The Lost Metal (Mistborn #7), by Brandon Sanderson
The Book
Synopsis:
For years, frontier lawman turned big-city senator Waxillium Ladrian has hunted the shadowy organization the Set-with his late uncle and his sister among their leaders-since they started kidnapping people with the power of Allomancy in their bloodlines. When Detective Marasi Colms and her partner Wayne find stockpiled weapons bound for the Outer City of Bilming, this opens a new lead. Conflict between Elendel and the Outer Cities only favors the Set, and their tendrils now reach to the Elendel Senate-whose corruption Wax and Steris have sought to expose-and Bilming is even more entangled. After Wax discovers a new type of explosive that can unleash unprecedented destruction and realizes that the Set must already have it, an immortal kandra serving Scadrial's god, Harmony, reveals that Bilming has fallen under the influence of another god: Trell, worshipped by the Set. And Trell isn't the only factor at play from the larger Cosmere-Marasi is recruited by offworlders with strange abilities who claim their goal is to protect Scadrial...at any cost. Wax must choose whether to set aside his rocky relationship with God and once again become the Sword that Harmony has groomed him to be. If no one steps forward to be the hero Scadrial needs, the planet and its millions of people will come to a sudden and calamitous ruin.
My Review (5 out of 5 )
The Lost Metal is the seventh book in the Mistborn saga, and the fourth and final book of what it's known as the second era of Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson. And let's be honest, knowing this book was meant to be the conclusion to one of the major arcs of Cosmere, the expectations were really high, but Sanderson delivered, making me feel even more hyped for future books situated in the Cosmere, wondering if they will get at some point an ambitious crossover between sagas.
I have to admit that at first glance, I wasn't a big fan of the second Era of Mistborn, especially during the first two books. It's true that with The Bands of Mourning my perception of these characters improved, and some characters as Marasi improved so so much; The Lost Metal definitely has elevated my perception of this arc of the Cosmere, moving it among my favourite ones, because it wraps the end perfectly, making it really memorable.
This book starts six years after the end of The Bands of Mourning, in a difficult moment for the city of Elendel. The tension between Elendel and the outer cities is growing, and the demands for sovereignty are becoming a big problem for the Elendel government. At the same, the hunt for the Set, the shadowy organization, continues. After Waxilliam accidentally discovers a new type of destructive explosion, he has to assume one more time his paper as Harmony's Sword, and to fulfill that role, he will need the help of Marasi, Steris, and Wayne. Throw into that mix that Harmony's power is getting blocked in Bilming, one of the outer cities, and you get a race against time, in which our protagonists must stop Telsin's plans before they get to a port.
In the style of other final books by Sanderson, we get a slow start, which gets cooked to lead us into a really high-stakes ending, in the same way, The Hero of Ages did with the First Era. We are also reading one of the most ambitious crossovers in the whole Cosmere novels, with several references that are easily spotted by fans of the saga. Also, the fact that many of the first Era characters get implied in the plot of this book is a nice touch (I have to admit, I will always be part of the Survivor's church).
Sanderson gets all the elements to reach the final part, and unleashes the perfect Sanderstom, making the last half of the book really frenetic and emotional. Again, drawing the parallelism with The Hero of Ages, The Lost Metal manages to deliver a great climax to this arc of the story. I can't count how many times I was surprised by another twist in the plot, and how it felt so satisfying and emotional the ending of this story.
The Lost Metal is the cherry on top of how great the second era of Mistborn has been. It definitely closes some of the plots that were opened with our characters, and I can say that it was worth waiting six years for its publishing. A superb ending that made these characters ascend to the top of Sanderson's character.
The Author/s
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson was born in 1975 in Lincoln, Nebraska. As a child Brandon enjoyed reading, but he lost interest in the types of titles often suggested to him, and by junior high he never cracked a book if he could help it. This changed when an eighth grade teacher gave him Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly.
Brandon was working on his thirteenth novel when Moshe Feder at Tor Books bought the sixth he had written. Tor has published Elantris, the Mistborn trilogy and its followup The Alloy of Law,Warbreaker, and The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, the first two in the planned ten-volume series The Stormlight Archive. He was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series; 2009’s The Gathering Storm and 2010’s Towers of Midnight were followed by the final book in the series, A Memory of Light, in January 2013. Four books in his middle-grade Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians series have been released in new editions by Starscape, and his novella Infinity Blade Awakening was an ebook bestseller for Epic Games accompanying their acclaimed Infinity Blade iOS video game series. Two more novellas, Legion and The Emperor’s Soul, were released by Subterranean Press and Tachyon Publications in 2012, and 2013 brought two young adult novels, The Rithmatist from Tor and Steelheart from Delacorte.
The only author to make the short list for the David Gemmell Legend Award six times in four years, Brandon won that award in 2011 for The Way of Kings. The Emperor’s Soul won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novella. He has appeared on the New York Times Best-Seller List multiple times, with five novels hitting the #1 spot.
Currently living in Utah with his wife and children, Brandon teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University