I must say that I am extremely pleased with this book. The twists and surprises are very twisty and surprising (with a few exceptions), but not so much that I feel like Brandon was just trying to shock us. In short, satisfyingly surprising, without resorting to LOST-esque cheap shocks.
The whole idea of this series is very interesting. I can't really explain it here, because it would take too long, but I will give a brief overview. If you are someone who hates surprises, like Dad or James (who am I kidding- neither of them know how to get to my blog), read on. If you like to enjoy books, stop reading now and pick up Mistborn at the library.
Mistborn takes place in a ruined world ruled by an evil despot (so, the same setting as 2/3 of fantasy books). In the first book, a group of thieves set up an elaborate plot to overthrow the Lord Ruler, the god/emperor figure. They manage to free the slave-caste of people and kill the Lord Ruler. As he dies, he tells them that in killing him they have doomed the world. Bummer.
The second book focuses on the "now what" question that most books ignore. The world has had a thousand years with no questions about who is in charge because the Lord Ruler kept order by force, killing anybody he had to. Now that he was gone, who should rule? How do you keep order in a world whose god was just killed? The empire falls apart, with various noble families grabbing what they can and some members of the Lord Ruler's old administrative body taking power in other places. This book asks interesting questions about right and wrong ways to keep order.
In the third book, we start to find out that the Lord Ruler wasn't that bad of a guy. He was in a very tough situation and, although his actions weren't ideal, he was generally trying to do the right thing. He (and the whole world around him) were in the middle of a war between the Gods (no one else knew about this war, because they thought that the Lord Ruler himself was god). He ruled by force in order to ensure that he stayed in power, because he was the only person capable of destroying Ruin (one of the two Gods) when the time came. The story follows the same crew of criminals as the other two as they begin to discover their roles in this battle. In the end, of course, good triumphs over evil (because that's what's supposed to happen), but it's not a cheap super-happy Scooby-Doo ending.
In all of these books, Brandon Sanderson takes jabs at standard fantasy cliches. For instance, the Good Guys and Bad Guys are often related, but seem to have no qualms about killing their father, mother, best friend, etc. as long as they were on the other side. In Mistborn, you have a married couple of Good Guys talking:
"You have to admit that you're unusual, Vin.... Plus, you've managed- in our short three years together- to kill not only my god, but my father, my brother, and my fiancee. That's some kind of homicidal hat trick."
I think my favorite thing about these books is how consistent they are. The way things work in the first book is the same way they work in the later books. That is not to say that there is no development, but just that there's no Harry Potter magic that works this way in one book and that way in another (but that's a rant for another post).
In conclusion to a very long post, if you haven't picked up Mistborn, you should. It's on sale for the next week or so at Barnes and Noble.
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