The Final Empire (Mistborn #1) – Brandon Sanderson
Synopsis
For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed.
For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear while the Lord Ruler reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, a divinely invincible leader. Hope is long lost, until a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa in the depths of the most hellish prison and discovered he has the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, Kelsier will turn his talents to the ultimate caper: one with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.
Only he’s not just planning the greatest heist in history, he’s plotting the overthrow of a divine despot.
Kelsier recruited the underworld’s elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel’s plan looks like a long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she’s a half-Skaa orphan, but she’s lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.
Review
This book is like putting together a 1000-piece puzzle. You start by having piece by piece the information. And you can join it little by little like when you put the edges together. However, as you get closer to the center of the puzzle it seems that you are still missing pieces to complete it.
Long ago the Lord Ruler saved humanity by destroying the Deepness. Unfortunately, power made him a tyrant leader. In a world where it rains ash, a strange mist appears at night, and things like flowers are just a legend.
The society is divided between nobles and skaa. The last are nothing more than slaves whose life has lack of importance. Vin is a somewhat different skaa. Fate wanted that instead of ending up working on a plantation, she would end up in a gang of thieves. Her greatest talent was her ability to stay invisible. That and her “luck”. A strange ability that allowed her to entice people to do what she wanted, but which, unfortunately, ran out very quickly each time. Anyway, it had earned her to become the amulet of the gang leader when he carried out his scams.
When one of these scams goes wrong. Vin meets Kelsier, the only survivor of the Pits of Hatshin and a Mistborn. He explains to Vin that her “luck” is actually allomancy, the ability to burn some metals for getting skills. Most allomancers can only burn one type of metal, but those Mistborns can use them all. Kelsier is the only Misting skaa in existence, or at least he was before Vin.
— The nail attacked me!
Did that metal give life to objects? That would indeed be an incredible power.
— The truth is that you attacked yourself.
Vin becomes part of the Kelsier gang, and joins his plan to overthrow the final empire and assassinate the Lord Ruler. The problem is, how do you murder a god? Unless that’s just a legend and the Lord Ruler is just a man after all. Everyone in the gang believes it’s an impossible mission, but they decide to accept it anyway.
Vin was beginning to understand that her old goal in life (to survive, without further ado) was worthless. There were many things she could do. She had been Reen’s slave; she had been a slave to Camon. She would also be Kelsier’s slave, if sooner or later that led to her freedom.
While Vin practices allomancy with Kelsier, her main task is to infiltrate the nobles, posing as Lady Valette at social gatherings, such as balls, to get information and spread rumors at her disposal.
Finally she realized why men were expected to help women out of the carriages. It wasn’t a silly custom after all: the clothes were silly.
The problem is that she caught the attention of Eland Venture, the only heir to Luthadel’s most powerful house. At least Vin isn’t fool enough to fall in love with a noble…
— Maybe it’s best if you avoid Venture entirely. Try to offend him or something. Give him a couple of those looks of yours.
Vin looked at Kelsier.
— That, that same look! — Kelsier said with a laugh.
From the beginning, Vin’s life was very hard. Her brother, Reen, rescued her from her mother after she murdered her younger sister. From that moment they became thieves and his brother was in charge of teaching her not to trust anyone, not even him. What was verified when he escaped and abandoned her as he always said he would do.
Once in the gang, Kelsier teaches Vin what it means to trust someone else, but also reminds her of what it feels like to be betrayed…
Kelsier looked at her for a moment, then smiled.
— The first time we met, I could barely get you to say a few words. Now you’re giving me sermons.
An incredible start to a saga, full of action, romance, friendship, humor, madness. The truth is that it seems complete to me in every way. It’s been a long time since I found a book that would take you to a completely different world and that had such a good level of development of both the place and the characters and the type of “magic” of the story, because when Vin learns to use allomancy we have a complete class of its use and its scientific bases. All this in a didactic way, without getting boring despite the abundant descriptions.
In addition, the system of allomancy seems absolutely impressive and complete to me.
The only warning I will make is that there is a lot of blood. The constant battles in the story tend to be quite descriptive and bloody. However, I consider myself quite sensitive and it did not affect me.
I feel like I found one of those stories that is a real gem. That you can enjoy again and again. Or at least I hope so, I have only read the first one, and I am already too excited ?.
Bye bye ?
* I read this book in Spanish and some things are translated by me, so they may not be identical to the English version *