The Final Empire

Mistborn, #1

by Brandon Sanderson

Hardcover, 541 pages

English language

Published July 25, 2006 by Tor.

ISBN:: 978-0-7653-1178-8
Goodreads:: 68428

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(16 reviews)

For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier "snapped" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Then Kelsier reveals his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the …

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets. She will have to learn trust if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

3 editions

nemo reviewed The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, #1)

Re-read Review

5 stars

Content warning re-read discussion with full cosmere spoilers.

I'm reading this after almost a decade, and it was still quite fun, after having explored so much more of the cosmere. Hoid barely has a cameo in this one, and the heist went well. One of the rare times I didn't have to use Fictionary for checking up on old characters, since everyone is a first-time character.

I was watching out for mentions of shards, and Ruin but not a lot of that. I really liked the pacing of the book - it lets you breathe at just the right places, and Vin's growth shows very nicely.

One complaint I have with the novel is missing women characters. The entirety of Vin's old and new crews is male. The only other women we meet are unnamed skaa in a prologue, and a few noblewomen - one of which is dead by the end, with barely a few words. It does pass the Bechdel test on a technicality, but not really.

There's always another secret.

Eulalia reviewed Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn)

Another great novel in the magic-cowboy series

4 stars

The cat-and-mouse chase got a tad boring in the middle for me but it picked up by the ending and my god what an ending! We learn more about Wax and Waynes backstories and there's some wonderful character development for Marasi. The ending really had me thinking about faith. Harmony's the best person for the job but did he get everything right? How would his followers feel if they knew.

Radioactivestardust reviewed The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, #1)

Review of 'The Final Empire' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

It's so good, second read was even better than first read.

Leaf 🍂 reviewed The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, #1)

Review of 'The Final Empire' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

Things Sanderson excels at:
World building (overall), characterization, creativity, and plot.

Things he's sort of terrible at:
Language (get the man a thesaurus, the word 'stone' three time in one sentence? Really? And 'maladroit' starts standing out when you use it multiple times per chapter. Or paragraph.)
Pacing.
There are also a number of minor issues of continuity.
Also, I got extremely tired of Sanderson using child labor/cruelty to children every time he wanted to evoke pathos. EVERY TIME.

Then there's the fact that I still have no clue how women are regarded in this world. You have them being treated worse than male Skaa, what with the constant rape/murder by nobles threat, and in noble society they seem to be more or less where Victorian English women were as far as lack of basic rights went. Yet as soon as Vin gets out of her thieving crew, she'd treated like a complete equal by everyone. There's not even a breath of sexism. Not the tiniest hint, not even from servants or recruits. And you get the idea that Mare was treated the same way. Yet every other woman is next to faceless, and you don't get any dialogue from women other than Vin until 300 pages in. The biggest world building fail in the book.

All in all... I feel like the book suffered from length fatigue. Like, it needed a few more intensive editing sessions with a really good editor, but maybe its size prevented that from happening.
I enjoyed it overall. It was a good plot, and I liked the world and the mystery and the characters.
I'll read the next one, and hope that Sanderson improved by then.

Sean Randall reviewed The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, #1)

Review of 'The Final Empire' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

not since [a:Robin Hobb|25307|Robin Hobb|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1205023525p2/25307.jpg] has a fantasy author gripped me with such a tome. I have truly adored the [a:Dave Duncan|30279|Dave Duncan|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg] I've been reading of late, but his longest work would barely mar the dust jacket of one of these.

The world is stunning - not rich or vibrant but downtrodden and poor. the characters are so much more vivid as a result - combined with the excellent narrative and superb mastery of pace, the story unfolds and keeps you coming back for more. it's a self-contained story in and of itself, but leaves so much of the history and even more of the future open for speculation and further works, of which I tend to partake posthaste.