I Read Brandon Sanderson's "Mistborn"

I'm hitting the side of my head in hopes that words like "burning" and "Pushing" will fall out so they can go back to being regular human words.

The joke was that when I finished Blood Meridian I wanted something to “ruin that” for myself, so I went with a famously mid writer in hopes to get something fun to complain about, but my plan kind of backfired because I find myself kind of detached now that I’ve put The Final Empire down, just kind of aimlessly annoyed rather than full of criticism and nitpicks. I was skimming the last few pages once the final fight was over, eyes fully glazed as the surviving cast amicably nodded at one another while pondering about what happened.

I’ve heard from many people (including Brandon Sanderson himself in fact) that he’s just kind of an average writer with a staggering writing speed and a pocket industry he made himself, and I’d say that’s a fair assessment. It’s a well paced book that just kind of goes in and out of you without leaving much for you to think on. Characters have roles in the story and they quip and sass and give speeches about magic or injustice and it’s all so incredibly ‘just kind of there’ that I can’t get especially angry one way or another. At best I could call it ‘serviceable’; at worst I’d say it is deeply rote.

Everything serves the story in the strictest sense — and I do mean everything — and there’s just not enough time paid to any one aspect of it because Brandosando wants to hit those next plot points. This does give it high energy, but nothing ever surprises you. Characters exist not to evolve or be tested and grow but to engineer more fight scenes and the next plot point. If I unfocus my eyes, I can almost see The Final Empire being the origin story of “sex scenes don’t advance the plot” style discourse. The team has their roles, and they serve them because a rebellion must happen; but I can almost hear Brandon himself shrugging and going, but really, who cares about any of that? None of them really come into conflict, they don’t fight or argue, and when they do it’s largely offscreen. You’re here for magic training scenes and banter and romantic quibbling.

The army they raise is a plot device, so when they all die it doesn’t mean anything, nor does it when the Noble Houses all go to war or the underclass unite against them and the Lord Ruler. It just kind of is that thing that’s supposed to happen next to facilitate the epic fight scene. Elend is there to be Vin’s romantic foil, but he’s also there so he can facilitate a real government when the rebellion is over. I would almost applaud BrandoSando for saying “hey rebellion rules until you have to build a government, how about a guy who reads theory?” but since the writer doesn’t read theory even the deeper implications of that is left to ‘don’t worry about it.’

Vin herself is the center of the story and you keep expecting some time and care paid to her blossoming femininity or abusive past biting her in the ass in some way. But again, it never does. The whole book is streamlined so even curiously interesting stuff like slowly losing the ‘self’ that she knew from the streets is considered then done away with. She can’t bungle a diplomatic issue due to inexperience, because then the rebellion might fail and if that happens then there’s no final fight with the Lord Ruler. What’s even the point of having a plan if you won’t show it falling apart a little? And no, the army getting owned by the Garrison doesn’t count, that happens off screen.

I can see how “it has such a cool magic system” became the highlight of this series, because little else leaves an impression. It all feels like a vague outline of a story, to be improved on later, expanded and tweaked with more twists and turns and trials, but it isn’t. Kelsier being a martyr should be some kind of dramatic fall of the heart of the team, but even when it happens it’s clear he planned it and it’s not like his relationship to Vin (or anyone else) was especially noteworthy. It’s like getting sad that Obi-Wan dies in A New Hope. What else is the mentor figure supposed to do for the plot precisely?

The most interested I ever got was in the conclusion when Vin repeatedly bashes her head against the problem of how to kill the final boss and each solution presented, like the tenth metal or the future-images or the spikes in the back all fail. It feels very tense to have characters in the final ten percent of a book look at the final barrier to victory and go, ‘what the fuck do we have to do?‘ It actually did a good job in a show-don’t-tell way of just how terrifying the Lord Ruler’s immortality truly is. I just wish the entire rest of the book worked that way, with political and physical problems presented as real barriers to the cast instead of a checklist before a conclusion is earned.

I dunno, 3/5 I guess? Do I have to math out a number that means just ‘it’s okay’?