Mistborn: The Final Empire -- book review

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think a couple of people recommended this book, probably at one of the literary coffee klatsches were had before Covid put an end to them. it is somewhat reminiscent of A Game of Thrones in that it deals with political rivalries and conspiracies, But whereas A Game of Thrones deals with rivalries between different kingdoms, in this one the rivalry is between aristocratic families in the same empire.

In The Final Empire there is also a clear class division between the privileged nobles and the oppressed underclass. In that respect it seemed to be a kind of parable of the old Rhodesia, with a great contrast between the privileged nobles and the oppressed underclass, the skaa.

I didn't like it as much as A Game of Thrones, and it was only after about 500 pages (of 643) that I began to feel sympathy for any of the characters. Perhaps it was partly because I don't like the genre much -- books where the heroes have superpowers of some sort, which sets them apart from other people. In this case it it due to the ability of some people to consume and "burn" metal, with different kinds of metal enhancing different abilities. Those who could do this were called "Mistborn", and there are some whose abilities are limited to one metal only, who are called Mistings. In addition there are Obligators, who form a kind of bureaucratic class, and a group of enforcers, called Inquisitors, who also have special superpowers.

Those who like superheroes with superpowers will probably enjoy it more than I did. 

Oh, and, for what it's worth, you can click here to read my review of A Game of Thrones. And (spoiler alert) I gave up halfway through the second book. It was just too much. 

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Abandoned books

There are many reasons one might abandon a book before finishing it. When I do, it is usually because I find it boring, or because I have a lot to do and after a few busy days or weeks have lost the urge to read it. But here is a book that put me off before I reached the end of the first page.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness


I'm not going to rate it, because I haven't read it.

I don't usually write reviews for books I haven't read, but I thought I would say why I don't think I'll finish this one, and in fact I didn't get further than the first page. There were two things on the first page that put me off.

"...the summer crush of visiting scholars was over and the madness of fall term had not yet begun."

The speaker, the first person protagonist, is apparently something like a visiting scholar, and is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England. Oxford University does not have a "fall term"; it has a Michaelmas Term. Calling it a "fall term" tells me either that the supposed scholarship of the protagonist is phony, or the author has done a poor job of research for the book.

I suppose one could argue that the author is American, the character is American, and the envisaged (or should that be envisioned?) readers are American, so "fall term" would be understood by them all, whereas "Michaelmas term" might not be. But what would be wrong with "...the summer crush of visiting scholars was over and the madness of Michaelmas term (as the fall term is called at Oxford) had not yet begun." It makes the characters and the setting more authentic, and the readers learn something about the setting. 

And then the visiting scholar or whatever she is thanks the librarian for getting the books she had ordered, "flashing him a grateful smile". I'm not quite sure why, but that phrase put me off completely. It's the kind of language I associate with badly-written and poorly-edited self-published Y/A fantasy novels (for an example, see my review of The Enchanted Crossroads).

I found more examples of such usage in another such book I read recently, The Raven Moonstone, which had phrases like I tossed Jesse a questioning look and Jesse shot me a dopey grin. 

The thought of another nearly 700 pages of the same put me off. If it were 200 or even 250 pages I might persevere in the hope that it would improve, but this fat book is just too long. I read one Twilight book, and that was enough.

But perhaps if I post this here someone who has read it might tell me that my judgement is too hasty, and if I read on it might improve, and I might even enjoy it.

I read somewhere that Stephen King said that Fritz Leiber had written some good books, so when I found Ill Met in Lankhmar in the library I took it out and began to read it, but didn't finish it. Leiber may have written a good book, but this wasn't it.

But there are some bad books (or at least books that I have thought bad) that I've not only finished, but have actually read twice, mainly because I couldn't believe they were as bad as I thought them after the first reading. More on that here: On Reading Unbelievably Bad Books.