Amid the swirling mists...

One of the greatest pleasures in my life is being able to spend a large majority of my day reading. No interruptions, no other duties, no responsibilities, just me, sunshine, and a book. T's good friend invited us to spend Saturday at his cottage with him and his family. While T spent the day shooting guns and capsizing small sail boats, I found a comfortable patch of sunshine on the dock and blitzed through the rest of Mistborn. 

I did promise that I would post as soon as I finished. 

It was my duty to read. I couldn't let you guys down. 

Mistborn is the first book in a Trilogy by the same name, written by Brandon Sanderson. It revolves around a world where the villain has already won. He is called The Sliver of Infinity, and the Lord Ruler. He is immortal and tyrannical, and he's held the world in an iron fist for over a thousand years. It is a bleak and unforgiving world, where ash falls from the sky like rain, and deep mists rise every night. The sun burns an angry red, and all colour has been drained from the landscape, leaving everything brown and lifeless.

The story revolves around Vin, a teenage girl that has been dealt a bad hand for the majority of her life. She grew up on the streets with an older brother who beat her, and taught her to survive by turns. He taught Vin that the only thing you can trust people to do is betray and leave you, which he proved by vanishing himself. Vin is recruited by a thieving crew which is run by Kelsier, a man that dances over the line of genius and insanity like he's dancing the cha-cha.  Kelsier has gathered together a team of experts to pull of the biggest heist in history: overthrowing the Lord Ruler. It's doomed to failure from the start unless they can discover the Lord Ruler's secret. 

On the surface, Mistborn is a fantasy novel mixed with a heist, but beneath it all it's a study of the gaps between the nobility and the lower class. There is a large divide in this world. People are either of noble blood or they are Skaa (the subservient and maltreated lower class).  It is the brutal treatment of the Skaa that stokes the fire of Kelsier's plan. He imagines a better world for them all, and believes all noblemen deserve to die. Preferably at his own hand. There is a common mindset of "Them and Us" among both classes. To the point of the nobility reducing all skaa to near-animals, incapable of feelings or thought, and the Skaa believing all nobility to be evil.  Only Vin comes to an understanding, through her work for the crew as an undercover spy among the nobility, that there is good and evil in both classes. Not all Skaa are innocent, but not all noblemen are evil. She comes to understand that who someone is as a person has nothing to do with the conditions they were born into. 

I enjoyed the system of magic that Sanderson had created for this world. Allomancy is the ability to draw certain powers from certain metals and alloys when ingested. Those who have this ability are called Mistborn if they can control all aspects of this power, while those who can only control one aspect are known as Mistings. Through these metals, Mistborns are given keen senses, inhuman strength, the power to manipulate metals, and the ability to affect the emotions of the people around them. It even gives them the ability to fly, after a fashion. This kind of magic leads to some fantastic action scenes that are entertaining, albeit sometimes gruesome. 

The character of Vin is well developed and complex, and she grows beautifully through the first book, becoming stronger and more trusting. Kelsier is charismatic and thought-provoking as his actions make you wonder if he is a good man striving for the Greater Good, or if he has let his anger and revenge consume him. I did find myself wishing that some of the other supporting characters had more depth, however, this is only the first book in the series. Now that the world has been set up, perhaps Sanderson will be able to flesh out those other characters more. 

I'm off to start book two: The Well of Ascension. 

Happy reading, fellow bookworms!