fantasy, mystery, action/suspense
Amy's Reviews
The Alloy of Law (Mistborn #4)
Another great series start by Brandon Sanderson! I enjoyed his Mistborn trilogy very much so I decided to try the continuation of that series, The Alloy of Law, which takes place in the same world but 300 years into the future from the first Mistborn trilogy. This one felt like it was set in a parallel universe to our own cowboy era with gunslingers and trains and the emergence of electricity. Even the cover art shows them dressed for the American West. Waxillium has had to return to his family home in the city because he is the inheriter of a family estate that requires management and oversight. Unfortunately, this pulls him away from his vigilante law enforcement adventures in The Roughs. However, due to circumstances, he finds himself pulled into a mystery in the city, hunting down lawbreakers, and slipping back into his role of enforcer along with his trusty “sidekick” Wayne. (Wayne? Sanderson is so excellent at creating unique names for his characters and then he comes up with something familiar like Wayne? Oh well, the name certainly does fit him and he is probably my favorite sidekick ever! I love him! And I did not miss the “wax and wane” sound-alike.)
The references to all the old characters from the Mistborn trilogy were heart-warming and the “modern” interpretations of history and religion were interesting given the fact that the series reader knows exactly where those stories originated and can imagine how they’ve morphed over time. The characters were fun, there was a lot of action (although, the fighting scenes went on a bit long for my taste—this is my biggest criticism of the novel which is the only thing lowering my rating), the pacing was great, and the story pulled me in right away and kept me there. I will gladly continue reading the series.
Michael Kramer continued as the narrator for the series and, again, he tends to get too monotone when he’s not actively voicing a character. But, oh, when he IS voicing a character, he’s wonderful. I’ll give him an A for not only doing a great job with accents and different voices, but coming up with an almost entirely new cast of voices for this novel instead of recycling old voices of characters now gone. Bravo!
Shadows of Self (Mistborn #5)
As much as I love the characters in this series, I'm probably done with it at this point. In the fifth Mistborn installment, which is the second novel of the new generation, our story picks up about a year after the events in book #4 ended. Not much has changed during that time and Wax and his friends once again find themselves doing investigative work while chasing after a murderer.
The good: Oh, how I love Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Milan. They're all great characters and the interaction between Wayne and Milan was especially entertaining. They had me laughing out loud a few times.
The bad: The religion. Sigh. This is what I didn't like about the original Mistborn series. It got too heavily religious at the end. Granted, it's based on fantasy religions but it's still involving higher powers with the ability to speak to humans and interfere. It just doesn't do it for me. This is not what I want from the fantasy genre.
The ugly: The newspaper sections. I see what Sanderson was trying to do and applaud his creativity, but it was forced and, frankly, took me away from the action in the storyline for too long. Since I was listening to the audio book it was especially painful because I could not fast forward through these parts that did nothing to carry the story forward.
The narrator was, once again, Michael Kramer and he really outdid himself this time. The section where Wayne and Milan were showing off their abilities to speak using different accents was nothing short of genius! What a talent to be able to change to different voices and dialects with such high skill. I wondered if Sanderson was thinking about how much work he was setting up for Kramer, knowing he would be reading the audio version. I'm sure Kramer's stellar work here is appreciated by the author. He has finally earned an A+ from me!
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