Review: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

 

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 2.7 of 5 stars

2.7★

Buckle up, this is gonna be a controversial opinion.
I have to start by saying that if I had read this at 13, it would have been my favourite book at the time. Unfortunately, I'm 20, played DnD already and seen lots of media with the same premise in different fonts, so I was waiting to see what makes this story different. After making a list with everything I loved and despised, here are my conclusions in no specific order and a completely subjective filter.
I was very into the noble drama, Elend and Vin were definitely my favourite characters (not that I cared much for many others, aside from Kelsier and Sazed, I feel the rest of the band lacks depth), and Shan is going to make a great point in the upcoming movie. With that said, I couldn't bring myself to actually care about the politics, either because I felt it didn't have much impact or because... I don't know, I watch the news, it feels the same. It all revolves around one big issue- defeating Lord Legislator by bringing the skaa together and the houses against each other- and barely moves from it, which, for 650 pages, feels like it's dwelling too much.
While the world-building has potential, especially for a feature-length or a campaign, I found that the author was so immersed in it that he brought too much detail into the narrative, to the point that characters are shoved to the background often, and lore dumps become mind-numbing. I found myself dissociating through a few scenes that could have easily been made more dynamic by making training montages or exploration quests.
It all builds up to a problem in pacing. While the beggining its understandable, as its on book's nature to have a lore introduction and a heavy start, it drags too long, the first 300 pages with barely anything but context (and dreadful repetitive descriptions of the city) and one, maybe two twists coming. It's not till the last 100, maybe 150 pages that it actually starts to pick up and immerse me into it and by the time it gets me hooked, death is everywhere (gotta admit, Sanderson nails a good death scene) and the main plot is solved. Which, for a 3-book saga, I expected a bit more time on that (again, easily fixable by giving more character depth and sidequests for personal build, but oh well). Incredibly slow in some areas, incredibly fast in others, if only it would show me the magic system rather than telling me about it, I would have gotten more into it.
I feel I'm being too hard; epic fantasy just ain't my thing unless it has some unique plot point, or some pizzaz. It was just an interesting read.

If you know me, I felt the same as when reading Harrow the Ninth. The difference is that I'm more interested in space magic, gritty romance (yes, I was kicking my feet to Elend and Vin in dances as much as Harrow and Gideon in a pool), and side characters having a personality aside from a plot purpose.

I get why people like it, just not made for me. I will watch the movie and want to play the game tho, the metal magic system was something I'm willing to explore more.
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