Quick-take:

Dan's Review

Wax and Wayne are back at it again. This time it is to save Elendale. With that, I will conclude my mini-summary.

It was 90% investigative detective work and about 10% fantasy. The small fantasy bits that were used did not work well at all. Mistborn era 2 should've been left alone. Brandon Sanderson basically blew up his own magic system. He changed the rules, calling it "scientific progress" and just randomly decided to toss in elements from The Emperor's Soul. What's worse, is that the story did not even need it. It was a fairly minor plot area for such a massive shift to help to get out of a bind.

I'm just not sure what to think of this one. On one hand, if I was to judge it on its own, it is decent. On the other hand, he basically just ruined Mistborn. We already have Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy. Now, we have Soul Stamps.. because? I don't know. Maybe Brandon Sanderson likes that system better and thought it'd be a nice twist. The other characters just accept it and the story moves on.

If only the story was good enough to back it up. We have dead people coming back to life, and walking gods doing whatever gods do. Obvious plot points are tossed aside. "Couldn't we have a steel pusher move it out of the way?" Nah... Oh, how about some clones? That's cool, right?

For those wanting to dive into this one, a bit of a warning: There is ZERO intro to help your memory on the lore, characters, backstory, etc. This book has references going all the way back to book 1 of the original trilogy. If that is too big of a commitment for what I consider a pretty weak entry, then you can probably do OK rereading the previous book, The Bands of Mourning and a summary of metals and what they do. Even better, just stop at the Bands of Mourning. The end of this book said the Mistborn Era 2 ends here. Pretend The Lost Metal does not exist.

Score: 3/5. Not Brandon Sanderson's best work. I am glad I did not wait 6 years for this. I thought the series was complete.