Brandon Sanderson’s book, “Mistborn: The Final Empire,” has a word count of 214 thousand. This is a lot of words for anyone to read. As a college student with a limited amount of free time, may I suggest that you read this book?
My answer is yes, I advise you to read this book, and here’s why:
In this fictional land created by Sanderson, the Lord Ruler has reigned supreme for one thousand years and been given the title of God. A large divide splits the high and low classes. Those at the bottom of the class structure have been mistreated, executed, and further oppressed for those thousand years.
The story follows a girl named Vin, who throughout the book struggles with trust. At the beginning of the book, she is a member of a thieving crew, abused by those who saw her as a helpless girl.
The story also follows a man named Kelsier, who has a plan to overthrow the Lord Ruler with his own crew. The magic system in the story is called Allomancy. A person who has Allomancy is called a Mistborn and is capable of drinking a vial of shavings of a certain metal so that they have special abilities. Vin has these abilities and Kelsier, who is Mistborn himself, becomes aware of this.
Kelsier goes to great effort in order to take Vin from her thieving crew and put her into his own crew to overthrow the Lord Ruler. The book then follows Vin through her journey of not knowing who to trust.
She hears her brother’s voice in the back of her head, telling her not to trust anyone. This is the opposite of what Kelier’s crew is built on. Many within Kelsier’s crew are not doing the job for money, but for their respect for Kelsier.
As the book progresses, Sanderson uses a plot device to introduce Allomancy as Kelsier trains Vin to use her powers as a Mistborn.
This could have been one of the pitfalls of the book, but the fresh magic system of Allomancy makes the training scenarios very intriguing to read.
The book also has little logs at the beginning of each chapter about a character that the people believe is the Hero of Ages. This hero searched for the Well of Ascension a thousand years before when the Lord Ruler took the throne. In the story, the people believe that the Lord Ruler once was the Hero of Ages; Kelsier and his crew discuss this throughout the story.
In Mistborn: The Final Empire, Sanderson brilliantly subverts common fantasy tropes. That is why this book is worth reading.
It is something different, from its magic system to Sanderson’s take on the hero’s journey. All of these things make “Mistborn: The Final Empire,” a long but exciting read.
