Eighth book of 2013

Skipping ahead a bit (and I'll probably skip back to talk about "Chew",) we come to the eighth book I read this year.

"Mistborn" by Brandon Sanderson

The Final Kingdom is a dark and depressed land. Ash falls from the sky and flowers and green plants are rare or extinct. Society is heavily stratified, and most people are slaves, dejected and without hope. But then a prisoner escapes and becomes a daring criminal. He assembles a crew and comes up with an impossible plan.

First of all, I really enjoy Sanderson's world building in general. I read "The Way of Kings" a couple of years ago, and in both that book and this one, he manages to create entirely new and different worlds with their own rules, creatures, and mythology. And while each has a different feel, none of them are inaccessible or so convoluted as to distract the reader (assuming the reader has read fantasy books before.) Sanderson's use of imagery is strong, and while I would say that his world is quite unusual for a fantasy world, he made it easy for me to picture.

In "Mistborn," Sanderson does some really interesting things with the way magic works. I don't want to give anything away, but it has it's own logic that is fairly easy to follow, and this logic is integral to the plot. Moreover, while he does have include the occasional exposition about the rules of magic, he manages to present it in an interesting way that keeps it light.

I also appreciate his tendency to mix up the traditional "good versus evil" trope with a good bit of gray area. While there is certainly a hero (or two) and a villain (or two,) even these characters are tempered with ambiguity and given a full and complex personality. I know this is almost standard in fantasy novels these days, but it still feels worth pointing out, since I still read plenty of fiction where good is good and evil is evil and blech.

I should also point out that this is the first book in a series, and the fifth book is due out next year. While I purchased and planned to read the second book in this series before I even started this one, I think you could read "Mistborn" as a stand-alone novel and be completely satisfied. Yes, a lot is left unresolved at the end, but that's how I like my stories.