Shane’s Take: The Final Empire (Mistborn #1)

I’ve read other reviews, and I agree with a lot of what others have said. Here’s my take. I gave this book 150ish pages and almost stopped reading it altogether, which I almost never do. But when the characters plotted out their plan on a chalkboard like a strategic planning session in a modern boardroom, it struck me as…strange in a fantasy novel. It totally didn’t work for me. I did push on, and the story got better. The pros? It’s an interesting world with a unique, logically consistent magical power system. The combat scenes were fun to read. The cons? It’s way too long. I bought the entire trilogy, but I’m not sure I want to invest that much time reading the next two. Maybe it’s just me, but the other members of the main crew weren’t ever really distinct to me. I could never keep them separate in my mind. Finally, the dialogue near the end was very Bond-villainy. I didn’t think it was very realistic, but it was like Sanderson had to give the reader more information, so he just used a dialogue dump from the villains to get it to us. Some of the point-of-view changes felt a little off to me too. Overall, I’m glad that I read it just to see what the hype was about, but I don’t think I could really recommend this to anyone. There’s just so much out there that’s better to me.