the Fictional Realm

This was one of my latest reads. The reason i read it was because after Robert Jordan’s death (Robert Jordan aka James Oliver Rigney is the author of the “Wheel of Time” fantasy series) Brandon Sanderson, the author of “Mistborn” trilogy, was chosen to write the remaining part of the “Wheel of Time”. I picked up “Mistborn” because it was one of Mr.Sanderson’s latest works and I wanted to see the style of the guy who’s going to write the last book of one of my most favorite fantasy series. Well . . . overall I’m very pleased, I like his style, characters, the world and the storyline. I like all of the “Mistborn” world, the book is definitely worth a read.

One of the first things that attracted me in the book was the world itself, the way it has become and the way people live there. Everything there seems kind of apocalyptic, as if the world has already ended and what we see are only small remnants of it.

The story itself tells us about a small but very famous thieving crew which has really great goals to achieve. The main character is a girl from a thieving crew who have been thought all her life not to trust anyone. Somehow she ends up in an environment where everyone depends on trust. The reader will overcome all those new sensations and grow new affections to people with her. We will see many fierce battles and see some of our favorite characters die. Don’t read this to your kids :) Also the trilogy is not like usual fantasy. Most of the book is explained and has strong supporting logic behind it. Even the magic system stands out because of the limited set of rules it has to obey.

The magic here is called allomancy. One does allomancy by swallowing shavings of different metals. There’s a limited number of allomantic metals and each one of those does something specific. Also each metal has it’s pair which does the opposite of what the original one was doing. For example there’s a metal which allows to pull a metallic object towards you and also there’s another one which pushes metals from you. It’s surprising how many things you can do by just having these 2 metals.

Also I’d like to note that probably the thing that most impressed me about the book is the ending of the third part. It’s really mind blowing and very unexpected but it fits and feels very natural. It’s something i don’t even know how to describe you just have to read it :) Though i guess it may annoy some of the readers. (Honestly it annoys me as well but i still like it. It’s somehow beautiful)

One more thing that may interest you is that it’s possible that there will be more books after the trilogy. Brandon wrote on his website that he has some ideas but before writing those (if he decides to write a sequel) he has other projects to complete first. Those other projects include “The Wheel of Time” which will keep hism busy at least till 2011-2012 and some other projects of his own. So we have nothing to wait for in the nearest future.

In the end I’d like to say that i enjoyed reading “Mistborn” and am looking forward to reading the next book of the “Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. The book is titled “The Gathering Storm” and will come out  November 3, 2009.

For more information visit Brandon’s website & blog which he updates quite frequently (big thanks to him for this as well) here: http://www.brandonsanderson.com/

UPDATE:

Brandon is selling out signed copies:

Mistborn – The Well of Ascension – here

Mistborn – The Final Empire -  here

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