1 December 2012

Mistborn: The Final Empire


What a long time has it been! I actually finished this book before starting Legion, but for some reason I just could not bring myself to post a review about it. But now thats over! Thankfully, so is the book.

Let me explain. 

If you are like me, it is inevitable you've heard a lot regarding Brandon Sanderson. More specifically, you've heard a lot of people singing his praises. You've read a lot of rave reviews of his books. You've ached to read him, and enjoy the panacea-in-book-form so wonderfully advertised among fantasy fans. And then you do read him. And all falls flat. 

To be fair, that is the way hype usually works. Scarce are the things that end up being as good as they are famed to be. Not to mean everything said about Sanderson is false, or that he is a bad writer, but in my opinion, some of the things he is really good at ultimately (and ironically) get in the way of his own stories.

Yes, I have a gripe with his magic systems. Or, more exactly, I have a problem with the way he over-feeds us with explanation regarding his magic systems. I can appreciate the fact that they are very well developed, and all that. But I can't bear to  read explanations about the intricacies of their workings every now and then. If something is well-developed, that should be apparent by itself. There is really no need for Brandon to shine a proverbial limelight upon it the way he does, sometimes making the whole thing feel more like the tutorial of an RPG than a novel proper.  In this regard, I admit I am more of a fan of the way Steven Erikson writes the magic in his Malazan series.

And hey, you might say, thats not really specific to this book! And in a way its true. Still, bear with me. As far as I've seen, this flaw is also somewhat present in Warbreaker, the only other novel of Sanderson I've read so far (thought I didn't manage to finish it).

Now, continuing on, boring explanations are not the only problem we'll face. Indeed, the real killer is the feeling of blandness that emanates from many of the characters. Besides Kelsier and Vin, most of them don't have that feel of solidness, of not just being words and a name. As a result, there's not much empathy invested from our part unless the affected in any scene are either of the two aforementioned. 

To his credit, Brandon built an 'after-the-end' world that, unlike many of his secondary characters, does manage to feel real (I would say alive, but the world portrayed is not really in that good of a shape). It captivated me from the very first line. And it was the world that made me stay interested when all the other things I disliked urged me to leave. This in itself felt somewhat refreshing (thought not ideal), because usually it is the inverse that tends to happen.

About the plot I won't say much. It feels somewhat typical at first, the story revolving around the efforts to defeat an evil overlord and all that. Yet this specific evil overlord is akin to a god, and this, together with the well done world-building,  gives the story a certain edge over most in the defeat-the-evil-overlord genre.

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