Mistborn: The Final Empire

Mistborn: The Final Empire is a competent fantasy novel that offers a fascinating cast of characters and a compelling plot, which is ultimately dragged down by repetition and a deeply problematic magic system.

The setting is the great city of Luthadel, the center of a feudal empire built over the constant exploitation of the poor, the peasant class called Skaa. It frequently rains ashes over the city, which is governed by the immortal Lord Ruler, whose oppressive… rule is enforced by equally intimidating officers, who have nails in place of their eyes.

After several failed attempts at rebellion, the Skaa finally see a possibility of victory when they hire a famous band of thieves, led by the mysterious Kelsier, to coordinate the uprising. The book’s protagonist is the newest member of this group, Vin: a girl who grew up on the streets and, understandably paranoid, is always expecting a betrayal from those closest to her. So, when she discovers that she is a mistborn – a special person who can magically manipulate metal – and is recruited by Kelsier himself, Vin suddenly finds herself amidst friendly people who offer her something she thinks doesn’t exist: unwarranted kindness.

Vin is a girl who grew up in the ghetto, a Skaa who has been treated relentlessly throughout her entire life: even the person who was supposed to care for her – her brother Reen – ended up betraying her trust. Her brother’s sayings accompany Vin throughout her entire journey, always reinforcing her paranoia and distrust: she was taught by Reen that the world is a cruel place and that people are both unpleasant and horrible. She learned that good actions always hide ulterior motives.

However, subtle excerpts like this are rare. Here, characters’ traits are constantly and directly presented to us, which means that Vin will often openly think about her paranoia or remember her brother’s teachings – and sometimes she’ll do both things in sequence, always using simple sentences. In the second chapter, for example, her thoughts couldn’t be clearer (“Everyone betrays everyone else. That’s the way life is…”), but to hammer the point home, there’s also the voice of her brother a few lines later: “Anyone will betray you. Anyone.” The Final Empire often errs by making things too didactic, treating the reader as if they were stupid. And, even though I get the sentiment, it still makes for a poor narrative.

But Vin still is a fascinating character. She’s independent and feisty, someone who never accepts orders passively: when her stance seems submissive, it’s just to deceive her oppressor. Vin, however, often rejects traits that reveal their gender: with her cynicism disguised as practicality, she sees in the feminine a fragile quality that would make her look like prey to those around her, drawing attention to herself. To keep herself alive, then, Vin believes she needs to reject her femininity, which is symbolized by the earrings she got from her mother but never wears… for safety. After meeting Kelsier’s group, however, Vin starts to wear the earrings, almost as an affirmation of her own identity: she begins to understand that she can be feminine and strong at the same time.

The second most important character in the novel is precisely the one who assumes the role of Vin’s mentor: the thief Kelsier. Having suffered in the past at the hands of the Lord Ruler, he has sworn revenge against all the nobility – which he sees as invariably evil – and sets up a master plan to bring down the Empire.

His gang immediately shocks Vin due to their positive dynamic: there is not only unwavering trust between them, but also open gestures of affection, and a genuine concern about each other’s well-being. This friendship is nurtured by Kelsier precisely to contrast with their society: friendship is a form of rebellion in an oppressive world. One of Kelsier’s most striking features, for example, is his smile, which is ambivalent by nature: the gesture indicates not only contentment but also anger and indignation. It’s a smile that carries a deep sense of sadness but also seeks to deliver a bit of joy to those around him. Kelsier’s smile, in other words, is an act of resistance. As the character himself explains: “the Lord Ruler thinks he has claimed laughter and joy for himself. I’m disinclined to let him do so. This is one battle that doesn’t take very much effort to fight.”

Kelsier’s main arc, however, involves his arrogance. He gradually starts to build a heroic image for himself under the justification of raising the morale of his army, but it doesn’t take long for his companions to notice that he can’t distinguish this image from himself anymore, which often leads him to reckless actions. Kelsier’s arrogance gives him a tragic air, which only reinforces the impact of his narrative arc.

His mortal enemy, the Lord Ruler, is a character who’s initially framed as an abstract evil force. They describe him as something “like the winds or the mists. One did not kill such things. They didn’t live, really. They simply were.” Being portrayed as an absolutist king, almost like Louis XIV with ridiculous magical powers, the Lord Ruler builds a image of divine authority. To stand against him is to stand against God: besides being heresy, it’s a certain step to get oneself killed.

His authoritarian government, then, is a theocratic one. The intrinsically political nature of religions, derived from their normative function, doesn’t escape the characters, who openly raise the most important questions: “But, the Lord Ruler – as God – defines what is good. So, by opposing him we’re actually evil,” someone in Kelsier’s group ponders. It’s no wonder that one of the duties of the Lord Ruler’s ministry is to eliminate all religions from the Empire: there can only be one religion – his own –, as it will give him immeasurable power, being the main spokesman of its precepts and rules. In other words, if it’s religion that defines morality, the one who controls is able to manipulate not only our actions but even how we feel about them. If our notion of right and wrong comes from a priest – or from the Lord Ruler – we become at the mercy of their political agenda.

In a specific reference to the Catholic Church, Sanderson even names the most terrifying figures in this world – those responsible for the religious “cleansing” – as Inquisitors. In close dialogue with Catholicism, the novel also builds an unusual contrast between a specific character and Jesus: this story’s martyr doesn’t sacrifice themselves in the name of God, but as a direct challenge to His divine authority.

The oppression against the Skaa, however, can get repetitive: there are many scenes of disproportionate cruelty, such as one right at the beginning where a Skaa is beaten by his master for having “blinked inappropriately.” There are many accounts of especially defenseless Skaas being beheaded, butchered, and killed in some horrible manner. The frequency of all these things makes the theme a bit heavy-handed, but again, The Final Empire often errs on the side of that.

The nobility here is largely developed by big contrasts: its members may appear beautiful and civilized but are capable of the most ruthless actions and selfish thoughts. In their high society, there is the opulence and abundance of the great balls, but right outside their fortresses, there is only misery on the streets. When Vin visits a castle, she is dazzled by the stained-glass windows that make it look almost like a cathedral. However, when she leaves the place, she’s immediately witness to a boy being beheaded in front of an impassive audience.

The framing of social classes, however, is all over the place in Final Empire. After all, despite all this heavy-handedness, Sanderson still tries to avoid painting the aristocracy as one-dimensional villains, but puts just a single aristocrat acting like a sensible human being: this character, therefore, is not a representative of their class’s complexity, but an exception to its one-dimensional villainy. Kelsier’s binary worldview, consequently, appears to be totally justified: although several cruel Skaas appear in the story, there is only one example of a good aristocrat in Luthadel – or three, if we consider their two disciples.

Vin’s relationship with the aristocracy gradually gains prominence in the story, too: while she tries, in a curious disillusion, to make excuses for their actions – claiming that they act the way they do because they don’t know better –, Kelsier tries to make her understand that they are just a bunch of bastards. They even believe the Skaa to be naturally inferior to them, both intellectually and biologically, referencing the determinist school of thought of the 19th century that tried to justify racism and slavery.

The Final Empire’s narrative is loaded with symbolism related to social injustice. The city of Luthadel, for example, is stained by ashes, which are constantly falling from the sky – the rain is, much like the Lord Ruler, a larger-than-life force of oppression – but only the Skaa live among the soot, which covers their homes, their streets, even their own bodies. And if the nobles are mostly free from this plight, it’s precisely because they have the Skaa to clean everything for them.

The Final Empire also presents an intricate magic system built around the manipulation of metals. Here, when some people – called allomancers – consume them, they receive exceptional traits, such as the ability to manipulate the metal from a distance or to tap into people’s emotions. Normally, an allomancer can “burn” only one type of metal, but a mistborn can use all of them. The central point of combat involves the allomancers’ ability to “push” and “pull” metals – usually coins –, using them as a direct form of attack or to propel themselves in a certain direction.

Especially at the beginning, like in the battle of chapter five, Sanderson hardly employs general verbs to describe characters’ actions, such as “propel,” “throw,” or “launch.” He doesn’t even use expressions such as “Vin repeated the same move,” but instead confines himself to using only “push” and “pull” to describe everything. This may seem innocuous at first, but after the twenty-fifth “pull” in just three pages, we are already beyond tired. Again, I get it, people are slow and difficult, but there’s a limit. The more precise terms could have been used only to refer to key actions, or those which would otherwise become ambiguous, and most people would still be able to perfectly understand the magic system. Probably. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just an optimist.

The biggest problem of this magic system, however, is symbolic in nature. Allomancy here is hereditary and tied to a noble lineage. So, since the revolution in The Final Empire only has a winning chance due to the use of this magic, this detail reveals that the poor population is absolutely incapable of winning a revolution by itself, needing the support of part of those who oppress it, for the real power indeed lies with them. It’s a cynical worldview that some characters in the book, like a certain nobleman, openly assume at various moments.

But the rub really lies in the resulting distinction between the nobility and the Skaa. As already pointed out, the novel references a certain deterministic logic, with nobles believing that Skaa are naturally inferior to them. Although the overall narrative tries to show that this is obviously wrong and that we are all the same, this magic system practically throws everything out of the window: since only those of noble blood can become an allomancer, the aristocracy really are better than the Skaa in Luthadel. Magic here is justifying the deterministic ideology of the nobles, establishing a hierarchy of biological power between them. This is something reprehensible not only from a social point of view in its symbolism, but from a narrative standpoint as well, as it goes into direct conflict with the novel’s overall message. If later books eventually come to deconstruct this need of a noble lineage for allomancy, this doesn’t change the fact that this should have been done here, where the question is already pretty relevant.

In terms of structure, the novel would also have been more interesting if it had followed only Vin’s point of view, instead of offering us others, such as Kelsier’s. The absence of his point of view would have done wonders for The Final Empire: there would not have been an artificial evasion of his thoughts to avoid spoiling plot twists, it would have made the character more intangible and mysterious, and it would have avoided redundancies derived from him and Vin discovering the same things.

Serving as a microcosm of this problem, there is a moment, right at the beginning of the novel, when he visits Vin’s hideout. The chapter follows her point of view, which sees Kelsier as a potentially dangerous figure. However, as we were already following him, the character’s intentions during the scene, especially if they are friendly or not, are already known to us, which distances us from the protagonist’s perspective.

In the end, Mistborn: The Final Empire presents a fascinating world and a cast of characters that is full of potential. It’s a pity, then, to attest that the narrative is so marred by repetition and some conflicting symbolisms.

April 17, 2025.

Review originally published in Portuguese on November 04, 2017.