This did not read like the last book of an era.[Discuss]

[+Oltux72]

I like TLM. As a book it was odd, as in extremely paced, but it pulled that pacing off. As the end of an era, however, calling it mediocre is a bit charitable. It opened almost as many threads as it finished. Now, I am reminded that Brandon finished a book series featuring a group that perfected the art of misleading truths.

IIRC he said that he will not write any more books in era 2. Fair enough, I believe him. I also note that he has hired a "narrative director". Does that raise a suspicion?

[CarTorSan]

I think TLM finale's intent is to close much of what came with Era 2, while also opening new paths for Era 3. Assuming that Autonomy will come back in not even centuries, but probably decades, it's possible that Era 3 will take place 50-100 years from TLM, and maybe Wax's children will have some relevant roles there.

Personally, I liked the ending. It settled a fine amount of questions and secrets, which I ADORE, and now I can't be more hyped for era 3! 

[Karger]

Agreed.  I can't help feeling like a sequel is in the works.  So many unanswered questions...

[Returned]

That's the same feeling I had reading it. A good book: I thought it had excitement, particularly good character development, and a nice balance of tensions. But a lot of it was dedicated to connecting to other works, not even in crossover magic combinations, and I think that the plot structure suffered a bit for it. Some of that was (for me) the breakneck pacing that has characterized era 2 (the books cover a couple of days each, at most). I couldn't escape the feeling that the main plot (the bomb and impending invasion) were almost afterthoughts. I felt that there wasn't much for me, as a reader and Cosmere fan, to think about on those topics while going through the book. Certainly not compared to the implications raised by things we saw of the worldhoppers, whom I felt took center stage.

Some of it felt pretty superficial. I expect we'll see more of TwinSoul (I hope so at least, I liked him!), but we learned very little about him and he didn't have much role to play in TLM. His biggest thing was saving the hostages, which was great and I liked seeing it, but was also an arbitrary problem which was solved as soon as it arose with an arbitrary solution. Similar for Moonlight, though we got to see more about her as a person (and she's likely a certain character we already knew).

I think that the most important thing we learned about the Mistborn setting, specifically, from the book is that Sazed is trending towards Discord, but we didn't really get any context or guidance about what that means or why, exactly, it will matter (though obviously it will). The most important things we learned about the Cosmere are some examples of how much can be done with pure Investiture, along with a very rough guideline for how much power a jar of it represents. I really expected, given how much of an issue the medallions and Bands were in Bands of Mourning, that we'd learn more than nothing about them. What we did learn, that Hemalurgic spikes aren't working for compounding, came from the Ars Arcanum!

Though I also think that we (I) should give a bit of extra slack to era 2. Since it wasn't originally planned as a set of entries in the Cosmere books it probably was hard to write them with plots that were consequential but didn't upset the already-planned Cosmere events across all series. It's an awkward spot for books to be in. And given my experience with the other era 2 books I suspect I'll like TLM more and more each time I re-read it. But it'll be a while until the next Mistborn book and, at least for me, TLM wasn't really substantial enough to tide me over until then.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Returned

[Isilel]

I sorta agree, but not because of the cosmere elements, but rather because a number of important Scadrial issues established in the previous books, particularly BoM, have been carefully avoided because they are clearly reserved for Era 3.

It felt very contrived and artificial in some cases. Like, not only did we learn nothing   new about the medallions, they weren't even used by anybody in TLM! Not even the varieties already familiar to us, which could have been very handy for everybody except Wax. Bands of Mourning quickly shuffled away from the scene without any explanation of anything concerning them. We still know practically nothing about the southerners and what their lives are like. Marsh hobbled to the point that I wonder why he didn't die in HoA. Even more questions about Kelsier, etc., etc. Basically, most of BoM proved to be irrelevant for TLM, which is some significant breaking of promises. 

I liked TL, but maybe BoM, which I also liked very much, should have been a different book if Sanderson didn't intend to explore most of the things that it introduced until era 3? 

[Karger]

Maybe he has an era 2.5 series in the works?  A series of short stories from the perspective of the south's government?

Alternatively its planed as a group of flashbacks with era three structured sort of like stormlight?

Edited November 20, 2022 by Karger

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Since Era 2 was a bit of a last-minute addition to the Mistborn arc, I was expecting there to be a lot of missing pieces and loose ends. I think from a character perspective, it totally worked as a grand finale, and in the big picture:

 

Quote

 

quadquapters

I was surprised when I learned just how much more Mistborn you're planning on writing, and was even more surprised when I heard that the Wax and Wayne quadrilogy was only a spin-off and not part of your major plans for the series. But now I've found out you've decided to include those books as a major part of the larger series and instead do 4 different stories within it. Will this mean the next part (which I understood was going to take place in the more or less present) will be further into the future so as to space out each story? And what was the reasoning behind including Wax and Wayne in the main series?

Brandon Sanderson

I changed my opinions on Wax and Wayne after writing the first book, then outlining books 2-4 (which are a kind of "Trilogy" with these characters, when the first book was an experiment.)

I realized that the next era (which is still 1980's level technology) would work way better with some foundations in the W&W era. I'm very pleased what this did to Era Three, as it now is (1980s), because of the foundations in Era Two.

And yes, the next series will each go further into the future.

/r/fantasy AMA 2017 (Feb. 13, 2017)

 

 

 

I think Era 2 is meant to be self-contained, but lay the groundwork for Era 3 in a way that makes it hard to tie up all the loose ends.

On the other hand:

Quote

 

Argent

Is The Lost Metal planned to be the actual conclusion of the Wax & Wayne story then, or more of an epilogue to it and/or transition to [Era 3]?

Brandon Sanderson

It is an actual conclusion.

Stormlight Three Update #2 (Jan. 20, 2016)

 

 

Edited November 20, 2022 by Szeth_Pancakes

[+Oltux72]

5 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Since Era 2 was a bit of a last-minute addition to the Mistborn arc, I was expecting there to be a lot of missing pieces and loose ends. I think from a character perspective, it totally worked as a grand finale, and in the big picture:

I am sorry, but that is precisely what it did fail to. You do not make the protagonist a Mistborn and call that a conclusion.

And the book totally blew away the things we already had about the Sovereign.

[Szeth_Pancakes]

2 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

I am sorry, but that is precisely what it did fail to. You do not make the protagonist a Mistborn and call that a conclusion.

I'm with you on that, but I think everyone else's character arcs came to a satisfying conclusion.

3 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

And the book totally blew away the things we already had about the Sovereign.

Care to elaborate?

[+Oltux72]

20 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Care to elaborate?

The revelation that Kelsier is no longer an Allomancer totally casts in doubt that he is the Sovereign and made the Bands of Mourning. In fact it makes the coppermind coin of Bands of Mourning almost inexplicable.

[Szeth_Pancakes]

Just now, Oltux72 said:

The revelation that Kelsier is no longer an Allomancer totally casts in doubt that he is the Sovereign and made the Bands of Mourning. In fact it makes the coppermind coin of Bands of Mourning almost inexplicable.

Ah. Well, I personally am fine with a lot of questions not getting answered. And I don't think Sando is the type of author that would do something like that unintentionally.

[SpinningSky]

I wil join this choir. I also left the book feeling a bit underwhelmed somehow. I'm trying to put my hand on why specifically (read it full-immersion yesterday).
As I digest the story, I'm writing down some plotpints that I feel played a part in how I feel about the book right now, I'm very curious to hear counter points to these:

- Telsin did basically nothing after buing built up like kind of a mastermind and the Set wasn't very effective
On the topic of the Set: so was it the Major was overseen launch tests? wasn't that Telsin's plan? didn't he prepare the welcome party for Autonomy instead? I'm confused. I think in general there was a disconnect between the feeling that the Set was this big hierarchal organization, and the uncovering the lid to see confused people with confused goals moving randomly. Not saying it's bad per se, it seems tied to Autonomy's MO, but I felt a disconnect. What felt like the villains of the book where the two copy-cats, which made little sense motivation-wise to me, but it might be a plot point on autonomy's "creed" left open for future books?

- Autonomy, while exciting to finally see on screen, was silly. I guess it was acknoloedgled in story hat Autonomy doesn't make much sense, but really, you moved all of your troops to take advantage of the perpedicularity and take over a plan with a double-shard, and the whole plan gets screwed by some allomancers slurping up the perpedicularity? not a great plan. Also, can we now just assume perpedicularities are this easily closed? 
Points for letting autonomy's army stuck in a perpendicularity-powered slow bubble for god knows how long

- the whole "breed an allomancer" community program was very cool and made sense, but I feel like it has no interactions with the main plot of the book besides misidirection with the apocalypse videos and being close, by "coincidence", to the perpedicularity, maybe this should have been in BoM. I think the best thing this plot point does is leading to Kelsier being unsure on how he feels about it and the end.

- The whole Ghostbloods plot was super fun, but basically a secret history on its own winded together with the book's plot in my opinion. I think it doesn't work as well for book that's so fast paced and shuld be closing an era.

- I don't feel like we saw on screen much of the resolution of the political tensions between cities, let alone the south, which was the major conflict left by the prev book and started by this one.
I wonder if the book would have felt more complete if it was focused on Wax\Wayne and Steris storylines, leaving the Ghostbloods to a secret history type book where we find out how they stopped Autonomy having just hints in the main book, much like the first SH. This could given more space to Autonomy herself to be developped.

- The ending seemed a bit contrived to me, couldn't they just sink the ship? that would have watered the three bombs at the same time if done correctly right? even if that's not the case, if wayne could basically stop time around him, couldn't he just like, do whatever he needed to and walk out?

 

As a final thought, I liked the book don't get me wrong! but I guess I strongly agree with the title of this post, to me it felt more like a couple of indipendent novellas smashed together, which these books kinda are, but then again this is the ending for a 4-books series. 
I also think the slow build up of Sazed's 'corruption' is very well done and a good plot point set up for the next Era.

 

 

 

[Letryx13]

18 hours ago, Returned said:

I think that the most important thing we learned about the Mistborn setting, specifically, from the book is that Sazed is trending towards Discord, but we didn't really get any context or guidance about what that means or why, exactly, it will matter (though obviously it will). The most important things we learned about the Cosmere are some examples of how much can be done with pure Investiture, along with a very rough guideline for how much power a jar of it represents. I really expected, given how much of an issue the medallions and Bands were in Bands of Mourning, that we'd learn more than nothing about them. What we did learn, that Hemalurgic spikes aren't working for compounding, came from the Ars Arcanum!

Sazed's changes are definitely the most unsettling thing in my opinion.  Considering what it took to balance out Preservation and Ruin in the first place, I thought/hoped that the conflict there was done.  But on the other hand, it makes sense that an imbalance is starting to happen, if the people of Scadrial are still slightly more Preservation than of Ruin.  

3 hours ago, SpinningSky said:

As a final thought, I liked the book don't get me wrong! but I guess I strongly agree with the title of this post, to me it felt more like a couple of indipendent novellas smashed together, which these books kinda are, but then again this is the ending for a 4-books series. 
I also think the slow build up of Sazed's 'corruption' is very well done and a good plot point set up for the next Era.

Honestly, I was kind of ok with at least one Shard playing something of a neutral force, or one that can only act in extreme cases.  I wanted the conflict between Preservation and Ruin (externally or internally within Harmony) to be over.  Given the exchange of letters between Harmony and Wit/Hoid, I was hoping Sazed would be the stable rallying point against Odium or other threatening Shards in the future.  Maybe he still can be, if he manages to overcome his pending predicament.

[Blackwarder]

I think the problem is that we got our timeline wrong, it’s clear that Scadrial is is heading way faster towards the 1980’s equivalent than we thought, I believe era 3 will be 3-4 decades down the road, probably with Marasi as governor, possibly opening at Wax’s funeral.

I would love for the protagonist to be Wayne Ladrian, younger son of Dawnshot himself and a member of an anti-allomencer swat team.

[Andy92]

There is a possibility Wax will live the rest of his life not knowing he’s a full Mistborn. The book ends with Sazed telling Wax he will finally let him live his life. I’d expect him to retire fully, and as some others have guessed, father another child who’s a future full Mistborn. In one sense Wax’s story is done, but his bloodline is still going to have a major impact on the future of the planet. 

The character left with the most unknowns is Kelsier, but with him being known as a future player in what’s to come, I didn’t find that very surprising. And if Brandon writes Era 3 between Stormlight 5 and 6, we won’t have to wait terribly long to find out what he’s up to. 

[ChickenChaser]

13 hours ago, SpinningSky said:

- Telsin did basically nothing after buing built up like kind of a mastermind and the Set wasn't very effective
On the topic of the Set: so was it the Major was overseen launch tests? wasn't that Telsin's plan? didn't he prepare the welcome party for Autonomy instead? I'm confused. I think in general there was a disconnect between the feeling that the Set was this big hierarchal organization, and the uncovering the lid to see confused people with confused goals moving randomly. Not saying it's bad per se, it seems tied to Autonomy's MO, but I felt a disconnect. What felt like the villains of the book where the two copy-cats, which made little sense motivation-wise to me, but it might be a plot point on autonomy's "creed" left open for future books?

I was confused on this as well. I don't know if it helps at all, but at the end of BoM right before Mr. Suit gets vaporized. The red eyed hobo says that they agreed with Edwarn's plan and were going to accelerate the pace. Here is the quote:

"Our accelerated pace will no longer require the Set to have its full hierarchy."

Edwarn whines and then

"Recent advances have made civilization here too dangerous. Allowing it to continue risks further advances we cannot control, and so we have decided to remove life on this sphere instead."

So according to the red eyed guy, Edwarn messed up. He pushed to accelerate, not knowing that Autonomy's "faceless immortals" would basically cripple and deceive the Set into thinking that the bomb was a city killer. When in reality, it was probably a planet killer. Harmony even states that he wasn't sure exactly how much damage even two of those bombs would do.

[Frustration]

On 11/20/2022 at 10:19 AM, Karger said:

Agreed.  I can't help feeling like a sequel is in the works.  So many unanswered questions...

Like what?

[puhtahtoe]

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

Like what?

Who created the BoM? In Kelsier's epilogue he is revealed to not have powers at the moment so it seems unlikely he made the Bands.

What happened to the BoM between the end of book three and when they were fetched in this book?

What behind the scenes plot went down at the meeting in Elendel when the Bands were retrieved?

How are the medallions created?

 

These are all questions that I think could be answered in Secret History 2 if Brandon is able to find time to write it as he has said he might.

 

Also, I can't help wondering if there's more to the architecture of Bilming than just the appearance of the buildings.[Elantris]

Spoiler

There seemed to be more of a focus on the arrangement of buildings than on their appearance which leads me to wonder if there's something special about the actual positions of stuff similar to the geography that affected Aons in Elantris.

The question of what's going on with Harmony is likely meant to be answered in era 3 or beyond.

Edited November 22, 2022 by puhtahtoe

[Frustration]

46 minutes ago, puhtahtoe said:

Who created the BoM? In Kelsier's epilogue he is revealed to not have powers at the moment so it seems unlikely he made the Bands.

No narrative focus is put on this in TLM, so I wouldn't say that makes it worse as the end of an era.

46 minutes ago, puhtahtoe said:

What happened to the BoM between the end of book three and when they were fetched in this book?

That one's fair

46 minutes ago, puhtahtoe said:

What behind the scenes plot went down at the meeting in Elendel when the Bands were retrieved?

You mean other than the Malwish trying to get the bands? Either way no narrative focus was put on that, so I fail to see how that makes TLM weaker. 

46 minutes ago, puhtahtoe said:

How are the medallions created?

That one is close enough I'll count that as fair.

46 minutes ago, puhtahtoe said:

The question of what's going on with Harmony is likely meant to be answered in era 3 or beyond.

He's becoming Discord.

 

So that's two questions, neither of which are very big ones.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Frustration

[+Oltux72]

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

No narrative focus is put on this in TLM, so I wouldn't say that makes it worse as the end of an era.

After a whole book of the era is named after them?

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

You mean other than the Malwish trying to get the bands? Either way no narrative focus was put on that, so I fail to see how that makes TLM weaker. 

The Malwish knew about the manipulation.

 

[Karger]

18 hours ago, Frustration said:

Like what?

Everything with BoM's creation, information on southern scadrial, an explanation as to how those medalions work, who was doing what when the BoM were handed over, why Wax's splitting experiment worked differently, whats up with Harmony and Kelseir, what are the GBs planning for their next move, is Shai going to be OK, and where did that dor come from for starters.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Karger said:

Everything with BoM's creation, information on southern scadrial, an explanation as to how those medalions work, who was doing what when the BoM were handed over, why Wax's splitting experiment worked differently, whats up with Harmony and Kelseir, what are the GBs planning for their next move, is Shai going to be OK, and where did that dor come from for starters.

That's not that different from the questions we were left with at the end of HoA.

[Karger]

35 minutes ago, Frustration said:

That's not that different from the questions we were left with at the end of HoA.

Isn't it?  We knew the nature of every single magic system, exactly how many metals there were, how the atium ended up where it was, how TRL did his thing and the end state of the entire world.  What were we missing?

[bmcclure7]

On 11/19/2022 at 4:44 AM, Oltux72 said:

I like TLM. As a book it was odd, as in extremely paced, but it pulled that pacing off. As the end of an era, however, calling it mediocre is a bit charitable. It opened almost as many threads as it finished. Now, I am reminded that Brandon finished a book series featuring a group that perfected the art of misleading truths.

IIRC he said that he will not write any more books in era 2. Fair enough, I believe him. I also note that he has hired a "narrative director". Does that raise a suspicion?

 You must remember that era 2  Was originally supposed to be a standalone book between era 1 and era 2 (now era 3).   So that's what's probably producing the feeling it was always a sort side story to prepare us for era 3. 

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, Karger said:

Isn't it?  We knew the nature of every single magic system, exactly how many metals there were, how the atium ended up where it was, how TRL did his thing and the end state of the entire world.  What were we missing?

How Kelsier spoke to Sazed, what Adonalsium was, how Ruin and Presentation had been separated, who this Hoid fellow was, what the last two metals were etc.