Mistborn: Shadows of Self

This book was again pretty good. I swear to god I don’t know how Brandon Sanderson does it. He is a writing machine. Also I discovered the Cosmere so I kind of want to touch upon that “briefly”.

Spoiler warning for Mistborn: Shadows of Self

This was a shorter book than the books from Era one, who were all 500+ pages while Era two has 250-300 pages per book so far. The story was great. I didn’t speak of the characters really at all in my thoughts about Mistborn: The Alloy of Law. And even though the magic system is absolutely amazing, I want to look more at what we figure out in this and the last book and what is going on.

Characters

Wax

Wax

Wax is the main character. It is not like he is a Mary Sue type, he just has the greatest presence. The story revolves around him. He was a lawman in the Roughs who returned to Elendel after his uncle and sister died. He also returned because his wife Lessie was killed because a criminal pushed Lessie into Wax’s bullet’s trajectory. He is the main protagonist that fights against Miles Hundredlives in Alloy of Law. It is revealed in that book that Miles worked for Wax’s uncle who is part of a secret criminal organization called the Set.

Wax is also a Twinborn, meaning he is both an Allomancer and a Feruchemist. However there are apparently no more Mistborn or Feruchemists who can use all metals. Instead there are only Mistings, Ferrings (Feruchemists that can store aspects in only one type of metal) and a combination called, as stated before, Twinborn. Wax is an iron Ferring and a steel Misting, meaning he can store and tap weights from his ironminds and push off of metals with a Steelpush. He uses these abilities in a lot of ways. I like the magic system a lot because the characters manage to use their abilities in all kinds of creative ways. Wax regularly puts some extra oomph into his shots by Pushing on the bullets. He can also create a steel bubble of sorts by pushing on every metal in his, well, bubble. With this bubble he can slightly offset bullets so that he gets hit less often. There are many other creative applications of the powers and I’m sure I’ll mention a few others.

Wayne

Wayne

Wayne is a very fun character. He acts like he is an idiot, and he is at times. But he’s very good at imitating people. He is a master disguiser and is very good at changing his voice. A master imitator. He also has a very good character, he fights for what’s right because Wax took him in when he was young and Wax put Wayne on a good path. Wayne is still haunted by a man he killed with a gun, turning a wife into a widow and a child fatherless. He regrets it still as there is a chapter of the book where Wayne visits the person he left without a father to give her money as he does every month. It crushes him to do this but he deeply regrets what he did and wants to make it right even though he can’t.

Wayne is also Twinborn and is a gold Ferring and bendalloy Misting. Bendalloy is a new metal which I think I introduced in my thoughts on Alloy of Law but if not, here goes. Bendalloy allows the Misting to create a bubble where people and things caught inside will be sped up compared to the rest of the world. Wayne routinely uses this to be able to have a conversation about strategy or something else with Wax while in a situation which they normally couldn’t, like in a firefight or a wedding. He stores health so he can mostly heal from most injuries after he has taking a little while to store up some health.

Marasi

Marasi

Marasi is a supporting character but is still very important and very well characterized. She struggles with her place and is unsure of herself. She is the bastard daughter of the father of Wax’s fiancee. I do like her creative use of her Allomancy. She can burn Chromium and with it speed up time in a bubble. In Alloy of Law she uses this to basically summon a bunch of constables to capture Miles while in this book she briefly uses it to confuse some guards and be able to sneak into a carriage.

Harmony

Harmony

The revelation that Lessie, Wax’s wife. Was brought into his life and taken out of it because she a servant of Harmony was a crazy. While I was reading it I was like: hold on, is this Lessie? She said things like Lessie and according to Wax had the mannerisms down exactly. I forced the thought down thinking she could have figured some things out from extensive study but then when it’s revealed I was like oh shit I knew it! It has been 300 years after Sazed ascended and his motives are probably “beyond human understanding” but it’s kind of messed up of him. I get it and I don’t get it and I think that that is what Wax is going through as well it’s great.

Also the reveal at the end where the metal is some unknown metal is very interesting. I desperately want to know who or what Trell is and how and why they gave the metal to Bleeder. Is Trell another God? If so, is Harmony just not omnipotent but just very powerful. Could Harony be killed by this Trell? Also, at the end of the book there’s someone writing things seemingly looking in to the world of Scadrial from outside. Who is that? What is Investiture and a Spiritweb? Is it part of the Cosmere?

Cosmere

I was interested and looked around a bit, managing to evade all spoilers. But I did look at some reading order videos include the official 2024 Cosmere reading order video by Brandon Sanderson himself. And to be honest, I’m hooked. Most of the books he’s written are in the same universe? Does this mean that, when there will be space travel that all the worlds and magic systems will meet? Will they mix in unexpected but also very logical ways? I don’t even know the other magic systems or the worlds of the other planets but this gets me excited. It’s like Infinity War but even cooler. I don’t know in what order I will read all the books but I will finish everything Mistborn before moving on I think. Then maybe Warbreaker and after that the Stormlight Archive. Honestly I wish I could just read all of them in a day but it is way more fun this way because then I can figure everything out myself I’m so excited!!!

Mistborn TTRPG

This is so awesome. I looked at it already, I know I could’ve been spoiled a lot. But I didn’t because I was mostly interested in the mechanics and even though I’m not very experienced I’d absolutely love to play a campaign in this setting with this system. It is developed by Crazy Games I think but cough I downloaded it illegaly cough (don’t tell anyone). I like the Compounding things as well, I thought compounding copper would do nothing but according to this material you can see what happened by Compounding copper from just a few eyewitnesses and that’s insane. Or what about LITERAL X-RAY VISION with tin? Hemalurgy and stuff is also very cool when I finish all the Mistborn material and want to run a game, I might just run a game with this with some other avid Mistborn fans.

Cosmere RPG

OMG I want to play this so bad but I don’t want to get spoiled. I’m going to read all the books so I can look at the source material and not get spoiled. It would be so cool to combine the books and stuff but again, I’ve not even read all the Mistborn books. Let alone all the Stormlight Archive and all the standalone books. I just want to have read all the books and then read them even more and then play with them to construe an epic adventure. But alas, I need to wait until I have read everything and then I need to find some other people who either don’t care about maybe getting spoiled, or those who have read the material, or somehow find a way to not spoil anyone. Either way it’s a long way away before I’m even finished with all the books.

Conclusion

I’ve rambled quite a lot in this, I guess I’m getting more comfortable just sharing stuff then I was with the last few posts. I’m actually quite liking blogging and just writing whatever the fuck I want. Anyway the book was great as always and I’ve already begun the next one so see you at my next blog post I guess.