The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Brandon Sanderson does some stuff very, very well: action filled fantasies starring main characters who question their purpose and motivations set in a world where religion is considered in unconventional ways.

For the most part, Sanderson managed to deliver again an incredible fantasy adventure filled with laugh out loud moments and pulse racing scenes. Somehow, his seemingly simple prose was always extremely effective in describing complicated action scenes that were practically his hallmark.

I was initially apprehensive about The Alloy of Law because I was major fan of the original Mistborn Trilogy. While the ending was not entirely satisfactory in my opinion, it was nevertheless an ending that I have come to grudgingly accept as a bittersweet conclusion to an extraordinary fantasy series. But I thought, what the heck, this is Brandon Sanderson! One of my favourite fantasy author and I have yet failed to read any book written by him (except for WoT).

The story was an interesting addition to the original Mistborn lore. The applications of Allomancy to semi-modern gunfight sequences and Wax-Wayne’s hilarious interactions kept me turning the pages as time flew away.

However on the negative side, the world building wasn't as extensive as other Sanderson books. Religions have always been a strong focus in his worlds, but they were only alluded to in this case. This was something I felt remiss and could have expanded upon to clue in readers who aren't familiar with the original characters or to bridge better with the original series.

When I finished the book, I had many lingering questions. What the heck was bendalloy??? How did they discover bendalloy? Did Sanderson decide they need 8 pairs of metals and since theres the absence of attium and malatium, created an additional metal out of the blue? What's the God Metals?

Why were the aristocrats so useless in the ballroom scene? Have the mistings been relegated to mere courier services? What happened to keeping strong men in your household? That seems like a 180degrees change from 350 years ago. And having an entire ballroom of Aristocrats of noble descent and all of them could only cower in fear? Elend is a not hereditary Mistborn, so the kidnap theory was extremely flaky on my part as the reader.

I was very annoyed that Elend is known posthumously as Lord Mistborn, when Vin was obviously the stronger Mistborn warrior and the main character in the Mistborn series. What each religion has come to represent was also too vaguely explained.

So you will understand my disappointment that towards the end, instead of addressing these issues, Mr Sanderson chose to leave major cliffhangers in the final chapters to preempt possible future entries in the series. It went like this: after the main conflict was concluded, it was revealed that the main villain was manipulated (for unknown ulterior motives) by a higher-order villain. And surprise, surprise, Marsh and Sazed (ie GOD) are still there having a hand influencing the proceedings. Effects of Marsh's actions are another cliffhanger. Sazed didn't sound like Sazed at all. why did he help Wax? Why were Miles's actions considered so wrong as to justify God's intervention? I thought Wax was the more evil one meting out capital punishment for crimes of theft & kidnap. The crew had no initial plans to kill anybody.

Then the story ends. WTF? W-T-F!!!????

Considering there were no clear plans (if any at all?) that this series will continue in the future, I felt the ending was very bad. I was left feeling bereft of a satisfying closure to what I expected to be a standalone novel but all I could do was pull my hair in frustration.

As much as I may love the rest of the novel, the final chapter made me feel that the book was incomplete and spoiled the entire thing for me. I apologise for the schizophrenic tone in this review, for the book has clear merits and deficiencies, which accounts for the 3 stars.

P.s. Brandon Sanderson wrote in the preface he wanted to do an urban fantasy trilogy on the Mistborn world. By usual definitions urban fantasy is different from the steampunk setting of this book, which makes me doubt the continuance of this storyline, hence my utter frustration at the ending.

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