The Double Return
And so returns the long-lost Condor!
And I’m not alone, either – something else I know and love has returned.
Yes, it’s Mistborn, and it’s still very much alive – however (and very unfortunately), alive is about as much as I’m willing to credit the new sequel.
Let’s start with the overview. The Alloy of Law (the newly-released novel) takes place 300 years after the events of the original trilogy (which, for those of you who don’t remember, or never read the books, consists of The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages – see my previous review of those books here). We find ourselves in the semi-utopia of Elendel (sound familiar?), following the story of Waxillium Ladrian, who has retired from his previous life as a “lawkeeper” in the unsettled Roughs to take control of his family’s house, and bring it from destitution. The events of the original books are now ancient history, and all our familiar friends are the stuff of legends. Our heroes, Wax and Wayne (haha, Brandon), has to fight his way through a new mystery, and save the girl and save the day, etc.
Now, the good. Sanderson, as ever, has a deeply engaging fantasy world – details thought of, oddities explained (or not, as the story calls for), etc. While most of our favorite friends are long-dead, a couple have encores in this new storyline, and Sanderson manages to write new and funny replacements for them. Allomancy and Feruchemy are back as well, and we get to see some interesting new combinations when they combine (for example, Wax, our protagonist, can manipulate his weight with his Feruchemy, and his Allomantic power, steel-Pushing, can have drastically different effects based on his weight – interesting, huh?). Many references are made to the original books (Spook’s eastern street slang becomes “High Imperial, a lofty language” used for ancient official imperial documents), and all in all, the upsides are what you’d expect from a Sanderson book – or, mostly, anyway.
However, and however unfortunately, Sanderson disappoints with this new addition (and I’m especially let down, considering that this is my favorite series of all time). Here’s why:
One: He changes the powers. Remember how, near the end of The Hero of Ages, we finally “figure out” Allomancy (or, almost) To understand the difference, you need to understand the original system. There are 16 metals:, 4 groupings of powers (Physical, Mental, Temporal, and Enhancement), each with two pairs (Internal and External), each pair with two metals (Pushing and Pulling) – so that each metal ia classifiable by these characteristics (the Physical Internal Pulling metal, for example, would be tin, and the Mental External Pushing metal would be Brass). Within each pushing-pulling pair, one metal ia an alloy of the other, and all the metals within a grouping are usually closely related. It was a system that was useful, easy to understand, and had an attractive symmetry to it. The problem? It all goes out the window in this book.
Sanderson leaves Mental, Physical, and Enhancement untouched, but the Temporal metals are butchered – Atium, and its alloy, Malatium (both fictional metals, and both central parts of the original trilogy) are thrown out the window, and replaced with Cadmium (it’s called Chromium at one point, but according to the explanation section after the book, Chromium is actually one of the Enhancement metals that was undiscovered at the end of The Hero of Ages - but we wont’ go into that now) and an alloy of Cadmium named “Bendalloy” (just try to ignore the uncreative name for now). Before, the Temporal metals all gave the user the ability to see past or future versions of a person. Now, half of them do that, and the other half literally change the passage of time itself, in a bubble around a person – one making everything in that bubble happen at supernatural speeds, the other slowing everything down to the point where an eyeblink is slower than the flow of molasses. The Temporal metals are now effectively split. Atium still exists, but it’s now classified as a “god metal” (remember how it was Ruin’s body/power?), and it, along with Larasium (Preservation’s body/power, from The Well of Ascension) are now each possible to alloy to make entirely new sets of sixteen metals. In short, the symmetry of the system is completely broken – this has been officially acknowledged, much to my dismay, and although it may not seem like a huge failing, and I admit that I may be biased because of my love for the old system, I believe that this willingness to retroactively change how things work shows part of what’s fundamentally wrong with The Alloy of Law. In addition, the new powers feel like a gimmick – “ooh, look at me, I’m messing with time” – which doesn’t help its case at all.
Two: The scale of the books feels significantly reduced. In the original three books, we have our heroes facing supernatural and seeming insurmountable problems – a god emperor, destructive deities, shapeshifting, brute force, and more. But in this new utopia? Nothing. We have Allomancy, and we have Feruchemy. No gods, no Kandra or Koloss, nothing. Essentially, the events of The Alloy of Law come down to petty crime and a vigilante trying to stop it. To put this in perspective, I’m going to quote a sentence that’s from the final chapter of The Alloy of Law, but modified to reference the other books – “It wasn’t the overthrow of a god, the collapse of civilization, or even the end of the world – it was insurance fraud.” (in the original sentence, the original “wasn’t's” were theft and kidnapping). After the original trilogy, the events of The Allow of Law feel small and inconsequential, and, quite frankly, boring.
I would like to point out that both of the previous gripes I have with this book are simply because of the fact that The Alloy of Law takes place a good deal of time after the original series – one problem because we might get bored with what we already knew (although I don’t think that would’ve happened), another problem because there’s a God who can do pretty much anything sitting up there (who was a character in the original series) – anything terrible would just be fixed, and we’d all move on. It just goes to show that authors shouldn’t have series after other series.
Three: Many of the conflicts and characters feel cliche. For example: Wax is the strong silent character who is still grieving over the loss of his lover, Wayne is the lighthearted joke-cracker who does voices, Marasi is the shy girl who’s learning how the real world works, etc. They’re characters we’ve seen before, in other books, albeit not exactly the same. The same hold for the conflicts – Wax’s obligations keep him from being with Marasi, Wax’s uncle is the bad guy and “Roughs honor” (scout’s honor, anyone?) compels him to “clean up the mess.” Again, it’s boring, and profoundly un-Sanderson-like.
Four: Most criminally, the storyline is linear, and one-note. Anyone who’s read the original trilogy can tell you how Sanderson can juggle multiple storylines at one time – in The Hero of Ages, we had Vin, Elend, Ham, and Sett at Fadrex, Sazed, Spook, and Breeze at Urteau, Marsh running around everywhere, and Ten’Soon in the homelands, with other snippets of story in other places inserted in here and there. However, that simply doesn’t happen in The Alloy of Law. We have a grand total of one storyline: Wax, Wayne, and Marasi doing detective work and beating up thugs left and right. There’s no complication, no twists, no turns in the road, even – just more subterfuge and detective work. This, to me, is the most criminal of The Alloy of Law‘s mistakes – how Sanderson seemingly abandons his usual narrative style, which is what I love the most about (most) of his writing. Nothing interesting happens – they just fight and talk their way to a predictable ending (the bad guy they’ve been fighting is captured, tried, and executed, and his mysterious employer is revealed to be the uncle who mysteriously died in the beginning of the novel). Personally, I honestly can’t understand how Sanderson could have departed so much from his beloved (and award-winning) style of writing. This, to me, is the biggest problem of them all.
TL;DR: I realize I’ve written a gigantic wall of text for you all. For those of you who didn’t finish (I know I wouldn’t have), here’s a condensed version of what I’ve said:
- Sanderson messes with the established system of his mystical powers. It’s a personal gripe, but it’s a huge one for me, and I think the retroactive changing of what was written emphasizes the other problems.
- The events of the book feel boring after overthrowing gods and saving the world. It’s insurance fraud – what’s exciting about that (in the context of the Mistborn series)?
- There are cliches – what more needs to be said about how that’s bad?
- The storyline is linear – they fight, they win, it’s over. There’s nothing confusing, or unexpected, or engaging, as is characteristic of Sanderson’s novels.
All in all, it wasn’t what I had hoped for it to be. If you feel you have to read it after reading the original series, then do so, but I think your enjoyment of the original books would be better if this book was unread – but it’s your choice. Overall, I feel that in The Alloy of Law, the series has Wayned.
5.2/8
bookworm4evr
Jazmine Baker
lightningwind
Condor
