Mistborn: The Final Empire

Overview: An epic fantasy that turns all the tropes on their heads, yet manages to still be epic, not grim or dark.. This story is told as a breathtakingly action packed tale about very human characters that grab you and pull you along as they develop. Great stuff.

On 1st Reading: Not what I was expecting at all. The story opens in a really depressing setting, basically Mordor (big fire mountains filling the sky with ash and turning the sun red). Pretty much everyone is a serf (aka. Skaa) and the few nobles are generally cruel masters, answering to the god-like and enigmatic “Lord Ruler”. OK, grimdark here we come I thought.

Oh not at all.

We are soon introduced to two characters, firstly Kelsier, a survivor of mine/death camp who is armed with hope and a plan, and Vin a young girl who is barely surviving on the streets of a sprawling city by Luck and by trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Following these two we are taken on an epic adventure in which all our expectations are challenged, yes there is a lot of darkness in this story, but there is also defiance, hope and most of all there is that best of all story elements: characters you care about.

On 2nd Reading: I remembered that this was good. I forgot just how gripping it is. To be fair the start is rather slow. It's intriguing , but not much happens in the first few chapters except that we see that this world is dark, brutal and nasty. Then (when our main characters meet) things start getting interesting, and the excitement, character development and brilliant worldbuilding just keep getting better in some sort of exponential curve.

To put it another way:
Me at the end of Chapter 1: [Raised eyebrow] “Hmm, interesting.”
Me at 50%: “Wha..but that means...wow...clever!”
Me at 85%: [Clutching book with white knuckles] “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod....”
Me at 90%: [Making cat-like hissing noises at anyone who might possibly stop me reading]
Me at 100%: [Contented sigh] "Elend and Vin...awww"

Yes, great stuff!