The Final Empire

Mistborn, #1

by Brandon Sanderson

544 pages

English language

Published Aug. 7, 2006 by Tor.

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

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(22 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. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, …

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, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

This saga dares to ask a simple question: What if the hero of prophecy fails?

13 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.

VITI reviewed El imperio final by Brandon Sanderson

Buen trasfondo, interesante sistema de magias

4 stars

Por fin me puse con esta saga. El resultado, para mí, es bueno pero me hubiera querido que me gustara mucho más, pero no lo ha conseguido :(

El mundo que se ambienta, la opresión, tanto natural como humana es interesante, clasismo, casta, naturaleza, especies, todo me hace querer saber qué hay más allá de Luthadel y alrededores y por qué todo es así.

El sistema de magias me parece muy original, orgánico, crudo, invisible y en cierto modo, peligroso de manejar. Con un episodio de infodump marcando las claves de su uso.

Pero el argumento del libro es frágil e ingenuo. No me convenció el objetivo final ni su fuerza para llegar a él. Al igual que la evolución de los personajes, tienes que creerte que un personaje ha cambiado por la triquiñuela del pensamiento interno de otros, lo que te fuerza a ver que ha cambiado, cuando no …

Por fin me puse con esta saga. El resultado, para mí, es bueno pero me hubiera querido que me gustara mucho más, pero no lo ha conseguido :(

El sistema de magias me parece muy original, orgánico, crudo, invisible y en cierto modo, peligroso de manejar. Con un episodio de infodump marcando las claves de su uso.

Ya tengo el segundo a mano! A ver cómo sigue esta saga :)

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.