I am 300 pages in, and here are my impressions of the characters. Also have in mind that I have already read Stormlight so I know how the cosmere works in general.

Also please no spoilers

• Vin. You know when you see a stray puppy, and reach out to pet it, but it recoils and runs away because it thinks you will hurt it? Thats Vin.

• Kelsier. He's an ass. I love him.

• Breeze. He's an ass. I hate him.

• Dox. There is no way he is not gay for Kel \j

• Ham. I like him simply because he asks question no one else asks.

• Marsh. I dont hate him. But he also seems to be unfair to Kel. We'll see.

• Sazed. I love how cheeky he is. He also has more than he shows. I think he follows the "crouching moron, hidden badass" trope.

• Camon. He hurt Vin. I hope he... oop, nevermind.

• Yeden. Buddy. What were you expecting when you hired the embodiment of the Chaotic Neutral alignment?

• "Renoux". I dont know what is up with him. But somethig is up with him.

• Lord Ruler. I am split 50/50 whether he is as powerful as everyone says or if thats just propaganda. It all depends on how literal everyone is when they say he is "a fragment of God himself"...

• Hoid. Has not shown up yet, but I know he does as an informant of sorts. Cant wait for everyone to be done with his bs in this side of the Cosmere too.

I was hoping to start red rising next but just finished a long trilogy so i was hoping to read 1-2 standalone first, any recom?

Sixteen shards, sixteen metals... Do the shards have metals that represent them

Edit: thank you, your responses have been helpful

That ending blew my mind. The ruin revelation made me rethink about everything until that point.

Misborn was my entry point to Sanderson and Fantasy. I wasn't aware that there's was some powerful god working behind the scenes the entire series. Like I was thinking the story would just be about the people living in the country not this big.

Nothing came close to that reveal. From that point I got accustomed to there is always another secret and a bigger purpose.

Humans are the voidbringers was another reveal which came close in Stormlight.

Kelsier working behind the scenes and holding the shard was another surprise. Sazed becoming the hero too but I was already too shocked by Vin and Elends death to register that reveal.

How that moment worked for you? Did any other moment stood out than this?

I have just finished Hero of ages and I'm in complete awe. I am so overwhelmed by the emotions flowing through me right now.

I absolutely loved everything about this trilogy of books especially the characters and the world they were placed in. Vin and Elend are some of the best characters I've read of and I love them so much.

I've never felt so satisfied and overwhelmed by an ending and just had to share my feelings. Truly an incredible trilogy.

Just finished the book last night and I'm shocked.

Honestly, Shadows of Self was, until the final chapters, one of my least favourite Cosmere books. It's not that I wasn't enjoying it, there was a lot of cool stuff in it. My issue is that it had this detective and mystery vibe, but the mystery itself was just... Too obvious to me. I guessed the killer was a kandra in chapter one. And the whole thing about Paalm wanting to be free of Harmony was also pretty in our face at some point.

I waited the entire book for the twist, and we got the reveal that Innate was Paalm and it explained a lot of stuff. But it still felt... Underwhelming.

And then... The Lessie reveal.

The whole book instantly clicked to me. Why everything was so personal between the Bleeder and Wax? Why she had several chances of killing him, but didn't? Why she left Wayne alive at the mansion? Why Bloody Tan showed the fuck up in the first chapters? Why, for some reason, she REALLY wanted to free Wax in particular?

And why the prologue was a chapter about Wax getting to know Lessie, which felt a bit out of place?

And it was in our face since the beggining! Who else in the world would know that the phrase "Someone move us" would affect Wax so deeply? Who else was there in the day of Bloody Tan's death???? Who would know about Wax traumas from the past (the whole coin thing)?

Yes, we know kandras are masters of disguise and are really good in investigating the people they impersonate, but these were informations Bleeder just couldn't get from anyone else that was not Wax himself. MAYBE Edwarn (the coin), but still.

And the implications for the relationship between Wax and Harmony? Damn!

The ending changes the entire book to me. And I honestly can't wait for a reread at some point!

HOW DID SAZED END UP AS HERO OF AGES, My question is that if the prophecy was always that the hero would be a foreigner or an outsider as they called it, Sazed doesn’t fit the role. The rest of the part of prophecy he fulfils being rejected by his own people and gender neutral and all that but how come he was the hero when he wasn’t a foreigner.
In fact, I believe anyone reading the book ruled out the possibility of Sazed being the hero of ages precisely because of the fact that he wasn’t a foreigner to terris people.

I've been working on a Mistborn RPG project recently, and I ran into an interesting problem when trying to create a usable map of the Final Empire.

How do you represent both the enormous scale of the Final Empire and the intricate layout of Luthadel on a single map?

Since so much of Mistborn takes place within Luthadel, I wanted the city to be detailed enough that its individual districts could function as separate regions, while still having the rest of the Final Empire represented around it.

My solution was to:

1) draw my own map

2) essentially distort the geography.

I used the canonical maps from the books as references, then dramatically expanded Luthadel and pushed the surrounding geography outward from the center to accommodate the enlarged city. This required repositioning and adjusting some of the rivers, mountains, coastlines, and other geographical features to make everything fit together reasonably well.

The result is a map that isn't geographically to scale, but hopefully preserves enough of the original geography to remain accurate while allowing Luthadel and the surrounding empire to exist on the same playable map. I tried to keep the overall appearance consistent with the maps from the books, including the parchment coloring, mountains, waterways, and the general layout of the region.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I'd love to hear what other Mistborn fans think! I'm also curious what everyone thinks of the approach of enlarging Luthadel this dramatically to fit everything onto one map.

On my 2nd or 3rd reread of the series and am wondering why Rashek did some of the things he did.

First: Why did he pretend to be Alendi? The stories the Skaa have about the Lord Ruler having been a good person before becoming the Lord Ruler are clearly about Alendi, who Rashek hated. But he mustn't have made any kind of proclamation about not being Alendi after emerging from the Well and ruining the plane.

Second: Why use the Terris language as the Empires lingua franca? Obviously Rashek was a Terris supremacist before the Well, but after it he persecuted the Terris people to prevent any risk of a Fullborn being born by controlling Terris reproduction. But Sazed mentions in passing in The Final Empire that the language spoken in the Final Empire is a dialect of the Terris language. But in everything else he adapted and borrowed culture and techniques from everywhere not Terris, especially Khlennium. It just feels a bit odd the Rashek would break his own character of hating the Terris (post Ascension) by using their language.

Is the era 2 Worth reading? Is it better or worse in your opinion?

I don't want it to spoil the series

Recently finished the trilogy and there is something that grinds my gears.

I enjoyed a lot of things in these books, but the thing I enjoyed the most was how twists were revealed and presented. Every time you had all the necessary information to reach the conclusion before the book presented it to you.

Examples of plotlines that I solved before the book told you:

• Vin's ability to pierce copperclouds & why she could NOT draw the power of the mists
• the fact that Ruin (not Kelsier) was talking to Spook in book 3
• Sazed being the hero of ages

And whether you reached the conclusion solo or not, the payout always felt rewarding, aside from a single one...

Vin's ability to take power from the mists is a plot line that starts in book 1 and ends in book 3. This whole trilogy I was waiting for an explanation as to why she could. Yes there was some foreshadowing, she didn't want change or whatever. But it felt incredibly cheap.

She can take power from the mists because she's the chosen one. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe I missed something and someone else might chime in.

Also the whole "Vin and Elend are happy because they are in a better place" felt weird, minimizing the gravity of their deaths. But I guess this one could be related to some cosmere stuff.

I have the iron arm band for the metal mind and an earring. Thinking this is pre-Alloy of Law era Wax.

Probably going to be my last update, this will be my Halloween costume.

Bonus Mistcloak

By the forgotten gods the ending was so amazing, I think.

The lord ruler is indeed clever and a good man

Hi! my copy of the first book in the series had a binding issue and pages fell out. Can anyone Help me out with a pic of pages 631 and 632 so I can finish it??? I've included a pic so you can see which edition / book.

I figured it makes sense for Wax to have this symbol on there. It was actually kind of a huge pain in the ass to make and cut the pattern for the symbol. I didn’t hem the edges because I figured a bit of raw fabric edge adds to the western rustic feeling. Might do a cleaner one if I make another mistcoat.

Also, I added fringe because what kind of cowboy doesn’t have fringe somewhere?

Yesterday's inktober was "Hero"

So I drew the greatest of heroes at the moment of his ascension.

"I am, unfortunately, the hero of ages".

I'm currently reading Alloy of Law and just got to the execution of Miles, so please no spoilers past that point. Anyway, double golds are near immortal because they are able to burn the gold they've stored healing in, which amplifies the feruchemical power. Miles used gold wristbands spiking his skin, similar to the Lord Ruler. Removing these wristbands would leave him without healing powers, which is what they did when they executed him. However, shouldn't limb severing attacks be lethal to Miles (and others like him)? I'm specifically thinking about Miles's strategy of holding dynamite in his hands. This should reasonably blow his arms off and therefore kill him, and while Miles did seem to be a bit delusional, just the threat of his arms severing should be horrifying. And wouldn't it be relatively easy to target the wristbands using powerful rifles/pistols to break them to a point where they fall off or are easily removed? On a side-note, clearly it's possible to burn metal that touches blood (not requiring swallowing). Why don't more normal allomancers use metal "implants" that they can burn almost indefinitely?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I feel like Brandon's type of hard magic system encourages this type of hard scrutiny. So are these "plot holes" or have I just misunderstood how the magic works?

Just finished Hero of Ages and loved it.

I kept getting reminded of the book series I read a few years ago - "The Bird That Drinks Tears".

The thing is... on the surface, there isn't much too similar.

Bird series doesn't have one big bad that you are trying to overthrow, nor is it set in a medieval setting with magic or superpowers.

But they both share common themes and tropes such as gentle world building thru experience and subplots rather than spoonfeeding it to you. The worlds slowly grow deeper but also bigger in scale.

Both have some awkward humor that makes you laugh but also second-guess yourself if that was meant to be funny.

They both have give you a feeling that the more you understand a character, the more you realize how wrong you were initially lol.

But I think these two series were the only ones where I finished a series and thought to myself - "there literally could not have been a better ending" - where I was emotional and fully content.

I know the 1st book came out a few months ago and the 2nd book (of 4) is coming out soon.

I personally recommend waiting til book 2 is out.

Hope you enjoy!

As the title says, if anyone has 2nd book and you've finished it could you lend me to read ? I have ebook but I prefer reading the actual physical book, but cant afford it as I bought the 1st one with the budget I had.

Anyone who lives in gurgaon/Delhi, India ...

Got a tattoo of Harmonium, love it!!!! Did it through Fine Ink Tattoo in the Central Florida Area

AoL is the first entry into Era 2, and it is stated to take place roughly ~300 years after the events in Era 1. Specifically, the very end of HoA is the epoch for the new calendar used in Era 2.

However, the way the characters in Era 2 talk about events from Era 1 makes it sound as though it’s been thousands of years. Characters in Era 2 treat some of the stories and historical figures from Era 1 as mythical legends that happened in the far distant past- when in reality it shouldn’t have been that long ago.

On Earth, 300 years ago was only 1726. In context, that’s only 50 years before the American Revolution. The first U.S. president, George Washington, was born in 1732. The 10th U.S. President, John Tyler, was born in 1790- and Tyler’s grandson only just passed away last year! (Yes, grandson- not great-grandson, just grandson).

We learn that some of the characters at the end of Era 1 live good long lives, which further complicates things. If Spook from Era 1 only died 60-100 years after HoA, why do we act like events happened 1,000~2,000 years ago?

Idk, maybe nobody else had this problem while reading them. Thoughts?

EDIT: Thanks for all of the comments, this got way more attention than I thought it would! The dramatic world-changing events at the end of HoA definitely help explain the characters’ views, as does the intertwining of religion and history.