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Note to self: You are no longer allowed to bring books this good on family road trips. It makes you antisocial. You ignore the great views outside the car. You resent being torn away from the book to spend time with family, and when you are you babble incessantly about how awesome it is and how everyone would like it and how cool the magic is and how great the characters and on and on and on until your family is probably sick of you. And then, even after an eight-mile hike in the desert when you're covered in sweat and dirt, you let your sister have first shower so you'd have more reading time. You even considered skipping dinner to finish it! This is the kind of book that stays at home in future, where you can sit and read all day and not be bothered.



And now for the rest of you - all the above is true. For the few days I was reading it, this book did its level best to take over my life. It was addicting. I craved it like chocolate, and not being able to read was hard to deal with.

I would expect nothing less from the man chosen to finish the Wheel of Time, or from a contributor to Writing Excuses, the podcast that got me into podcasts. I went into Mistborn ready to be impressed, but that's not what happened. I wasn't impressed. I was wowed. Blown away. Astounded. Engrossed. Shocked. Thrilled. And filled with a sense of loss when it was over.

This is not a good book, my friends.

This is a great book.

This is what fantasy needs.

As far as the genre is concerned, this book - this series - this author - is the Hero of Ages.

Thank goodness for Brandon Sanderson. Thank goodness for a writer with such a depth of imagination; for the wildly creative systems of magic he creates; for his vivid and haunting settings; for his masterful plotting and artful twists which are, always, "surprising but inevitable". Thank goodness for a male writer who makes his female main character strong, but not in a masculine way. Vin is seriously amazing. So is the rest of the cast - my one objection is that there aren't any other women in significant roles, but maybe that'll change in later books.

And the writing! I know from Writing Excuses that Sanderson has never wanted to be anything but an author, and that he spent years working as a hotel clerk so he had time to write, and that he had completed numerous novels before he managed to sell one. It shows. The language is almost entirely flowing and clear, suffering only occasionally from an over-use of commas. (One after every 'but' is a bit much.) More authors should learn to write like this. More authors should practice writing the way he has.

Normally I find more to say about books I like, but this time I'm too impressed. Sanderson has amazed me beyond anything I expected. I can't wait to read The Well Of Ascension.