Mistborn

 

By Brandon Sanderson

A cursed world, plagued by volcanic ash fall and nights of mist and strangeness in the mist, so much so that people are fearful of being out in the mist, and where there are only two classes of people, the ruling class and the slave class.

Vin is a teenage thief, the daughter of a slave and of a lord. The law requires that children born of such a union must be destroyed. But Vin and her brother Reen survived and lived by their wits, until the day Reen left his sister behind to survive on her own, a betrayal that has left Vin suspicious and untrusting of everyone. 

The some in the ruling class have mystical powers, fueled by the metal and metallic compounds they consume. Vin also has these powers, although she doesn't really understand what she is doing and she doesn't know about using metals to enhance her innate abilities. That is until she became acquainted with Kelsier, a man with a plan to overthrown the ruling class and its leader, the Lord Ruler. But the Lord Ruler is more like a god than a human man, believed to be immortal. 

Kelsier sees the potential in Vin and brings her into his crew of rebels, teaching her how to use the metals to achieve amazing feats beyond ordinary human powers. He eventually places her in the house of fake lord who works for him, introduced into the nobility as the young daughter of a country lord. Her job is to spy on the noble houses and gather intelligence to be used against them. 

Vin becomes smitten by a bookish young lord, Elend Venture. Elend is the heir of House Venture, the most powerful house in the capitol city. But Vin is a thief and criminal and fake who is supposed to be helping Kelsier  bring down the ruling class, including House Venture and Elend Venture. According to Kelsier, they are all corrupt and deserve to be destroyed. But Vin sees goodness in Elend and argues with Kelsier that not all of the nobility deserve death.

Then an important battle goes against the troops Kelsier has gathered and they are defeated. Which drives Kelsier into a face to face confrontation with the Lord Ruler, who is revealed to be as indestructible as claimed and Kelsier dies. Which causes Vin to attempt to get into the Lord Ruler's citadel to discover the secret of his immortality.

This was an OK story, although way too long. It is the first book in a trilogy, and, looking ahead I found out that the author has a habit of killing off the heroes of his stories. We already know Kelsier dies, Elend dies later on as does Vin. After finding that out, I lost interest in reading the other two books in the trilogy. Life is sad enough in reality without it being miserable in fiction too. Also, like I mentioned, the book is too long. I frankly skipped through a lot of its over 600 pages.

Review by Erik Kain in Forbes.