Mistborn: The Final Empire

Setting

The Mistborn series is set in a roughly medieval dystopian future on the world Scadrial, where ash constantly falls from the sky, all plants are brown, and supernatural mists cloud every night. One thousand years before the start of the novel, the prophesied Hero of Ages ascended to godhood at the Well of Ascension in order to repel the Deepness, a terror threatening the world whose true nature has been lost to time. Though the Deepness was successfully repelled and mankind saved, the world was changed into its current form by the Hero, who took the title "Lord Ruler" and ruled over the Final Empire for a thousand years as an immortal tyrant and god. Under his rule, society is stratified into the nobility, believed to be the descendants of the friends who helped him achieve godhood; and brutally oppressed peasantry, known as skaa.

Central to the Mistborn universe is the presence of magic. The most widely known discipline of magic is called Allomancy, which allows users to gain magical powers by swallowing and "burning" specific metals to gain supernatural abilities. Allomantic potential is a genetic trait concentrated in the nobility, though skaa Allomancers exist due to crossbreeding between the nobility and the skaa. Normal Allomancers have access to one Allomantic power, but an incredibly rare subset of Allomancers, called Mistborn, have access to every Allomantic power.

Plot Summary

Three years prior to the start of the novel, a half-skaa thief named Kelsier discovers that he is Mistborn and escapes the Pits of Hathsin, a brutal prison camp of the Lord Ruler. He returns to Luthadel, the capital city of the Final Empire, where he rounds up his old thieving crew for a new job: to overthrow the Final Empire by stealing its treasury and collapsing its economy.

At the beginning of the novel, the reader is introduced to Vin, a street urchin who is recruited by Kelsier's crew after Kelsier realizes that she is a Mistborn. She is trained by Kelsier's crew to develop her Allomantic powers, which include burning pewter to strengthen the body, burning tin to enhance the senses, and burning steel to gain a limited form of telekinesis over metal. She also spies on the nobility by attending opulent balls in Luthadel, where she poses as Valette Renoux, niece to Lord Renoux, a nobleman working with Kelsier's crew. During these balls, she meets and falls in love with Elend Venture, heir to House Venture, the most powerful of the Luthadel noble houses. Elend flouts the rules of nobility culture and secretly plans with his noble friends to build a better society when they ascend to their respective houses.

Kelsier hopes to conquer the city by destabilizing it with a house war between the nobility and invading with a skaa army. Once in control, he hopes to overthrow the Final Empire by stealing the Lord Ruler's atium hoard, the cornerstone of the Final Empire's economy. The crew succeeds in starting a house war by assassinating several powerful nobles and recruiting about seven thousand soldiers to join their cause. However, about three quarters of the soldiers are slaughtered after one of the crew misguidedly uses the army to attack an unimportant Final Empire garrison. The remaining soldiers are smuggled into Luthadel. Unfortunately, Lord Renoux and his estate are seized and brought to be executed by the Canton of Inquisition, the secret police arm of the Final Empire. Though Kelsier's crew manage to free most of them, Kelsier is killed by the Lord Ruler himself in a dramatic confrontation in Luthadel's city square. Though these events appear to leave Kelsier's plan in shambles, it is revealed that his real plan was to become a martyred symbol of hope for Luthadel's superstitious skaa population. The skaa population react to his death by rising and overthrowing the city with the help of Kelsier's army.

Before his death, Kelsier had attempted to unlock the potential of the "Eleventh Metal" in his possession, which was rumored to be the Lord Ruler's weakness. He was unable to do so before his death, and left it to Vin to finish the job. With the Eleventh Metal, Vin goes to the imperial palace to kill the Lord Ruler. She is captured by the Canton of Inquisition and left in a cell to be tortured, but Sazed, her faithful servant, comes to her rescue. Using a magical discipline called Feruchemy, he helps Vin to escape and recover her possessions. Vin fights the Lord Ruler, who is revealed to be both an incredibly powerful Allomancer and a Feruchemist, the combination of which grants him incredible healing powers and eternal youth. Vin is almost destroyed by the Lord Ruler, but with hints from the Eleventh Metal and the unexpected help of the mists, she manages to separate the Lord Ruler from his Feruchemical bracelets that provide him with constant youth, causing him to age rapidly. With a spear to the heart, Vin kills the Lord Ruler, who with his last words ominously warns her of a greater evil. The Final Empire collapses, though Elend is able to avoid total anarchy by uniting Luthadel under a new system of government.

Characters

Reception

Upon publication, Mistborn: The Final Empire was nominated for the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Best Book Award for an Epic Fantasy Novel.

A review in The Washington Post comments that "Sanderson's characters aren't particularly well-developed, and the allomancy sometimes feels a little like a video game trick (press X-Y-X-X to burn steel!). But he has created a fascinating world here, one that deserves a sequel." Forbes magazine praised all of the books in the Mistborn series: "The narrative is crafted with such bloody precision, it's nearly impossible to put the books down."

Film adaptation

In January 2010, Brandon Sanderson announced that he had optioned the rights to the Mistborn books to Paloppa Pictures LLC. In Q1 of 2014 Paloppa Pictures' option ran out.