Daniel Rodrigues-Martin's Reviews > Mistborn Trilogy Boxed Set

Read the review on my blog here: https://arknovel.blogspot.com/2017/12...

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The Skinny: At the end of the day, there are better fantasy stories out there than Mistborn—probably from Sanderson himself.

Full Review
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Where Mistborn Succeeds: Worldbuilding

Mistborn’s greatest asset is its worldbuilding. Visions of ashen, gothic spires contrasting against the perpetual red of a dying sun paint clearly the picture of a world without flowers. Apparent love and effort were invested by Sanderson into developing the philosophical concepts underlying the world, portrayed in many of the dead religions chronicled by the Keeper, Sazed. The Mistborn world is believable sociologically, mythologically, and historically, which is crucial for constructing robust fantasy. The major events and people groups of Mistborn are believable because of their complexity. This is to Sanderson’s credit as a conceptualizer of high fantasy and mythopoeia, and, unfortunately, constitutes most of the good I have to write about the series.

Bad Use of Voice

Major portions of the Mistborn books are unfortunate drudgery. The dialogue is often repetitious in the immediate context (i.e., it states directly what is already implied by action and dialogue) and, while colloquial, the idiomatic speech of the Mistborn world seems inconsistent both with the parlance of brigands and thieves as well as with that of scholars, kings, and noblemen. The language reads too much like contemporary American English. While clarity should always be a writer’s top goal, it need not come at the cost of narrative or characters’ voices which, to my eyes, often seemed the case.

Most of the characters’ voices bleed together due to similar vocabulary, syntax, and reliance upon the American idiom mentioned above. A few characters have distinguishing verbal characteristics, but these are often laborious catch phrases or buzz words like “good man” and “child” out of the mouths of Breeze and Tindwyl, respectively. I recall counting the use of the former phrase on one page of my Kindle edition of book three and found that in that particular passage, every line of dialogue by Breeze contained the phrase “good man.” A character should not be most clearly defined by the sum total of his catch phrases.

The only character I truly enjoyed in this series was Sazed the Terrisman. Sazed has the clearest character voice, his actions and inactions carry narrative weight, and his personal struggles with religion force much of his inner turmoil to contend with the world Brandon Sanderson created. No other character’s development makes better use of Mistborn’s mythopoeia than Sazed—the protagonists included.

Labor Pains and Fight Sequences

I recall from The Two Towers Tolkien’s description of Aragorn’s blade falling upon Uruk-Hai like bolts of lightning. Sanderson provides little such artistry in his fight scenes, which are often far too focused on intricately-described choreography. When it comes to writing fights, we should follow Tolkien’s lead and not lose the forest for the trees. Painting with broad strokes and leaving sharp description to key moments in Mistborn’s battles would have kept those portions of prose moving more smoothly and would have helped the crucial portions of those sequences stand out.

Bland Characters

With the exceptions of Sazed and Spook (due to his subplot in book three,) the cast of side characters is sadly forgettable. Breeze is far more interesting as a thief than as an emperor’s aide, as the events of books two and three turn him into little more than an oenophile who provides occasional comedy relief. Ham’s philosophical queries are close to nonexistent by book three, and he is essentially relegated to a second-tier set piece by that point; most of his words and actions in book three could have been performed by any character. Clubs was never especially relevant or interesting.

(Don’t) Trust Your Reader

Sanderson often seems to be untrustworthy of his readers’ ability to make basic logical connections, egregiously restating established worldbuilding concepts even up into book three. One example in book three’s closing pages compares the character Marsh’s abilities to those of the Lord Ruler. Not only is this fact implied because of Marsh’s abilities themselves, but the same comparison is made earlier in the same book from the perspective of another character.

Sanderson’s reasoning for this is likely well-intended: his worldbuilding concepts are big and well-developed. There’s much to learn about the world itself, allomancy, feruchemy, and hemalurgy, and a lot of people could conceivably forget much of this information on the regular. Well-intended or not, the readers of the Mistborn trilogy are often reminded of remedial worldbuilding concepts. This unnecessarily lengthens the books, makes those particular portions of narrative boring to read, and whispers to me that the narrator doesn’t trust me to remember what I read earlier.

Abuse of Filtering Language

The biggest offense of the books is the abuse of filtering language – the words “could” and should” usually in connection with the subjunctive mood, expressing potentiality or ability over and above reality. This is despite most of the occurrences of filtering language referring to simple active states of being.

This is a problem for narrative for two reasons. First, it unnecessarily lengthens the story overall. In Sanderson’s case, I’d reckon the Mistborn Trilogy would be thousands of words shorter without the abuse of filtering words. Second, the overuse of filtering language in contexts that are actually describing the simple past or present-active implicitly removes the reader from direct interaction with the events occurring. What often reads in the narrative as “Character X could hear the sound of Y,” could have been written as “Character X heard Y.” (This leads to a lesser issue of formulaic, repetitive, predictable prose if an author is not careful, but this is surmountable with creativity.) The abuse of filtering language caused much of the nuts and bolts of Mistborn’s storytelling to be repetitive and uninteresting to read. I gravitate toward journalism and biography precisely for this reason: authors writing in these formats have to exercise great skill in turning potentially monotonous details into literary hook after literary hook – and don’t forget the hard deadlines and word count limits. In my estimation, filtering language and unengaging prose are Mistborn’s greatest technical weakness.

An Unsatisfying Conclusion

The conclusion of the third Mistborn book left much wanting, not merely in terms of unanswered conceptual questions (more metals, events about the history that were barely addressed,) but in terms of untied character knots. The three-book metanarrative ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly.

A Prolific Author, a Mediocre Series

Along with Elantris and Wheel of Time, the Mistborn Series helped cement Brandon Sanderson as a modern giant of contemporary English speculative fiction. Sanderson’s enduring success can only mean that his style has matured since 2008. My gut tells me that Mistborn is not the best measure of his skills.

At the end of the day, there are better fantasy stories out there than Mistborn—probably from Sanderson himself. 3/5 for its intriguing musings on religion and detailed worldbuilding. With more compelling characters and better prose, Mistborn could have been a powerhouse series that capitalized on Brandon Sanderson’s dense, imaginative mythopoeia. It’s not a story I plan on returning to.

Mistborn’s enduring legacy may not, in the final analysis, be the story itself, but its role in launching Brandon Sanderson’s literary career.