94/100
In a world where ash falls from the sky, and mist dominates the night, an evil cloaks the land and stifles all life. The future of the empire rests on the shoulders of a troublemaker and his young apprentice. Together, can they fill the world with color once more?
In Brandon Sanderson's intriguing tale of love, loss, despair and hope, a new kind of magic enters the stage - Allomancy, a magic of the metals.
+1 Cover Design
There were several covers of this book floating around, and I have to admit that this one is my least favorite. The only one I liked were the newest white ones, marketed as YA books. I just feel as though this cover in particular is extremely busy. There's too much detail and too many lines and drawings making it a non-cohesive cover. I don't hate the font though.
+5 Writing Style
Brandon Sanderson's writing style is absolutely amazing. So many people have called him the king of high-fantasy and he is complete deserving of that title. His writing just flows really well. The transitions between chapters, scenes, and different POVs is just incredible.
+5 Plot Development
Yet another amazing aspect of the book. We knew the trajectory of the book from the beginning and while the novel stayed on the predetermined path it was, by no means, predictable. The intertwining of all these different subplots made for such a complex and interesting book.
+5 Character Relations
My favorite part of any book is the relationships between characters, whether it be between friends, more-than-friends, or enemies. I love the interactions and dialogue between them. And this book reminded me exactly why I love relationships so much. We see such real interactions in this story. We see heartfelt conversations, serious conversation, angry conversation; we even get to see a bit of wit thrown in there every once in a while. Everything about the characters felt so natural.
+4 Character Development
Because this is the first book in a series, we didn't see character development in everyone, but we did begin to see it in many of the main characters. For example, Vin and Kelsier both grew from each other. Vin became trusting and confident, while Kelsier became mature. Like everything else in this book the character development felt natural in the sense that the development wasn't absolute. Characters would frequently revert to their original thinking simply because it was habit to them and it served a sense of realism that most books lack.
+4 Likability of Protagonist
I'm not sure who would be considered as the protagonist since there are two main characters. But for the sake of argument, let's just say it was Vin. I know some people don't necessarily like Vin because she's a bit whiny and repetitive in her thoughts, but I didn't dislike her at all. Sure at some points it was mildly frustrating but mostly I found it natural. As humans we tend to focus heavily on our insecurities and I think Vin was just portraying that aspect of herself. Other than that though, as a female lead she is fantastic. Her Allomancy gives her so much power and I love seeing that confident Mistborn inside of her.
+5 Necessity of Minor Characters
There are a lot of characters that are part of Kelsier's crew and most, if not all, of them have some type of crucial role in the plot. Sazed, Breeze, Dockson, Marsh. Though each character may not have gotten a lot of page time, from Kelsier we can tell how much they've really done for the mission.
+5 Setting Description
I feel like this goes hand in hand with writing style. Since the writing style flowed, the setting description followed. There was never a moment where I couldn't understand at least the basics of what was happening or where they were.
+5 Interesting Storyline
Since the plot development was fantastic, I can say that the original idea was fantastic as well.
Interesting storyline + great plot development = happy reader.
+5 Predictability
There wasn't much about this book that was cliché or predictable. We were always kept on the edge of our seat when we were reading and everything caught us by surprise.
+50 Finished
Final Total: 94/100; A
All in all this was a fantastic read. For so long I've been seeing this book everywhere and finally I decided to read it and it was a fantastic decision.
In fact Courtney from CourtneyReads and I are doing a Buddy Read of the whole trilogy and at various checkpoints in the book we've been doing discussion posts which I will link to below:
Discussion #1
Discussion #2
Discussion #3
Discussion #4
Discussion #5
If you haven't read this book I highly recommend it. I'm not usually a huge fantasy person but I am definitely loving this book and this series, so I suggest giving it a try even if the genre doesn't seem to fit. It takes a few chapters to get into it, but once you're in it's hard to get out.
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