Steel yourself, this is the epic end of a trilogy!

Mistborn Era One: it’s perfect from start to finish. It’s heart-breaking, inspiring, tragic, uplifting, but most importantly, it’s fulfilling. Have you ever read a book and found yourself wondering why the author dithers with so many plot points? How they fail to deliver on big twists and reveals? Sanderson ends this epic trilogy on the highest of highs, and coming from someone who’d read Words of Radiance before starting this trilogy, I could not imagine a more satisfying ending.

It’s been a year since Vin entered the Well of Ascension, and the world is dying. Elend, now ruling as Emperor, is trying his best to marshal his forces to acquire all the resources he can so that the people of The Dominances can survive the coming apocalypse. But with Ruin now moving full steam ahead with his plan to end the world, it seems escaping this doom is one trick the Survivor’s crew won’t pull off. Hope still remains; Vin is convinced that the Lord Ruler, former God Emperor of the world, has left some clue to a secret supply of Atium – a metal which, when burned, gives one a brief glimpse into the near future – that holds even more startling importance to Ruin than they can imagine.

With the mists taking lives, the ash falling heavily, and the end of the world all but nigh, Kelsier’s crew must pull off one last daring job – saving the world before Ruin obliterates it. While this is definitely the darkest of the novels in the Mistborn Era One books, it’s perhaps also the most interesting. There are many different narratives converging in this grand finale of the most epic, and typically Sanderson, proportions. The sheer effort I had to muster not to read this book constantly was a struggle in and of itself.

This isn’t just a great book; it’s a guide to rounding up a trilogy in a way that is ultimately heart-breaking and satisfying. Sanderson does not shy away from tragedy or hopelessness. He embraces these dystopian elements and shows us a broken world on the verge of collapse and the strength it takes to remain strong.

Elend’s transformation is one of the most startling elements of this book. While we never spent much time with the villainous Lord Ruler, Emperor Venture, the Mistborn conqueror, gives an exciting look into what this character might have been like. The conquest of the fractured Final Empire into a new kingdom is one of the most captivating plots of the novel.

Elend is not the only one given a transformative character arc. Spook, who we first met in Book One as a shy, poorly spoken boy, is now rising as one of the grand heroes of Kelsier’s rebellion. Sazed, one of the most theologically inquisitive characters, is now devoid of purpose.

Dystopian fiction has always struggled with capturing the elements of a world on the brink of collapse, especially in fantasy where magic gives a sort of easy escape for the characters to find a way – a solution in the arcane arts – dissolving the problem. What is done brilliantly here is the solution is not just one; it is not just Vin or Elend individually or together that manages to overcome this force that is Ruin. Sanderson shows how the collective can operate in a way that an individual can’t. He makes each action against the inevitable doom feel like the shifts of pebbles that come before the mountain falls.

And when it falls, it smashes and breaks in a way that I cannot describe without spoiling the final act of this book. Mistborn Era One has been perhaps the greatest read that I have had in 2024, and there have been some very good and close contenders. I look forward to further exploring the world of Mistborn in Era Two, but I’m going to take a little break before I revisit the world of Sanderson’s Cosmere.

Grandiose, heart-breaking, perfect – if there is a trilogy out there that matches the Mistborn Era One novels, then let us know. This is a series that will be as long revered as its in-universe heroes.