Mistborn

This particular book/series by Sanderson is a quickly-paced fantasy heist with a very cool magic system involving different metals. The main character, Vin, is a lowly commoner who ends up navigating the complex social web of nobility. It’s a fascinating progression with a fascinating and satisfying result.

This book has loosely inspired some aspects of action, nobility, and the gem-based magic system found in my Heroes of Time series. One review of my book Murdoch’s Choice called it “Mistborn on a Boat.”

I enjoyed the clever world-building and its realistic yet fantastical elements. The magic system intertwines beautifully with the world.

I found myself feeling for the characters and wondering about their connection with the world and its magic. As I learned about the plot, I kept trying to predict the big pay-off and was still surprised when I learned the truth!

The book is full of clever twists and turns, and I loved how it kept me guessing. I still get shivers thinking about some of the fight scenes. 

Brandon Sanderson is a master world-building storyteller. I absolutely loved this entire series. I had heard others talking about it, and wow, it did NOT disappoint.

His use of magic was stellar, and I believe that in the future, many writers will use the mechanics of what he has created. The characters were believable and flawed, two aspects I look for within a book.

Mistborn was my first experience with gazillion-selling epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson.

Kel and Vin are the two main characters, and I bonded with them immediately. IMHO what sets Mistborn apart from any other fantasy I’ve read is the magic system. I don’t want to spoil it, but it has something to do with metallurgy.

The twist is in worldbuilding, creating a world in which magic exists almost as a natural property, seemingly adding new laws of nature that are absolutely unique to the fantasy genre. It was so cleverly written and believable. I loved it.

I could populate this list with all of the books by Brandon Sanderson, but Mistborn, for me, has some of the most interesting magic systems. As a faith-based author, my own systems tend to center around deities. That is the concept that magic or power is not inherent to someone but must come from somewhere else. In Mistborn, even though the systems in a way are created by the deities that fashioned the universe, the scale of how much magic a person can use is specifically determined by their birth or race.

Moreover, there are three distinct systems… show more.

The dreary desolation of the ash-covered Final Empire sets the tone for this heist story featuring a ragtag band of revolutionaries intent on taking down the immortal Lord Ruler. From the dark streets and seedy bars where the heroes make their plans to the lux parties of the elite, the Final Empire is as much a part of the story as the characters. Most of the story takes place in Luthadel, the capital city where their target, the Lord Ruler, reigns over a city being crushed under the weight of so much inequity and hopelessness. Sanderson builds this world so… show more.

Brandon Sanderson is known for his detailed and unique systems of magic across his many series of novels, such that a significant body of writing by third parties has been dedicated toward trying to describe them all.

In the Mistborn series, he creates a system unlike anything I’ve seen before. A full understanding is best gained by reading the books, but in short, the magic in Mistborn, known as Allomancy, involves ingesting certain metals to gain very specific effects by “burning” them. The powers and limits of each are well-defined and balanced, and the reader can very quickly begin… show more.

In the first chapter, Sanderson’s character Keslier decides to ‘burn tin’. Burn tin? What does that mean? I was hooked. Final Empire is the first novel in the Mistborn series, and Sanderson teaches us his magic system of ‘digesting’ certain magical metals to create fantastic powers, through the eyes of a young magic user named Vin. While I may have occasionally questioned Sanderson’s grasp of physics as Vin bounces along airborne, repelling her body off a coin, I loved his commitment to his system. This is an example of an author and a story that goes all in, and it… show more.

The Mistborn series was recommended to me by a friend who knew the genres I enjoyed reading. And I must say that it didn’t disappoint. The characters were complex yet easy to follow, and it wasn’t hard to spot the protagonists Kelsier, the leader of a rebel group known as the Skaa, and his mentee Vin, who he recruited to help him overthrow the Lord Ruler. I began cheering for them both from the very beginning. The entire cast of characters, including those with mystical abilities, track through the entire series and kept me on the edge of my seat.  

I’m a sucker for heroes who rise from obscurity. Vin’s path from a street urchin to a pretend noblewoman to a blazing revolutionary kept me on the edge of my seat. She grapples with trust and treachery, power and corruption, and the authenticity of found family, all while her cruel older brother’s warnings play inside her head: trust no one, expect betrayal, accept abandonment as inevitable. 

But do her tragic origins really dictate her fate? Hers is a journey of hope, and I love every minute of it.