Mistborn: The Final Empire
Rating: 1/2 Nice
Name: Mistborn: The Final Empire
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Category: Fiction - Fantasy
Recommender: —
Review
Mistborn book 1 is a My Fair Lady story about fear, faith, and revolution. Much like Cyberpunk fiction, it starts by rendering an almost impossibly miserable world dominated by intense chattel slavery. In this respect it is similar to Anthem, but the gratutitousness of the violence against the skaa did take me out of the story a bit in a very similar way that the Mandingo fighting took me out of Django: unchained. Slavery is ineffective. When you pay people to torture themselves and others, you do not get quality products. Furthermore MTFE envisions a world where tradesman and streetsweepers alike belong to the same chattel class, which is not believable to me. In more realistic scenarios, the merchant and craftsman class would have to be skilled laborers separated from the untouchables by race or religion. Perhaps versions of the Indian caste system or certain eras of theocratic European society prove that I am wrong and people really are as easily subjugated as they appear to be in Mistborn, but personally I didn’t buy it, and it just read as a minor smear against humanity. The best characters in the story are the most religious. Sazed in particular is a paragon of reason, whereas everyone else is a mixed case to some degree or another.
Spoiler, click to expand
Ultimately Kelsier's revolt only succeeds because he fraudulently invents a religion centered on himself. Many of the characters are cool, but everyone is shocked all the time. Characters in this book really love to say "you're crazy! It will never work!" in a way that reminded me of info-mercials. The protagonist is not like other girls, and very cool, and also very scared, and the story ends in mormon fashion with her and the male love interest sharing a warm hug. The book did not really become interesting to me until Elend was introduced. Elend is the archetypical marxist savior character who like the protagonist of Metropolis must serve as the arbiter between The Head and The Heart. The magic system is very cool, but the fight scenes are tedious and I skimmed over all of them. Overall I think the book does a good job of describing the plight of a woman of ability to overcome a society of wretchedness. In essence it's a My Fair Lady story. Kelsier is the inviolate father figure who pays the bills and shows her respect and Elend is the troubled lover figure whom she has to save from himself. In the end everything works out, and there are some awesome plot twists.
1/2 - I’m not blown away but it was enjoyable.