Next books worth it ?

[darkmoods]

Hey all,

with 3 hours left on book 3, I am debating if i should start the next books in the series or jump to something else. What seems to be the consensus of true fans that come to forums? the reviews i've seen are really mixed, saying the next books are shorter, more boring and don't add much. 

Should i keep at it and finish all of the "trilogy of trilogies" or just switch to another series of Sanderson ?

Thoughts ?

 

Thanks.

[Karger]

Alloy of Law(the next book in the series after Hero of Ages) is quite different and the transition can be a bit jarring.  In some ways the way Sanderson readepts his world for a different era is inspiring but if you are expecting more in the same vein you are going to be disappointed.  Once I got over the initial shock I actually found myself enjoying the change but everyone is different.  If you want to switch series that is fine but I must warn you that none of them are technically complete yet(although Warbreaker and Elantis both work fairly well as sand alones).

[+robardin]

25 minutes ago, Karger said:

Alloy of Law(the next book in the series after Hero of Ages) is quite different and the transition can be a bit jarring.  In some ways the way Sanderson readepts his world for a different era is inspiring but if you are expecting more in the same vein you are going to be disappointed.  Once I got over the initial shock I actually found myself enjoying the change but everyone is different.  If you want to switch series that is fine but I must warn you that none of them are technically complete yet(although Warbreaker and Elantis both work fairly well as sand alones).

I agree completely; I finished the original MB trilogy right when AoL came out, segued right into it directly, and found it disappointing. But going back to it to reread it when Shadows of Self came out, I enjoyed Era 2 much more. I think I needed more time to reset my mind from what the world of Scadrial and Allomancy and Feruchemy were "supposed" to be.

I'd recommend coming to Mistborn Era 2 after reading Warbreaker, Elantris, The Emperor's Soul.

[darkmoods]

awesome, thank you both.

I have the new Thrawn audiobook (the previous ones are amazing btw, and worth a listen for sure) that i'm gonna use as a pallet cleanser i think.

The idea of going to warbreaker, elantris and emperor's soul sounds appealing to me as well.

 

thanks for your time, happy to hear other's opinions.

 

oh i just realized i have "Way of the kings" already paid for and downloaded. Good trilogy?

Edited August 8, 2019 by darkmoods

[Lunamor]

2 hours ago, darkmoods said:

oh i just realized i have "Way of the kings" already paid for and downloaded. Good trilogy?

Those books are amazing, but be prepared for the fact that he has only written 3 out of 10 so far.

[Karger]

2 hours ago, darkmoods said:

oh i just realized i have "Way of the kings" already paid for and downloaded. Good trilogy?

Extremely good series so far.  Possibly Sandman's best work ever.  It is going to be two parts five books each.  The first three of the first part are out and he is currently working on the fourth(he just completed 40% of the first draft).  They are a big commitment as they are rather long and the world is a bit strange(many of us love this but some people find it difficult to comprehend).  They might be my favorite series ever but I am willing to give a book my all at the expense of other commitments in my life that are clearly less important.

[+robardin]

1 hour ago, Lunamor said:

Those books are amazing, but be prepared for the fact that he has only written 3 out of 10 so far.

On the other hand, each of the tomes of the Stormlight Archive are in essence a mini-trilogy unto itself.

[Weltall]

Yeah, I'm going to echo the consensus here and suggest that you read something else Brandon has written (plus Timothy Zahn, like Brandon I've never seen a work of his I haven't liked) between MB1 and MB2. The big plan Brandon has for Scadrial is to show a world develop over the course of centuries (if not millennia) so while the fundamental magic system stays the same and there are very much points of continuity, the setting and the cast is going to change with each arc. I've loved both Mistborn series so far (and The Lost Metal is one of my most anticipated books) but there's a very different feel to each one and to their characters and taking some time to read something else in between will help you with the transition.

You really can't go wrong with any of Brandon's other Cosmere works, or for that matter his non-Cosmere works. Just grab whatever looks most interesting to you and enjoy. xD That said, if you want a single book to read rather than a new series, @robardin gave you the best ones to look at. I'd also suggest reading Warbreaker before the Stormlight Archive books, but it's not required.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Weltall

[darkmoods]

Thanks everyone, very excited to have stumbled on this author so far.

[Karger]

On 8/8/2019 at 2:03 PM, Weltall said:

Yeah, I'm going to echo the consensus here and suggest that you read something else Brandon has written (plus Timothy Zahn, like Brandon I've never seen a work of his I haven't liked

I was actually not a fan of some of his earlier Thawn work.  His current work is much better.  He has actually mastered the art of writing ridiculously smart people.  Something that some authors(Looking at you Lu) defiantly struggle with.  I still don't like how he writes Vader but to date no author has made a satisfactory Vader perspective.

[Ripheus23]

As I have recently discovered, I was willing to try to use The Way of Kings as part of an actual IRL attempt to resurrect someone from the dead (who it turned out wasn't dead), which is an episode of my life I've not the immediate time to explain but there you have it, if a mysterious sphere of aleph-numbers is willing to bet it all on WoK, then either read MBE2 or that.

[Kaymyth]

On 8/8/2019 at 7:37 AM, Karger said:

Alloy of Law(the next book in the series after Hero of Ages) is quite different and the transition can be a bit jarring.  In some ways the way Sanderson readepts his world for a different era is inspiring but if you are expecting more in the same vein you are going to be disappointed.  Once I got over the initial shock I actually found myself enjoying the change but everyone is different.  If you want to switch series that is fine but I must warn you that none of them are technically complete yet(although Warbreaker and Elantis both work fairly well as sand alones).

 

On 8/8/2019 at 8:09 AM, robardin said:

I agree completely; I finished the original MB trilogy right when AoL came out, segued right into it directly, and found it disappointing. But going back to it to reread it when Shadows of Self came out, I enjoyed Era 2 much more. I think I needed more time to reset my mind from what the world of Scadrial and Allomancy and Feruchemy were "supposed" to be.

I'd recommend coming to Mistborn Era 2 after reading Warbreaker, Elantris, The Emperor's Soul.

I think the primary issue with Alloy of Law is its unplanned nature. It started as a writing exercise, turned into a short story, and then he morphed it into a full novel.

It wasn't originally plotted as a novel, which throws the pacing off. Given that Brandon generally plots things out pretty tightly, the odd nature of AoL can throw people off a bit when they first read it.

[Karger]

20 hours ago, Kaymyth said:

It wasn't originally plotted as a novel, which throws the pacing off. Given that Brandon generally plots things out pretty tightly, the odd nature of AoL can throw people off a bit when they first read it.

That is actually not my issue.  When you first read Alloy of Law you feel star wars prequel for a while.  What is this author doing trapping over my beloved series for?  This is not what the Mistborn series is about!  After a while you let that go and recognize the series's brilliance but you have to weather the initial shock first and let go of your preconceived notions about what the series should be.  The star wars prequels are inherently bad while Alloy of Law is inherently good but the jolt is still their in both cases.  Star wars just never recovers. 

[+robardin]

One has to read Era 2 not as a continuation of Era 1, but as a setting where the characters and events from Era 1 mostly being legend and folklore. Brandon writes as much in the intro, but it's particularly hard to do if you segue directly from finishing Hero of Ages to Alloy of Law.

On 8/17/2019 at 0:46 AM, Kaymyth said:

I think the primary issue with Alloy of Law is its unplanned nature. It started as a writing exercise, turned into a short story, and then he morphed it into a full novel.

It wasn't originally plotted as a novel, which throws the pacing off. Given that Brandon generally plots things out pretty tightly, the odd nature of AoL can throw people off a bit when they first read it.

While this is true, my own reaction was much more in line with Karger's:

On 8/17/2019 at 8:54 PM, Karger said:

When you first read Alloy of Law you feel star wars prequel for a while. What is this author doing trapping over my beloved series for?  This is not what the Mistborn series is about!  After a while you let that go and recognize the series's brilliance...

My reaction for the first half of the story on my first read-through was like: "So this is Mistborn... with no Mistborn? And no Feruchemists, either? Instead there are single-power Feruchemists called Ferrings, and Twinborn? And what's with this mishmash of Old West America and Victorian London?" And I spent some time fruitlessly skimming for some concrete info as to the fates of the characters from Era 1, which have only tantalizing, offhand implications, which was frustrating.

Included as part of my "what is going on here" reaction was how versatile Wax proves to be as a Coinshot, who consistently catches himself from falls by dropping a coin, Pushing it down to the ground, and then Pushing off of it gradually to slow himself like a retro-rocket. Which makes total sense, really, except that it felt oddly OP as compared to the Coinshot Mistings we saw in the original trilogy.

There aren't any in Kelsier's crew, but I remembered Vin's fight to save Elend from assassination with Shan Elariel's team that included a Coinshot who she quickly eliminated by Pushing him off of the rooftop such that he couldn't Pull himself back, being "only a Misting."

There seems to be no reason for a Coinshot of the Final Empire to be any less skilled than Wax would be as a Coinshot in terms of "maximizing what they've got" (indeed, Vin goes to learn from skilled Mistings like Breeze, Marsh, and Spook for that very reason), so what was the deal with that guy? He didn't have any coins handy to save himself with? And there weren't any metal things on the ground behind him at all? Seems to me if Wax were Pushed off a rooftop like that, he'd bounce back and be in the fight again in very short order.

My head-canon explanation is that that guy was some kind of newbie Coinshot on his first assignment (the second Coinshot, who didn't fall for the same trick, was described as "not as foolish as his companion", and who released his Steelpush after firing his coins). Poor fellow was dropped in way out of his depth, going up against Vin on Day One. Of one.

In addition, my first impression of Wayne was that he felt rather too "schticky", like he was at least two believable characters compressed into one. I think that was an artifact of what Kaymyth described, that the first part of the story originated in a personal writing exercise that spiraled to become a standalone novella, and then the anchor point to start a new trilogy (promoting "Era 1.5" to "Era 2").

But I had another reason to be uncomfortable about Wayne: he's a gifted mimic, a light-handed thief, possessed of an extremely rare power set, and has a dark past that he covers over with overt lightness of speech. That strongly recalled to me my very first "Mary Sue" type AD&D character, that my 13 year old self came up with: just replace "Twinborn" with "psionic abilities" and the rest with "half-elven thief with native-accent command of multiple languages who can disguise/pass as a human, elf, orc, or goblin", haha. (Don't even ask me about his tragic and dark backstory.)

I've since grown to like Wayne as a character, though part of me continues to internally cringe a bit from time to time when he acts or talks in a way a bit too close to my long-ago OP'ed teenaged ham sandwich.

[+Child of Hodor]

On 8/8/2019 at 8:12 AM, darkmoods said:

awesome, thank you both.

I have the new Thrawn audiobook (the previous ones are amazing btw, and worth a listen for sure) that i'm gonna use as a pallet cleanser i think.

The idea of going to warbreaker, elantris and emperor's soul sounds appealing to me as well.

 

thanks for your time, happy to hear other's opinions.

 

oh i just realized i have "Way of the kings" already paid for and downloaded. Good trilogy?

Emperor's Soul stands on it's own and is fantastic. Don't need any other background for that. 

Way of Kings is my favorite book of his and The Stormlight Archive series that it is a part of is my favorite. 

[Isilel]

21 hours ago, robardin said:

Included as part of my "what is going on here" reaction was how versatile Wax proves to be as a Coinshot, who consistently catches himself from falls by dropping a coin, Pushing it down to the ground, and then Pushing off of it gradually to slow himself like a retro-rocket. Which makes total sense, really, except that it felt oddly OP as compared to the Coinshot Mistings we saw in the original trilogy.

 

To be fair, I thought that the Coinshots were oddly and impausibly useless and that they should have been able to use the "Mistborn roads" when I first read the first Mistborn trilogy, so I was kinda glad to see the ability used logically in the second one . In fact, the opponent allomancer teams in first Mistborn just weren't sufficiently skilled, full-stop. I now rationalize it with the fact that both Kelsier and Vin had to become very coordinated and used to making split-second decisions in order to survive and very successfully leveraged these pre-existing abilities as Mistborn. Whereas the enemy were nearly always "gentlemen-allomancers" who lacked both motivation and experience to truly plumb their abilities.

The Coinshots in particular would have needed much more training to do what Wax does, because they couldnt protect themselves from or minimize the results of their mistakes by burning Iron and Pewter. But if they had dared to move around like the Mistborn did (and Wax does), in order to accumulate that experience, they would have immediately become targets for the Mistborn from the rival families. So, it wasn't deemed worthwhile for them to invest the hard work into developing these skills.

What I found disappointing in the Second Mistborn series and still do, somewhat, despite loving it otherwise, is the low percentage of Metalborn and Our Heroes of course being those lucky enough to be born with super-rare abilities yet again. I see the logic, both in and out-of-world for splitting the abilities so that only Mistings and Ferrings exist and agree with it. But I really don't understand why Harmony didn't make everybody a Ferring when he remade them, with a percentage still being born a legacy allomancer, or very occasionally, a Twinborn. IMHO, a setting where everybody has magical abilities and it is really mostly up to inventiveness and skill of the protagonists with what they have, rather than a rare inborn gift, would have been refreshing. And there still would have been sufficient incentive for certain developments.

[Kingsdaughter613]

I agree that a break is a good idea BUT! If you are planning a significant break between HoA and Era 2, read SH here. It rightfully belongs in Era 1, and it is easier to follow the latter half if you have read HoA recently.

If you are planning a short break, and think you’ll be able to recall the HoA timeline easily, then wait until you finish Era 2. SH will make a plot point in one of the books more obvious, though a close reading of HoA and its annotations will reveal it anyway.

If you already know the MC of Secret History, then you already know the information you may want to avoid. If you don’t know, and don’t want to know, stay away from this forum until you’ve read it. (It comes up fairly often.) 

[Govir]

On 9/15/2019 at 4:28 AM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

I agree that a break is a good idea BUT! If you are planning a significant break between HoA and Era 2, read SH here. It rightfully belongs in Era 1, and it is easier to follow the latter half if you have read HoA recently.

SH being Mistborn: Secret History.

I will add onto this to just say that Sanderson's recommendation for reading SH is after Bands of Mourning, but you can read it after you are done with Hero of Ages (i.e. book 3 of Era 1).

Depending on your reading speed, you could always take a break with something else, eventually get to Era 2 Mistborn, then re-read Era 1, then read SH.

[Seventh]

I don't think the Wax and Wayne series is technically part of the "trilogy of trilogies," (the series is four books after all). The original trilogy is Era 1, Wax and Wayne is Era 2, and then Era's 3 and 4 are the second and third Mistborn trilogies. The second trilogy is supposed to be set in the early computer age with 1980s technology, and the third trilogy is supposed to be a grand space-opera with FTL technology powered by Allomancy. I believe both should be similar in scope to the original trilogy. 

As other people have said, going from the end of HoA to the Wax and Wayne books is a little jarring as they aren't supposed to be quite as "fate of the entire planet is literally determined right now by these characters" serious. The overall mood of the books is more joke-y and lighthearted, and they are all shorter than the books in the original trilogy. I'd maybe read Elantris or Warbreaker first and then come back to them so the difference isn't as noticeable. The Wax and Wayne series are good books and interesting glimpses into what happened ~300 years after the original trilogy - not to mention the Cosmere implications - and in my opinion they're definitely worth it. Just maybe not right after HoA on your first read-through. 

[Wolverine13]

I really cannot wait for The Lost Metal!! Wax and Wayne are 2 of my favorite cosmere Characters. I just hope Brandon is done breaking Wax's heart into a million pieces