Review: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

This is the first book in the Mistborn series, which I thought was a trilogy but it seems to be longer experience than that. There are currently 6 books out in the series, a 7th on the way and a number of in-between books (you know the 0.5 and 3.5 in a series). 

This book is about the street urchin Vin, who comes to realize that she has powers, when a mistborn takes her under his wings. The book is set in a society ruled by what appears to be an immortal man, who holds the people in an iron fist using magic and a strict social order. 

Vin finds herself part of Kelsier’s thieving crew who has a plan to overthrow the ruler and set up a new world order. She must learn how to use her new found powers in order to help the crew, while she struggles with trusting her new friends and navigating life as a court spy. 

I really liked this book, but because it is so long I did begin to flag a little towards the last quarter or so, when nothing much seemed to be happening and it was pretty much about the politics of the world. But it soon picked up again and I really enjoyed the action packed ending. I also found the magic system interesting. In order to use their powers mistborn have to ingest metals and burn them. This means that magic isn’t easily achieved, you have to acquire the metals and you need to ration them, since you don’t necessarily have an endless supply. This made it more interesting than a magic system where people just have inherent powers. 

In the book there were some twists and turns and I was mostly interested, but as I said it did lag a little towards the end. I think this was mostly due to me, as I find really long books a chore to slog through sometimes because I just feel like I have been reading the same thing for SOOOOO long. But at the same time I did appreciate how Sanderson took the time to build this world and explain its background and inner workings, so there was never really anything that was glossed over or seemed unexplained. 

I think fantasy fans will really love this book, and I will be continuing with the series. At some point. I do struggle to see how it will fill out another 6 books or more, as the story seemed to be concluded at the end of this book. There is some unfinished business, but not 6 books worth in my opinion. But I guess I will see. 

I gave this 4 stars out of 5.