(Quick double heads-up: this is my 300th Goodreads book review! I think it's fantastic that such a milestone is on a book that I love as much as I love this one - which is scads and scads.
I would also like to give a quick shout-out here to all the wonderful people who have decided to follow my reviews. I've been meaning to say it for a while, but didn't get to it until now: you all are awesome and I really, really appreciate you. Thanks so much!)








I cannot actually write a review of this book without spoiling at least the first two, and probably without spoiling it. Hell, I can't really even think straight about this entire series right now. I spent most of my afternoon finishing this - stopping myself very carefully before I got too sucked in to remember to eat; shooing my friends away when they came to hang out because I was 50 pages from the ending - and my emotions and thoughts about it are a big ball of confusion. That being said, this is probably the best point for me to try to write a review, because this is when the sheer awe and excitement that I felt in the finale of this book are the strongest, so hopefully those emotions and more will communicate themselves.


(Edit: I was going through my copy and removing all the little markers that I'd used to make sure I didn't forget the things I wanted to talk about which I ended up not talking about at all and what it really comes down to is this: this book deserves a better review than what I've written, but if I told you everything I loved about it, we'd be here until the end of time because I'd have to list them by page. Okay, so maybe that's hyperbole. Still. There is so much in this book - so much to love, but also just so much content in general - that it's pretty much impossible for me to review every bit of it. Instead you get vagueries. Sorry, but I'm sure you can make do.)



I had two immediate reactions to the end of this trilogy.


First:

There were certain events that had been spoiled for me; there were others that I would never in a hundred years have predicted. Never. At all. And as one might expect from a Mistborn book, the climax was a whirlwind of shock, pain, awe, exhileration, and simple incredulity. There were character deaths that I thought impossible; there were events and contentions so vast in scale that the very concept of them baffled me; there was sacrifice and courage and strength and love and hope and it was everything I wanted from it and more, so much more.

Second:

It is. Oh, okay, not entirely. There are things I would change in the series. But when it all comes down to the wire, those changes would really be cosmetic. The heart of the story, the worldbuilding, the plotting, the character arcs: they're all basically flawless. There were so many worldbuilding reveals in this book that I'm still not sure I understood everything that happened - and yet I am, because it was all so elegantly logical and neatly expressed. The fact that some of them left me literally gasping, that others made tears come to my eyes, and that still others filled me with such restive energy that I had to set the book down and pace testifies to the incredible power of Sanderson's setting: it really feels almost like another character.



Beyond that... I don't really know. What should I say to convince you to read this series? Do I need to list characters and tell you why I love them? (that's an idea that I considered for this review, but rejected because it would involve too many spoilers.) Do I need to describe the strangely giddy feeling I got reading this book? Do I need to make veiled hints at the reveals it contains?

I don't think so. I think the most effective thing I can say is this: no matter your feelings on the fantasy genre as a whole, you owe it to yourself to read this series. At least try the first one. They're really something special. The more I read of Sanderson's work, the more I become convinced that it contains easily as much 'literary merit' as some of the things I read for AP English classes in high school. It is not genre fiction in the demeaning way tha term is often applied: rather, it is fiction which uses its genre and a vivid story to create a backdrop for incredible philosophical questions about the nature of faith, and about how we define right and wrong, and about the conflict between idealism and practicality. It is everything that we should ask for from our authors, delivered in a stylish and slickly readable package.

Even if you turn your nose up at 'that fantasy stuff', don't skip this series. It is everything that is good about the genre, and you might just learn something from it. And if fantasy is your bread and butter, as it is for me, well... what are you waiting for?


(If you have read this book and would like to discuss spoilery things - tags, comments, go go go. I can't tell anyone IRL about this book because I want to make them all read it, so I'd love a GR discussion. TO those of you who haven't finished the trilogy: do not, I repeat, DO NOT click spoilers in the comments.)



((Edit 2: just one more thing. This song, or rather that particular cut of it, is basically Elend's theme in this book.))