Mistborn Kept Proving Me Wrong — A Retrospective

Note: This review contains major spoilers for the entire original Mistborn trilogy.

I went into the Mistborn trilogy on a completely clean slate. I had never heard of it, knew nothing about its world and had no idea what kind of story Brandon Sanderson was going to tell.

That blank slate may be one reason I loved it so much.

While reading, I kept making predictions. During The Final Empire, I thought I could imagine many plausible endings. During The Well of Ascension, I thought I had begun to understand Sanderson’s way of thinking. By The Hero of Ages, I had given up guessing altogether.

The wonderful thing is that the clues were nearly always right in front of me. I saw them, thought about them and built entire theories around them and still looked in the wrong direction.

(If you’d like to read my messages to Ruta as they happened, they are in the diaries: Book One · Book Two · Book Three.)

The book I thought I was reading

At 25% into The Final Empire, I had already sent Ruta three theories: a Kelsier–Marsh–Mare love triangle, Vin eventually facing her brother Reen and having to make a choice, and someone inside the crew being an infiltrator.

They were not entirely unreasonable. Kelsier, Marsh and Mare did share a complicated past. Reen continued to live inside Vin’s mind even though she did not physically face him. And there really was an infiltrator, just not where I expected one.

I still wish Sanderson had given us more of Mare, Kelsier and Marsh. Reading at 38, I was more curious about their mature, morally grey history than I initially was about Vin and Elend’s young romance. I wanted to know why Mare chose Kell, what she meant to Marsh, and how the relationships among all three changed.

My complicated relationship with Vin and Elend

I did not like their subplot in the first book. I did not like that Elend became king. At that point, I felt that almost anybody else would have been more deserving.

The second book did not change my mind immediately. Twenty-six per cent in, there was no character development. Elend was full of theoretical but impractical ideas, cowering behind Vin and the core team. While Zane was the exact opposite and I liked him more.

And then, only a few days of reading later, I had started loving Elend.

That progression now feels important. Elend did not begin as the king he needed to be. He was theoretical, idealistic and impractical. His development mattered precisely because he had so much growing to do.

Vin and Elend also grew organically, not only as a couple, but as individuals. By the end, I loved how both of them came to understand who they were, who they wanted to be and who the world needed them to become.

My opinion did not change because I suddenly became interested in a romance. It changed because the relationship grew into something larger than its beginning.

I was right that history mattered—and wrong about everything else

While reading The Well of Ascension, I became convinced that the old story was repeating:

Kwaan → Vin ; Alendi → Elend ; Rashek → Tindwyl

I thought Tindwyl might become the new Rashek. I thought she might turn against the group, fail to overthrow Elend, and allow the old story to repeat with a happier ending.

I even thought the older members of the crew might sacrifice themselves as Kelsier had, leaving Vin, Elend and Spook, the “young blood”, to carry the third book.

The epigraphs encouraged me to compare the past with the present, and I did. But I fitted the right pieces into the wrong pattern.

That is one of Sanderson’s great storytelling strengths. The clues are not hidden so deeply that the ending feels invented at the last minute. They are visible. They are repeated. The reader simply misunderstands what they mean.

Every new answer gave me a new wrong theory

One theory lasted approximately 41 minutes: Zane is Reen, that he is Vin’s brother. Then, oh, phew, they are not.

Another lasted longer, until it too collapsed: was the Lord Ruler a mistwraith wearing Rashek’s body? Was that why there was a discrepancy in the rubbing of what Kwaan had written?

Again, I had noticed a real discrepancy. Again, I had invented the wrong explanation for it.

Even in the first book, I thought Vin might kill the Lord Ruler by burning gold and stabbing his younger reflection. Instead, the truth involved Rashek, Feruchemy and Allomancy in a way I had not imagined.

The ensemble, and learning to love greyness

I did not finish the series with one favourite character. What I loved was the crew as a whole, Kell, Dockson, Ham, Breeze, Sazed, and how each one had a unique relationship with the others.

That remained true across the trilogy. I loved how Vin, Elend, Sazed and Spook eventually made decisions about who they were, who they wanted to be and who they needed to be. I loved how Breeze understood his strength and what people needed, and used it confidently; but the cherry on top was that his friends looked one layer deeper. They understood everything he was not saying. I loved Sazed’s journey through loss and grief. His struggle was not merely about being sad; it changed his relationship with knowledge, belief and purpose. And I loved Cett: brutal, political and willing to do whatever was required to win.

Somewhere in the middle of Book Two, I realised I had started loving grey characters. I had never liked them before, but I had begun to see that life is more grey than a stark black-and-white difference. That greyness is present throughout Mistborn. People act from mixed motives. Good intentions produce terrible consequences. Brutal people may still understand dangers that the heroes cannot see. Someone can be both wrong and understandable.

The Lord Ruler became the clearest example of this for me.

How did I miss the Lord Ruler? My God.

We judge, react and act impulsively. In hindsight, when we place our immediate emotions aside and reconsider a person or situation, we may begin to understand why someone is the way they are—or why certain rules and systems exist. Understanding the Lord Ruler does not excuse his brutality. But the later revelations force us to reconsider the simple version of him we formed in the first book. That introspection in hindsight is one of the trilogy’s deepest ideas.

And the reveal I most feared did not turn out the way I feared. I had suspected an infiltrator from the first book, and by the second I was asking Ruta “Is it Dockson?”, desperately not wanting anyone from the crew to be the spy. When it turned out to be Vin’s kandra, who had attended every meeting and whom she trusted completely, and who ultimately helped her, what began as infiltration developed into something else entirely: an exploration of trust, identity and choice.

Death in one sentence

This is the observation I keep returning to. The death scenes of enemies in Mistborn are extremely detailed. Whereas the deaths of the main people, the crew members, are given in one sentence. Dockson’s, Clubs’ and Tindwyl’s deaths are each one sentence, but they are so powerful. That one sentence has all the emotions behind it.

A detailed death scene tells us what physically happened. A single sentence about someone we love can contain an entire relationship.

By then, the emotional work had already been done. The brevity made those deaths feel more sudden and final.

What did not completely work for me

I loved the trilogy, but not every part felt equally developed.

The early Vin and Elend relationship did not work for me, even though I came to love their growth later.

I expected much more from Allrianne. I did not feel she received enough development outside being Breeze’s girlfriend.

I also wanted more growth and character-building for Marsh. While reading, I hated that he did not remove the spike. I wanted him to become the hero the situation needed him to be. Looking back, I can also see the tragedy in how little control remained available to him and the importance of the resistance he did manage.

The start of The Hero of Ages was difficult for me. I was bored and distracted. I saw no hope in the story. There was absolutely nothing to look forward to.

Yet by the halfway point, that hopelessness had become part of the experience. I no longer knew what to expect. There were too many loose ends, too many parallel stories and no obvious way to bring them together.

And then they came together.

A world I could believe in but could not imagine filming

I loved the entire vocabulary and structure of the Mistborn world: Mistborn, mistwraiths, kandra, Allomancers, Tineyes, skaa, koloss, hazekillers and Keepers.

Sanderson created an unimaginable world that nevertheless felt very real. Its magic had rules. Its creatures had histories. Its religions, politics and social structures felt as if they had evolved rather than simply been placed there for the story.

It also seems super-duper difficult to adapt for television or film. I cannot picture how someone could visually recreate this world as it is described. How would they film Allomancy with its speed, metals, blue lines, pushes and pulls, without either confusing the audience or simplifying what makes it special?

Did I read Mistborn at the right age?

After finishing The Final Empire, I repeatedly said I wished I had read it in college. I would have loved it better then.

But by the middle of The Hero of Ages, I had changed my mind. I was glad I was reading it now, when I felt mature enough to understand the depth and breadth the books had to offer.

Perhaps my younger self would have loved Vin and Elend’s story sooner. But at 38, I was drawn to the greyness of Kelsier, Mare and Marsh; to Sazed’s grief and crisis of faith; to the compromises of leadership; and to the way hindsight changes our judgment.

I still cannot rank fantasy series. Each holds a special place for me because I encountered it at a particular moment in my life. I loved Harry Potter when I read it in college. I loved Mistborn when I read it now.

Brandon Sanderson has become, for me, what Fredrik Backman became when I discovered his work: an author I want to keep reading, one book after another.

I read Mistborn on Kindle, but I wish I had read physical copies. I made so many highlights and wanted more than the limited number of pins available to me. More than that, I want Ira to someday read books bearing the marks of my own experience—underlined passages, handwritten notes and evidence of how much fun I had while reading.

I am so, so looking forward to rereading these stories with her.

Maybe a book does not belong to only one age. Maybe we meet it once for ourselves, and then meet it again through someone we love.

This is Part 4 of a four-part Mistborn series.

• Book One: The Final Empire — Diary
• Book Two: The Well of Ascension — Diary
• Book Three: The Hero of Ages — Diary
• Mistborn Kept Proving Me Wrong — A Retrospective (you are here)