Mistborn: The Lost Metal

This one was even more amazing than the last. By a bunch. The endings to these series just keep me on my toes constantly. I read like the last 200 or so pages all in one sitting because I just couldn’t stop. Just one more page…

Spoiler warning for Mistborn: The Bands of Mourning

Autonomy

So in this book the team works together to fight Autonomy. Someone who carries a Shard and is therefore some sort of god. Autonomy carries the Autonomy shard and values individuality. Harmony carries two shards Ruin and Preservation and is therefore the most Invested being in the Cosmere. What that means or how or why that matters is unclear for now.

Autonomy has Invested Telsin because Telsin promised she could take over the planet for Autonomy instead of Autonomy destroying the entire planet. To do this they built some sort of nuclear bomb but instead of nuclear fission it’s splitting harmonium. Harmonium is the new metal that formed when Harmony rose to godhood. It is not an alloy of Lerasium and Atium but it somehow contains both. It’s unclear how or why this works exactly. Anyway they discover this because with Trellium an embodiment of Autonomy somehow, they manage to split harmonium and create lerasium and atium. But they didn’t know that.

If it was discovered that lerasium could be created and atium as well? It would have major ramifications as anyone and everyone that was a Ferring could become a very powerful Mistborn and start compounding whatever metal they are a Ferring in. If a gold Ferring got his hands on lerasium… That would be an incredibly powerful person. Or pewter, or tin, or anything else really. Even someone who had no Feruchemical or Allomantic powers could become really strong.

Ghostbloods

Ghostblood symbol

There is this secretive group of people who are only named like once but some of them are off-world and their mission is to protect Scadrial. They’re basically aliens but they are also human. It’s weird because apparently all, or at least some, worlds also have humans. How? Where all the worlds once one world? Moonlight mentions the Shattering once and I’d assume that that has something to do with it. Although the things that contain godly powers are also called Shards. Who knows? I know that there is more to be discovered but I don’t know how it all relates. We’ll figure that out later I suppose.

Moonlight

Moonlight somehow managed to sneak into the Elendel Constabulatory. She goes with her to a sting and introduces herself to Marasi. Moonlight is her codename but Marasi doesn’t know the word. Which is interesting because there was never a moon described, but that obviously makes sense. It seems natural to assume that there is a moon, but there’s not. It seems like not a big deal and it’s not but I think it’s something that seems weird. It’s logical it’s never mentioned, but it is something different from our own world. But of course none of the characters we’ve read about so far would even think about a moon because they don’t know what that is. I’ll stop rambling.

Moonlight is a cool character. It is very unclear where so comes from but so it is for most of them. She has some stamps she can use that change stuff. She has one stamp that allows her to press it into a wall and then the wall changes as if someone had build a door there. How is incredibly unclear but it is very cool. There’s also a stamp that let’s her repair broken items but that remains unused and the final stamp allows her to change herself to trick something that Moonlight grew up in a different place in her homeworld. She uses that eventually and loses all her memories.

The stamps are cool but I wonder what other things you could stamp and what other things you could change? Or how far you could go? Could she have changed it so she grew up in Elendel and were an Allomancer? Could she have changed it so that she wass the Lord Ruler? Could you change an entire planet? All it’s inhabitants? Change rocks into diamonds and water into wine? It also seems like the stamps are not specifically bound to Moonlight but that could just be her speciality.

Twinsoul

Twinsoul in crystal armor

Twinsoul is very cool, probably my favorite of the Ghostbloods I’ve seen so far. Being able to create those structures and things and he is apparently pretty intelligent with him being able to figure out were there would be entrances to the lab. He figured out a lot of things and his abilities are also very cool and useful. He can create crystals from water and maintained indefinitely. He does need to be touching his structures though as they can be maintained by an Investiture field which they apparantly setup in the Ghostbloods hideout but Scadrial has no natural Investiture field.

He seems to be able to create different kinds of crystals, mostly different colors like a different shade of pink or make it clear but what about different properties? Could he create crystals that are more rigid? More fragile? What about liquids? Or gasses? His structures turn to dust and then some sort of damp but could he control those as well? What about explosive crystals? If he could create explosive crystals and knew how guns worked he could fashion a gun out of crystals using the explosive crystals to drive a bullet. I don’t know if that is even remotely a possibility but it would be a cool character. Kind of like Ranette but more mystical and better able to improvise on the fly. Or maybe that character could create crystal that lasts indefinitely no matter where it is? Then they could sell their creations. So many ideas and questions I can’t wait to read more about all the new worlds and things that have been revealed now.

Sovereign

And we have the Survivor himself. It is weird because I don’t have any clue how he became the Sovereign, or how he survived or how he made the Bands. But after spoiling myself just a little bit I now know that some of those questions are answered in Mistborn: Secret History and since I haven’t read any of the Mistborn short stories I’ll read them all and tell you my thoughts about them whether you like it or not.

Others

There is one character Codenames are Stupid but we see very little of her and I don’t know what her deal is at all. Marasi implies that she can “call” someone with some sort of weird orb but I’m not sure if it is not just some sort of technology we haven’t seen yet. Either way she must have some extraordiary abilities if she has joined the Ghostbloods.

The organization is probably much larger than is shown but I’m not sure since they’re so secretive. Maybe it is just this ragtag group of people. Who know?

Wayne

One Last Logshine

Wayne is almost definetely my favourite character. He has some amazing quotes that are congregated by Steris at the end of the book. I just like his character. He’s an idiot goofball that has a darker more serious side to him. He deeply regrets the murder he committed when he was young but he manages to make it up eventually. He’s a tortured soul who uses disguises and accents and childish humor to escape being himself. In the book it was clearly telegraphed that Wayne would die. With the scene drawn above and his metalminds running completely out it was clear that something was going to happen. Then him becoming Mistborn and creating a duraluminium-enhanced bendalloy bubble. Actually that scene is the preview for this post and I love the entire scene.

Wayne is so cool and a very strong character. I’m sad that he passed and I’m glad that he managed to come to terms with who he is. A great character detail is that he’s just filthy rich about 4th in the entire of Elendel but doesn’t want anyone to know and keeps thinking of stupid investment strategies that work out way too well. And then at the end Allraine, the daughter of the person he killed, getting 120 million is quite amazing. And of course all the other ways he divided his fortune. Ranette’s shop renovation, his lucky hat for Marasi of course. And the pranks he laid out for his accountants to fulfill are absolutely hilarious.

Final thoughts on Mistborn

I loved the first three books. The reveals and story in each one of them is great and very captivating. The characters in those books were all great and I liked it a lot. The second Era or the Wax and Wayne series was also very good. The first book of Era 2, The Alloy of Law, was great and it was weird trying to figure out what characters had other names. Like the Lord Mistborn being Spook, the Ascendant Warrior was Vin, the Last Emporer was Elend and Harmony was Sazed. All characters we’ve come to know and love becoming these things of mythical proportions. Then Shadows of Self with the amazing plottwist. Bands of Mourning explored that there was more to this world than just the Basin with the South. And then this book touched on other gods from entirely other planets. I can’t wait to read what happens next and I’ve already started on other books from the Cosmere.