A review by thelostvoid
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

5.0

Well this was certainly one hell of a ride. As has become the custom, I knew literally nothing about this before picking it up other than "what if the chosen one didn't succeed", "metal magic" and the insane hype surrouding this series and Brandon Sanderson fantasy overall.

I have to say that I was not disappointed, this was spicy as hell and I loved the intrigue, characters and the combat. My lord the combat was truly something else.

I greatly look forward to reading the next book in the series, and many more Sanderson novels after that.

2024 reread
Well, well, well. It has certainly been a fucking while and I have some things to say.

First of all, I cannot believe that I said that this was 'spicy as hell', that is hugely amusing with the way that has changed meaning from 2020 to now because of booktok. Second of all, I am so sorry to past me for not actually following up on reading the second book, or pretty much any other Sanderson stuff despite buying it all. We are working on it now.

This was excellent, the start was a tad rough with just so many characters and concepts and names being thrown at me but once we got into shit my god it really took off. I am very glad I drew this out of the TBR jar and didn't chicken out, and that I reread it despite knowing the big plot moments at the end

I didn't remember most of the rest of it but my god I remembered that Kelsier died hahaaa

Also obligatory 'I couldn't stop comparing the Lord Ruler (and also Kelsier) to Paul Atreides/Dune in general'. Dune has been a plague upon my mind and existence for fucking months and I both hate and love it and feel that this needed to be documented in this review.

I am coming in after finishing The Hero of Ages to up this to 5 stars because holy fucking shit this trilogyyyyy.

Cannot believe Sanderson managed to make my main complaint of Vin being 16 an extremely relevant plot point that man is simply unstoppable.