The Mistborn trilogy

Titles: The Mistborn trilogy – Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages
Author: Brandon Sanderson
My take: Seriously, if you are a fan of fantasy, read these books. They contain a lot of the traditional tropes and moments from all the cookie-cutter or just-plain-terrible high fantasy we’ve been subjected to over the past few decades, but in this case, a lot of the plot twists twisted in a different direction from what I expected, and that refreshing blindness to where the plot would go next – largely without dues ex machinas, woo! – was the first thing since Harry Potter to rekindle my love of the genre. Read it. READ IT!
Spoiler-free synopsis: In a world where ash rains from the sky, humans have a terrible caste system and God rules them from his palace in the main city, a small group of specially talented people get together with a small goal in mind – to try to steal a fortune in precious metal from God himself. But there’s something more to the plan. Their leader wants to overthrow God to do it



The book starts by introducing us to Vin, a member of a thieving crew. She’s one of the only girls, and lives a frightened and wary life because of it, but she has a secret – her “luck” which is what she calls her ability to touch the emotions of others and adjust their thinking ever-so-slightly.

She’s resigned to a life where this is her small measure of control, until two men – Kelsier and Dockson – come into her life. They tell her her luck is actually alomancy, one of the brands of magic in this world. When she ingests metal (tiny bits of it in food, drink, even the air) her body allows her to burn specific ones for specific affects. For instance, iron and steel allow her to push and pull on other metals, bringing them to her (or her to them if they’re too large) and vice versa.

They want her help on something large – they intend to overthrow god. God, in this case, is a tyrannical ruler called the Lord Ruler who seems invincible and immortal. He has changed the world so the sky is choked with ash and the plants grow orange and brown. The society is split into two tiers – the nobles, who have the power, the freedom (such as one has under the Lord Ruler); and the skaa, the slave class, essentially, used and disposed of.

To this end, Kelsier has gathered his group – himself (a Mistborn, or someone who can use all of the alchemical metals. Allomancers are either Mistborn or they are limited to a single metal’s use); Dockson, smart, good with numbers and adept at playing a noble; Breeze, a Soother, or allomancer who can sooth away certain emotions in people (a soother’s opposite is a Rioter); Ham, a philosophical Thug (someone who burns pewter to enhance their physical abilities, also called a pewter arm); Clubs, a furniture maker who can also burn copper to generate a copper cloud, which hides other allomancers’ magic from being detected by bronze burners (Seekers); and Yeman, the leader of a skaa resistance group.

The plan is to try to get the defensive forces out of the main city, the seat of the Lord Ruler, then riot the skaa, take the city over and depose the Lord Ruler. Kelsier plans to do that using what eh calls the 11th metal, though he’s not sure exactly what that metal does.

Vin’s part in all this is one of a spy. They teach her how to use her allomantic powers while grooming her to pose as the niece of a noble they have in their pocket. This will allow her to move among the nobles and learn the gossip they have of what might be going on, what alliances are forming, etc., since part of rioting the city will be getting the major noble houses to fight one another.

At first, Vin is resistant. She only got as far as she did alive because she didn’t trust anyone (anyone except her brother, Reen, despite the fact that he beat her and regularly threatened to leave her – which he eventually did). And Kelsier’s group works on trust. It takes her a while to even begin to not only open up, but to really even understand what trust is.

As she’s training to join society she also meets two more members of the group – Lord Reneaux, who for reasons unspecified cannot attend the parties himself, and Sazed, a Terris steward who teaches Vin the finer points of courtly life. He also turns out to be a feruchemist, another magic-user, who can store a number of things in metal (he calls them metalminds) and draw it out at will, everything from knowledge and memories to strength, eyesight, even attributes like speed or weight. And once she joins the balls of high society, she finds that a large part of her really *likes* it. She likes the glamour, the beauty, and she also like feeling beautiful.

I really liked this. They never let it become overwhelming, but they let the kickass woman have a feminine side as well. The fact that she can (in the second book of the series) fly into a keep and slaughter more than 300 armed soldiers by herself doesn’t have to mean that she can’t like just being female sometimes.

Anyway, at the balls, she meets a lot of disingenuous nobles, a lot of fakery, but she also meets Eland, the son of one of the major houses and a totally different person from the rest to Vin’s eyes. They hit it off, after a manner (he comes to her table at one dance, only to spend most of the time reading). As an outgrowth of this, she determines from talking to him that some nobles don’t like the way skaa are being treated either and talk, though in more theoretical terms, about overthrowing the Lord Ruler.

This puts her at odds with the crew, especially Dockson and Kelsier, who both really believe all nobles deserve to be put to death. However, Vin can’t let it go at that, and when things start to go to hell soon after, she does her best to protect Eland, who’s smart, but fairly useless at protecting himself or fighting others (though there is a cute moment late in the book when he tries to return the favor and rides to Vin’s rescue, only to have it proven rather flatly that he is *not* good at this sort of thing, leading to Vin saving him once more).

Needless to say, the plan does go vastly awry (where would be the drama in a plan coming together exactly as expected?). Emboldened by Kelsier, known as “The Survivor” because he was sentenced to work in a mine called the pits of Hathsin until his death but was the only person ever to escape, Yelen leads his men in a skirmish against a local garrison well before they’re ready, leading to the slaughter of most of the army as well as the Lord Ruler finding out about their plans. He orders a number of people put to death, including Lord Reneaux and Spook, the nephew of Clubs and another member of their crew. When Kelsier steps into the fray to stop their deaths, he manages to kill one of the Lord Ruler’s priests – something no one had done before – but in the process draws the Lord Ruler’s attention, and is killed almost effortlessly. The eleventh metal seems useless. However, as he’s facing death down, Kelsier announces that he’s the one think the Lord Ruler can’t kill – hope.

And it turns out he’s right. Kelsier’s defiance and death has unsettled the city. People take to the streets. The army has gone out to stamp out the remains of the rebellion army and to deal with another issue – Kelsier destroyed the Pit of Hathsin. The noble houses are all fleeing. So despite the cost – or maybe because of it – the plan has gone into motion after all. And while everyone else has their parts to play, Vin feels lost – until she figures out that as the other Mistborn in the group, her part is the biggest of all – she must kill the Lord Ruler.

She succeeds. The fun here is really in the details, and I won’t go too deep into it, but she manages to figure out from information both she and we have that he’s using both allomancy and feruchemy (the ability Sazed used) which allows him to store and then use exponentially his abilities – including age, which is how he stays young. Figuring this out, she finds a way to win. Eland and Breeze and the others manage to quell the city.

Yay, end of story!

But wait! As he was dying, the Lord Ruler tells Vin that she doesn’t understand what he’s doing for the world, that she’s doomed them all. Is he right?

On to book 2.

Eland has been put in charge of the government, and used his not-inconsiderable knowledge about political theory to craft a semi-representational government. However, it’s looking like this might come back to bite him in the ass as an army (then two, then three) march on the city and besiege it. The government is set up so the king can be deposed by vote – and with the promise of being spared in return for their surrender, many of the leaders feel Eland’s desire to keep their land free to prevent skaa servitude will doom them.

Vin’s days are mostly spent in bodyguarding duty. She, along with the being who was playing Lord Reneaux, a kandra who can ingest a body and then copy it perfectly, are spending a lot of time just trying to thwart attacks. However, there is also a new variable – another mistborn named Zane, who comes and talks with her, spars with her, seems obsessed with her.

I’m not going to say much about this book and almost none of the third because even a synopsis of the third book is more or less bigger spoilers for the first than I’d care to give. But suffice it to say even a politician and diplomat of Eland’s caliber can’t keep three enemy armies around forever without there eventually being a big, pitched battle, and the outcome of the fight – not to mention some of the things they learn along the way - change the landscape of the world.

So… book 3
Not going to say much here. We get introduced to another new mistborn. We finally get to meet the Big Bad who’s been pulling the strings all along. And the entire world is in a race against time to try to save itself from utter destruction.

This book honestly had more plot twists that I didn’t see coming than anything I read in a while. It really was a worthy way to wind up the trilogy and felt like an ending – no obvious sequal-baiting from it, which I liked.