Retro Review: Mistborn - The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Read in April, 2009

This is one of my earliest reviews from Goodreads, and is to this date it is far and away my most popular. I'm not sure why, really. It's not my best, I don't think. But I'll post it here.

Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It reminds me of Ocean's Eleven meets The Italian Job, but set in Mordor after Sauron has ruled for 1000 years or so. In many fantasy stories, a dark lord is rising and it is up to our heroes to defeat him before that happens. In this, the Dark Lord is already set in place as the status quo and the heroes have to motivate others to want a change.....Yet there is a noble class of The Lord Ruler's flunkies who will need to be scammed and robbed along the way, to finance this big revolt.....I love it...

The pace, style, and grand-heist-scheme-in-a-fantasy-setting plot remind me of Michael J. Sullivan's The Crown Conspiracy while the characters and rags-to-revolutionary story make me think of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Certainly a great blending, as both of these were recent 5-star reviews for me....

Okay, now I've finished it. All I can say is WOW. Why did I wait so long to read this? I must read the other two books in the series very soon.......

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