character.
Vin is an orphan, half noble, half skaa (lower class). She survives as a thief, running around with
gangs. She has a gift for luck, making
things go her way. Then she stumbles
upon a gang that shows her that her gift is much larger than she thought. And this gang has a much larger mission than
just stealing. They want to overthrow
the tyrannical government that keeps the skaa as slaves to the nobility. She joins the group, growing in her powers
and trying to help with the coup.
The book is clearly a statement on the evils of slavery and
classism. But it also touches on the
seduction of money and power. The best
parts of the book for me were the scenes where Vin is disguised as a noble
woman, attending balls, and trying to spread and gather rumors as to the state
of the nobility. She often reflects on
the comforts of having money to dress and eat well versus where she was before
this mission, sleeping in alleys and eating what she could find.
The book is also quite a complex universe. Sanderson imbues this world with magic, but
it’s a very specific kind. It uses
metals to produce a desired effect, including having sway over people, seeing
into the future, and travelling at the speed of racing horses. Called Allomancy, it is the gift that Vin
has. One problem I had with the book is
that there’s a lot of description of the different aspects of Allomancy. I found this to be fairly boring. However, when Vin is using it, the action
soars, reminiscent of the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. There are times when she’s following Kelsier,
her mentor, and times when she’s actually doing battle. Both types of scenes are riveting, as is
being inside Vin’s head during these scenes.
As I mentioned, the book goes through a lot of exposition
with the Allomancy. It also goes into
great details in the plot to overthrow the government. I found the details to be rather dry and my
mind wandered a lot here. Unfortunately
I think the dryness is necessary because it all does make sense when the status
quo does begin to unravel and when the magic is in use. But at 650 pages, I thought some judicious
editing could have disposed of some of the extraneous exposition.
There are a lot of characters in the book as well. I felt that I couldn’t get into the heads of
the other characters as much as was available to me. Particularly, Kelsier, Vin’s mentor and the
leader of this group of revolutionary thieves, is basically a second main
character. There are a fair number of
scenes where he is the point of view.
But I never felt him the way I felt Vin.
Kelsier was more like a major secondary character, and the scenes with
his POV were somehow out of place when we should be focusing on Vin.
Even with the complex magical system, I was only going to
give this book three stars. Fortunately,
the ending is quite a page turner. It
makes up for the unnecessary length of the book and the lack of empathy I felt
for Kelsier. I also appreciated the fact
that the book wraps up nicely considering there’s five more books in the
series. So I settled on four stars out
of five.
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