I recently got into reading adult fantasy and after a deep dive into reddit, figured Sanderson would be a good place to start.

The final empire is the first book in the Mistborn series and is set in a dystopic era – a thousand years after the immortal Lord Ruler’s ascension. Those who live in the final empire are either nobility (those who gained the Lord Ruler’s favor by aiding him during his ascension) or Skaa (people oppressed by the nobility and treated as much lesser). The main plot unravels in the city Luthadel, as Kelsier, a powerful Allomancer and his thieving crew recruit sixteen-year-old Vin and plan to accomplish an impossible feat, overthrowing the Lord Ruler.

I read a few reviews before picking up the book and a lot of them touch on how Sanderson’s writing is simple and basic. And while I agree with them that the language in the book is indeed quite simple, I find it to be fitting of a fantasy series like Mistborn. There are times when I enjoy the elaborate prose that certain novels offer and there are others, when I’m mainly in it for the plot. And Sanderson has done such a splendid job with the plot in terms of both sophistication and grandeur that I didn’t find myself in want of complicated vocabulary.

For me, the book was a page turner from the first minute. I didn’t feel like the author wasted his words, everything he wrote ties together at the end. It did however, take almost two thirds of the book to convince me about the magic system and the world building. And in retrospect, I think that it might have been the author’s intention. Instead of explaining it all to the reader, Sanderson let me get acclimated to the characters and the world at my own pace.
And boy, the last third of the book was a whirlwind! You think the book is going in a certain direction and you get thrown into something else entirely. The slightly slow build-up definitely paid off and I had to take a deep breath to myself thinking – ‘Wow. What did I just read?’

The character development in the book wasn’t the best. As a reader, I didn’t feel more connected to them as the story progressed, rather, feeling about them the same way I did at the beginning of the book. Kelsier’s character has an air of mystery around it, which partly justifies the lack of development there, but the author has just spent so some time exploring Vin’s thoughts and emotions that he might as well have done a better job of it. Having said that, I am mainly a reader of literary fiction (where the character themselves have more weight and take the story forward, along with or rather than the plot) and I understand where my opinions might be biased.

Another issue I had with the book was the romance – it was poorly done. And honestly, it wouldn’t have bothered me had it not been central to the plot. The love that two of the characters have for each other sets the ground for the decisions that they make – some of which have serious repercussions. And as a reader (and as someone that has read one too many romance novels), I didn’t find it believable.

Although I pointed out some of the cons for the sake of this review, the pros far outweigh them and I can’t wait to spend this entire weekend reading The Well of Ascension!