The Mistborn series

I don't remember if I have talked about this series before, but I don't think so. Brandon Sanderson is mostly known for his work finishing up the Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan died, I think he raised the quality level tremendously when he took it over personally and most people seem to think he at least did an acceptable job.

Mistborn is his first series and the original work he is most known for, it currently consists of seven books, the first three forming the original trilogy in a fairly standard medieval fantasy setting, and the other four set in the same world but three hundred years later as it moves through its industrial revolution.

They are all really good, Sanderson has a knack for writing characters believably and spends a great deal of effort particularly on his female characters, taking pains to give them motivations other than the usual chasing after a husband or defending children one. Which was kind of a shift when he took over the Wheel of Time series as Robert Jordan appears to have had some not terribly flattering ideas about women and relationships.

Sanderson also builds interesting worlds and unique magic systems, in Mistborn magic comes from people capable of drawing power out of various metals to gain increased attributes or to manipulate the world around them, it is very well explained, limits in powers are defined, and its impact on society is examined as the series progresses, particularly in the second series where the powers are fairly widespread and often incorporated into technological progress when possible, buildings being designed to assist those who use their powers to fly around town, banks and trains built with the super strong in mind, and so on.

The plan apparently is to extend it to the future, with science fiction mixing with the magic setting, I don't know what that will look like but damn if I am not curious. I love stories that explain how stuff works, and I like settings that grow, seeing how a world with magic keeps up as science marches forward is really cool to me.

I don't know what more to say, if you like fantasy stories read this from the start, if you like pulp style adventure start from the fourth book, Sanderson has a mild problem in that he makes his protagonists just too damn perfect sometimes, but he appears to be growing out of it and with the rest of the writing it is a pretty easy problem to overlook unless you are searching for it.