Everybody loves Brandon Sanderson, don’t they? Well, as my enthusiasm for reading had been rejuvenated in the past year, I have been spending a lot of time on literature websites and other channels to find the right books for me to read. After some letdowns of overhyped books, I established a firm list of “must reads” and / or “classics” that I felt would be my thing. Reading what you want is so important, and probably why jumping on the hype train is always a disappointment.

Anyway, everybody seems to love Brandon Sanderson, and while Stormlight Archive is praised to the heavens, his Mistborn series is usually recommended as a good entry point for his novels. I like fantasy and magic and dystopian settings, so it sounded like a series for me. Alright, then I read the Mistborn trilogy.

So, what did I think? The first book, The Final Empire, was great. Sanderson really knows how to keep a reader engaged, and does a great job at establishing the universe and at introducing a cast of diverse characters. Altogether, The Final Empire is a really good book that can stand by itself.

But that’s just the first book in the trilogy, and leaves a lot of plot lines open. So obviously, one should continue with The Well of Ascension. Well, well, well, this book was really not what I expected. I feel like it’s very much mistitled. It should be called The Siege of Luthadel or something like that, because 90% of the book is just politics, and IMHO a bit of a drag. Here and there were some interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout that, but allover, I expected this book to be some kind of grand journey, and definitely not 600 pages of cooped out anxiety about being attacked by three armies. Well, I hope the last book will answer all the questions that I kinda expected this book to answer…

The third and final book of the first Mistborn trilogy is The Hero of Ages. The titular hero is a myth that has been well-established by book 3, so expectations were high. But similar to my experience reading The Well of Ascension, reading The Hero of Ages was not quite what I expected. The first half, or perhaps even the first two thirds of the book were bordering on boring for me. Lots and lots of political machinations, the point of which I still don’t quite see regarding the main theme and ultimate resolution of the plot. I also found it very odd that a lot of mysteries are just freely given away in the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, seemed a bit clumsy to me.

Altogether, the Mistborn series didn’t quite live up to my expectations (aside from perhaps The Final Empire), which might be because I had REALLY high expectations considering how Sanderson fans go crazy for this series. It was interesting, had some pretty unique concepts, and lots of great characters. But I would argue that it also has some flaws in its logic, and my suspension of disbelief suffered mildly.

I guess part of that has to do with the series’ theme of religion. I’ve never been a particularly religious person, and have a bit of an aversion to most organized world religions and the crimes they’ve committed throughout world history. The parallels were a bit too on the nose for me sometimes, but what else could I have expected from a Mormon author?

IMHO, The Final Empire was a great book, great setting, intriguing mysteries, high stakes dystopia, really awesome ending. The Well of Ascension was a drag. The Hero of Ages was a mixture of both. But ultimately I’m a bit let down by the issues mentioned above, as well as the plot-twist-for-the-sake-of-having-a-plot-twist at the end of the series. Not mind-blowing, but not bad either.

After reading this, I will probably take a long break from Sanderson. Eventually I might tackle the absolutely massive Stormlight Archive or maybe some of his other books, but probably with much lower expectations.