Book Review: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

Once, a hero arose to save the world. A young man with a mysterious heritage courageously challenged the darkness that strangled the land.

He failed.

For a thousand years since, the world has been a wasteland of ash and mist ruled by the immortal emperor known as the Lord Ruler. Every revolt has failed miserably.

Yet somehow, hope survives. Hope that dares to dream of ending the empire and even the Lord Ruler himself. A new kind of uprising is being planned, one built around the ultimate caper, one that depends on the cunning of a brilliant criminal mastermind and the determination of an unlikely heroine, a street urchin who must learn to master Allomancy, the power of a Mistborn.

~

 Though My Window

I heard many great things about this book, praises of its genius, cleverness, deepness, surprises, and beauty. Needless to say my expectations built rather high. So did this book meet my expectations?

Short answer: Yes, it did.

Long answer: Wow. Brandon Sanderson created a entire world real enough to step into within the first few chapters (not that I'd ever want to step into it; I'd probably run away screaming if given the chance).  Nay, possibly from the prologue. His writing is confident and clear, leading the reader deftly through every plot twist and agony without any unintended confusion along the way. His characters spring into life with heartache and mystery. Indeed, mystery is thick as mist in this story, as the reader tries to anticipate the upcoming twists and the truth of the matter, despite what everyone in the book believes. It was fantastically written, an incredible exercise on the imagination, if exhausting. But before you go rushing off to read this book, I want to give some caution. It's a tough, dark book with some grisly stuff in it. You might want to be aware of the content first.

Violence: Without a doubt, this is probably the largest matter of concern. A lot of people die. A LOT of people. Bad guys and sometimes good guys kill with indifference, and some bad guys like to do it just for fun. Battle scenes are super intense and exciting, but not really gory. There is, however, a couple gory scenes of the aftermath of some killings that are kind of gross. And there's some creatures going around that are kind of disturbing to picture, especially one sort of creature that isn't much weirder than some of the creatures we have on microscopic level, but this creature isn't on microscopic level. Not really violent, just ew. I've heard it said that the violence in here is PG-13. Book-wise, perhaps so. But if it was translated to the movie screen, I'm guessing it would be R, if only for some of the innocent casualties. However, if you're not super sensitive to violence, I don't think it will be a problem. I think it might have been a problem for me a couple years ago, but I was able to handle it now.

Sexual: In this area, I was SO tremendously impressed!!! I kind of started to get the impression that if a book was labeled Adult, it probably was sexually inappropriate. But I heard that this wasn't the case in this book, and I was so delighted to discover that this was true! Though there is a romance thread in here (a very cute, suspenseful, and clever one, I might add) it was totally chaste. Thank you, Brandon Sanderson, for not thinking good writing in romance includes dropping the reader in the mind and body of the characters as they kiss. In fact, thank you for pointing out that a romance in a book can just be fine without revolving around the inevitable kiss (because there wasn't one, believe it or not).

The area in which readers would want to be aware in sexual content is the sexual reference. It is common knowledge amongst the people that a nobleman can take any skaa (peasant) woman he pleases, so long as he kills her afterwards to prevent any unusually gifted children amongst the skaa. So that's really awful, but while the reader is aware stuff like that happens, there is no scene that comes anywhere near this content. And Vin, our heroine, as a street urchin in quite used to making herself appear as unfeminine and unattractive as possible, as she knows how dangerous that is on the streets.

Language: A smattering of h--l, possibly bas---d, wh--e, and d--m

Magic: Just at the beginning, I was concerned that the magic elements in here would consist of, "Here drink this and you'll become really powerful." But it's way, way, way more complex then that. Allomancy involves drawing certain powers off certain metals. And only certain people have it, though the reasons for these gifted people is at first mysterious. Yes, Allomancers do swallow certain little bits of metal to draw internal power, but as it is pointed out, they have to use them up rather quickly before the stomach digests them and gets metal poisoning. Indeed, some impure metals could kill you altogether. And other metals are external, the Allomancer using them from the outside. There are a lot of rules and a lot of consequences, but all easily explained, so that it started feeling like a science we don't have in our world rather than magic.

Spiritual: The author has created an entire world here, so there are religions. Tons of them actually, and one character is often trying to match the most fitting religion to the other characters, often to their chagrin. But such religions are supposed to be forgotten, because the evil Lord Ruler in this book proclaims himself to be God. Which brings up an interesting problem in the book. Most people think our heroes are insane to challenge the Lord Ruler, even wrong. After all, if he's God and makes the rules, all the evil stuff he's doing really isn't evil, right? But our hero, Kelsier, is not so convinced by the Lord Ruler's supposed deity. He's ruled with absolute power for the past thousand years, but there are legends of a time before when the sky was actually blue, the grass green, and there were beautiful things called flowers. Crazy, huh? There are even rumors that the Lord Ruler is not immortal, but can be killed. Nobody's just figured out what his weakness is yet. And there seem to be other powers far greater than the Lord Ruler, ancient powers that come far behind his reign, powers that he seems to try to hide or attribute to himself. The book isn't written from a Christian world-view here, but neither is it written from an atheist view.

Conclusion: I'm not sure how the rest of the series will go, but this book stood pretty well on its own.

I understand now why this book is labeled Adult. But I don't think this means just an adult audience. It's a book that really gets you thinking, that really challenges, inspires, encourages, and prepares the hard road of life. Because of the tough, violent, and sometimes sad content, I don't think it's one kids should read, but I think it suits a mature young adult as they prepare for (or work through) the tough stuff in life. 

This is a story where darkness has already won. The evil ruler reigns supreme. And yet, our heroes arise and realize that there is a choice. To trust rather than betray, to smile rather than cringe, to have courage instead of fear, to love despite the risks, to sacrifice yourself rather than hide, to have faith rather then doubt, and to know that instead of living in despair, you can live in beautiful, beautiful hope.