Reading With Tyler

Name: The Final Empire
Series: Mistborn #1
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Publisher: Gollancz
Format: Kindle
Genres: Young Adult, Epic Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy (according to Goodreads? I’m new to Sci-Fi-Fan, so let me know!)
Noted Tropes: The Mentor, Heist
Steam or Spice: None

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Review:

So, Brandon Sanderson… He’s one heck of a writer, right? That’s something I can’t deny. He suits the epic fantasy genre! I however, do not. So, this was a little harder for me to get through that most people’s experience with The Final Empire (from what I can tell). But despite that, the story was excellent. Let’s get into it!

The Final Empire follows two POVs mostly, Kelsier our mmc and Vin, our fmc. Kelsier takes up the role of mentor after he learns that Vin is a lot like him but without any training. Vin is a young girl working in a thief gang as she has a special skill that she calls ‘luck’ which the leader of this gang likes to take advantage of in order to make his cons work just that bit better. It turns out, her ‘luck’ is Allomancy, and when Kelsier discovers her he invites her to join his thief gang and ultimately train her. All of this in hopes of finding a way of completing his ultimate goal…

The Final Empire is a brilliant story about how an unlikely gang have to try and get really lucky (with a bit of an edge due to their various Allomancy skills) in order to complete an impossible goal of toppling the Empire. I ate it up. I loved Kelsier’s gang and their different personalities and strengths. If 2 or more of them were on the page, it was bound to be an entertaining time. And when Vin started developing into her role, I loved her POVs as well. Kelsier himself did take a bit longer for me to like, as he was the only one on the page I couldn’t bring myself to trust (specifically in this gang! there were plenty of people I didn’t trust…). But him taking Vin under his wing, did give him some brownie points.

I appreciated that Vin was a young girl who was completely clueless about Allomancy as it enabled Sanderson to teach us about Allomancy in quite a blunt ‘just put it all on the page’ kind of way. Which was something I desperately needed as I spent the first couple of chapters exploring this system, feeling very dumb! But once I got past that and started learning more about the system (turns out there is a handy guide at the BACK of the kindle book!! Wish I’d known about that while I was reading) I was fully invested. I thought the system was very well thought out and unique – at least I haven’t read anything like it before.

Now, I said I was fully invested. I ate it up! And I was, and did. I loved it. But that doesn’t mean it was a quick read. It took me almost a month to read The Final Empire because there is a lot of world building and information that you need to grasp as you’re reading it… If you’re not up for something like that (and you’re not like me – ultimately I’m a rage reader, I hate DNFing! Especially if I am actually enjoying the book) then perhaps The Final Empire isn’t for you… But I can truly understand why people love it and Sanderson’s writing.

I struggled rating The Final Empire because of this. The plot plotted, there were some excellent twists (some I was able to predict and others I was not), and the ending is one of those that immediately started the cogs in my head turning over what the hell needs to be done next… But it didn’t feel like a 5 star read. I can appreciate that the rating shouldn’t be affected by how long it took me to get through when I’ve already acknowledged that this is out of my comfort zone as I am not an epic fantasy reader… but despite that I couldn’t give it the 5 star rating. I still fully intend to continue reading Sanderson’s Cosmere as like I said, I have so many theories in my head about what the next book could be about… We’ll see if Brandon Sanderson can turn me into an epic fantasy reader!!

“Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope.”