Wednesday, May 13, 2009

[Lisa’s Take] Mistborn Book 3: Hero of Ages (Brandon Sanderson)

I kind of thought I’d have a lot to put into my review of the final book in this trilogy, but now that the time has come I don’t have all that much to say. I can’t do a plot summary without spoilers, and there just isn’t much that I feel like waxing poetic about. If you’ve read my reviews of books 1 and 2 you know that I adore the story, and book 3 continues to deliver on that promise. I didn’t enjoy it as much as book 1 (like book 2, book 3 is Good but not Great), but it was an entertaining tale. I’m pleased that the ending brought such great closure, and I was very surprised by the bold strokes that the author took in wrapping up the story.

Oh, I did have one little gripe: did anyone else feel that there was a pretty serious screw up (retcon?) in the capabilities of allomancy during one of the big final battles? Trying to remain unspoilery: the one involving a lot of Inquisitors? Maybe I was racing through the book’s climax so quickly that I missed the explanation of why this particular thing worked in that battle, but didn’t work in a number of other battles – I’d like to think that surely the author and the editor couldn’t both have miss it. Regardless, the fact that I got fixated on it in a “that’s not supposed to be possible” sense really broke up the book’s climax for me.

Anyway, at this point I’m really just rambling because I don’t have the juice to do a full review of Hero of Ages. I’ll wrap this up by reiterating that in spite of its (very few) faults, the Mistborn trilogy is truly excellent. It’s definitely the best fantasy trilogy I’ve read in a couple of years, sporting a compelling plot line, an amazingly awesome magic system, epic scope, and very well developed characters. I look forward to reading more of Bradon Sanderson’s work in the future.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I dunno. I never had any moments like that.

You'll have to point it out to me the next time we're at the same place/time so we can gripe together :)

Sidenote? The author's first book, Elantris, is also pretty solid. Not *as* solid, but you wouldn't peg it as a first book.

LisaBit said...

That's because it's not (strictly speaking) a first book. That dude is one prolific MoFo - Elantris is just the book that he and the publisher who picked him up -chose- to print first, out of all the other shitton of stuff that he had written. It's not even remotely fair!

Also, welcome to the blog! Hooray!