(Quick) Mildly Belated Book Review(s): The Mistborn Trilogy

I've waxed poetic about really liking Brandon Sanderson's work in the past.

The Mistborn Trilogy is the set of books that helped him build his reputation as an author; prevailing opinion is that more people get into his work as a result of reading Mistborn than any of his other works. I'm the odd duck here, seeing as how I got into his work with his currently largest single published book, The Way of Kings, which (aside from being the book I've reviewed previously) is comparable in size to Lord of the Rings yet is only the first book in a ten-book series (note, of course, that I'm generalizing and comparing my large softcover LOTR with thin, glossy pages to the heavy and sturdy TWoK hardcover... and doing it from memory, no less, because I'm not even sure where my copy of LOTR is). And because I'm a guy who likes thick books and long reads, TWoK is right up my alley.

I was a little worried, therefore, that Mistborn would fall a little short by comparison, because I like big books and Mistborn is less so... and I totally spoiled the heck out of myself on various websites beforehand, and thought it sounded less interesting as well.

I can happily report that it was not in any way a disappointment.

Even all together, the Mistborn Trilogy is not very comparable to TWoK, but on the other hand, it doesn't need to be and it shouldn't be, because it's its own thing. Mistborn was written to be accessible; The Way of Kings was written to be the kind of book that Sanderson himself loves to read and write.

I don't know that I have much else to say about it, because it's a hard series to talk about without spoiling stuff, other than the fact that it rather strongly reminds me of anime in general, and the story in Mistborn proper reminds me of one anime in particular. (If you know about certain plot points in only one of the series, then the link I'm about to provide will be aimed at a spoilery destination.) Most especially, Kelsier and Vin remind me of a couple of other characters; if you're familiar with both, you'll probably get what I'm talking about.

I can recommend the Mistborn Trilogy more wholeheartedly than The Way of Kings because reading the first book is a considerably smaller investment of your time to decide if you like the author or not. Which one is "better" is a matter of opinion.

-Signing off.