After last year I wanted to give Sanderson another shot. This time I chose one of his most popular series rather than a newer, spin-off work.

Mistborn stuck pretty closely to some common fantasy tropes. I thought Sanderson’s main characters had more depth to them in the book, which contributed to me enjoying the book slightly more than Tress. Allomancy is an interesting and certainly well-thought out magic system, but ultimately the softer, more mystical magic of Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire is more to my taste these days.

I struggled the most with the dialog in this book. Sanderson’s word choices for his characters often felt grating to me and disarmingly modern for an early industrial fantasy setting. The way that members of the city’s criminal underground talked about their profession felt awkward in the way they leaned in to modern tropes the reader would understand rather than in-universe exposition. I don’t think any character exactly said that they were “doing the heist” or something that cheesy, but many exchanges weren’t far off.

I didn’t really put my finger on this until starting to read The Well of Ascension, the sequel which I picked up but have stopped reading for now. But here are a few quotes that hopefully capture what I mean:

So I began spreading rumors in the Western Dominance, then made myself one of Lord Cett’s advisors

The way this glosses over an indeterminate amount of time, and how a character casually talks about penetrating the inner circle of a rival, did not feel like how someone would talk about an operation of this importance or risk.

Maybe this won’t work — maybe after a couple months of being besieged, we’ll just end up giving away the city anyway.

“Being besieged” just really grated on me here. I could think of twenty ways to phrase this that sound more natural, starting with “maybe after a couple months under siege”.

These examples might seem like nitpicking, but I picked up at least one of these every chapter or two during Mistborn, and it really did affect my immersion in the world.