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Book Review: Mistborn & Audible First Impressions

No, this blog post is not sponsored by Audible. I’m legitimately talking about their service. But, firstly:

The following review contains no specific spoilers, though as always, if you wish to enter into a series completely blind then I recommend you skip this review. If you’re interested in the Audible portion of this blog post, scroll until you see the header text.

When casting around for something to read after Harry Potter some time ago I discovered that a series of books I’d kept my eye on – namely, the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson – was on sale on Kindle for £1 per book. Being the eager beaver that I am, I almost dived right in and bought all seven available books, but I decided on this one occasion to hold back and buy only the original trilogy, in case the series wasn’t to my taste and I wasted my money. Boy, was that a mistake. I need more. Not that the conclusion to the trilogy wasn’t satisfying – it was, and it was brilliant – and that’s all I’ll say on the ending.

I’ve seen Sanderson’s works described as avoiding fantasy stereotypes expertly, and I can only agree with this notion. The method of magic in the Mistborn novels isn’t something I’ve ever read about before. Not to spoil too much, I’ll stick to saying that it’s very logic-based and contains limitations which reach a balance of not being too restricting, whilst avoiding any deux-ex-machina type plot holes. If I was to write a self-indulgent piece of fantasy, I admit that I’d likely base magical power on will rather than skill. Skill-based abilities, however, make your characters more admirable when they’re badass. And Vin is certainly that.

I’ve always said that written works are inferior to other platforms of fiction when it comes to scenes of action. One notable moment when I’ve found myself wrong on this has been when reading the novel Stormrage. This is another one of those moments. Allomancy allows for very momentum based combat, with the ability to pull yourself onto and push yourself off of various metals, as well as being able to enhance your strength. One of the first fight scenes in the first book, The Final Empire, sees Kelsier facing off against a group of soldiers who are trained to kill allomancers. Limited to what he can use his powers for, he finds a metal paperweight at his disposal, and the way in which he manipulates its trajectory to attack these soldiers is something that you have to read for yourself.

The world is as unique as its magic. The premise presented on the blurb of the first book is of a world where the bad guy has won, and ruled for a thousand years. This is what drew me into it. Sanderson creates a world of mists, ash and little colour without making any of it feel drab or overly depressing. Flowers are a forgotten legend. Stars are known only to those with the power to enhance their vision, to part the mists. And the world makes do. Any action against the Lord Ruler is typically more to do with stopping his tyranny than with fanatical dreams of revitalising the world, for this is the world that mankind has known as home for a thousand years.

My favourite thing about this series is how intricately plotted it is. The powers, races and state of the world all add up together towards the end of the trilogy in multiple moments of revelation. You’ll race alongside the characters to the truth as they discover deception, lies, and world-changing secrets dating back a thousand years or more. And without giving away too much, I feel like it’s important to praise the ramping up in scale of events over the three books that’s both impressive and believable, right up to the climax of the series.

Branderson (that was a typo but I’ll leave it in) has written more Mistborn novels set some centuries after the original trilogy, around the time of industrial revolution with trains being made popular, skyscrapers being built and electricity being discovered. These are the next novels I need to read – I’m very interested in what a more modern world would look like in a world where metals can be manipulated by allomancy. What really excites me is that Sanderson has stated that he also plans to write more Mistborn novels set even further in the future, in a time further ahead in technology than our own. The prospect of a series graduating from medieval setting to a futuristic one is something I’ve never seen done before – unless you count the narrative in World of Warcraft slowly become more sci-fi-esque – and I greatly look forward to reading more.

And that’s the review. If you’re skipping this bit, you can read on from here.

I’m kind of hoping that the other Mistborn books go on sale again. In the meantime, I found myself casting around for something to read again, and decided to finally use my Audible trial. Now, I could have used my free book to obtain The Alloy of Law, the next book in the Mistborn series, but I’d rather not own a continuation of a series in a different format. Brandon Sanderson has won my attention, though, and I decided to use my free Audible book token to grab The Way of Kings, the first book in the Stormlight Archive series. Well… more like the first two books, as in the UK it’s typically split into two 500 page paperbacks. So that’s 1,000 pages and 45 hours of listening I’ve just obtained for free. Except that when I went to cancel the subscription, they bribed me to stay with a second book token, so I claimed the sequel, Words of Radiance, which is equally as long. And then I cancelled my trial to no charge.

I’m going to be good for fiction for the next 94 hours of listening, then. I only hope that this still counts as a purchase on the author / narrator’s side of pay.

I’m like, 3 chapters in, so I have nothing to say about the story yet, other than it seems familiar and good. I’m here to discuss audio as a mode of listening. My first impression is that I have to pay attention. Not that it isn’t captivating, but if I’m on the edge of sleep and my mind begins to wander I have to either rewind by 30 seconds to catch the names of new settings, characters and powers I’m not yet accustomed to, or decided to switch it off for the night. I’ve also found that when reading, I’ll pause after being introduced to a new name – be it place, character or power – and go back and turn it over a few times in my head. You can’t control the pace so easily in an audiobook. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.

I have listened to audio dramas before, though, and whilst it’s a bit different hearing everything being read by just one person, it’s also a welcome return to the experience of listening to fiction. There’s something about being able to lay back, close your eyes and allow your imagination to fully take over whilst hearing the story narrated to you. And at the end of the day, when I look back on the first three chapters and compare them to other reading experiences, I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed them just as much as any other book. I look forward to enjoying these two long-ass books, and seeing how they compare to the Mistborn series.

Big Mouth, Small Audience

Before starting this blog post, I’d like to remind my readers that this blog will soon be changing to the domain name kristianrichmond.wordpress.com. If you frequent this blog via bookmark or web address, be sure to adjust your navigation accordingly.

I have a feeling that this will break a multitude of links across my blog posts, where I refer to earlier blog posts. Please bear with me if this happens.

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I’ve been churning out all sorts of content on the internet for almost a decade now, from the honestly too-young age of 12 to the 21 year old creature that I am today. And whilst a decade might not seem like long for other age ranges, teenage years are extremely formative and developmental to who you ultimately become as a person, and therefore much of my growth as a person and as a creator has been documented across various stations of the internet throughout this half of my life. Many of these have been deleted, privatised, or otherwise locked away never to see the light of day again – much to the benefit of anyone who would stumble across the inane blatherings of my teenage self. Others still exist.

It all began with my Youtube channel back in 2007. Youtube was a very different place back then. Monetisation wasn’t really a thing, and the idea of a single Youtuber having a million subscribers was ludicrous. It was more of a hobby. And 12 year old me wanted in on that hobby. And so, with no video editing or creating experience, none of the necessary equipment to do so and being far too young to create anything watchable, I set out on my mission to become one of the popular Youtubers I aspired to and watched. The results looked a little like this feat of video-making ability. Oddly, this Youtube account amassed the largest audience I’ve ever received for my content, and whilst the videos obviously improved in quality over the next 5 years before I shut it down, it’s still something I find strange. I use the account nowadays to upload 30 second gaming clips for my own archiving purposes, and to share.

It didn’t stop there. I won’t bore you with a full account but my creative instincts caused me to branch out into contributing to short story and poetry websites and starting multiple blogs (none of which were as well maintained or frequently updated as this one). I also discovered social networks along with the rest of my generation and joined Facebook for my ‘real life’ contacts, and Twitter to create and voice my internet persona. Twitter is, I think, a keystone for the topic of this blog post.

I’ve been tweeting for nearly nine years now. According to my profile statistics, I’ve tweeted a grand total of 32,708 times, but for all of those tweets across all of those years, I’ve amassed only 200 followers. And as contradictory to the existence of this post it may seem, I’m perfectly fine with that. I value my followers. I’d probably still be tweeting if I had 10% of that number. And that, finally, is where the name of this blog post comes into play. The question I ask myself every six months or so. Am I just simply talking to myself? I have a low interaction point with my 200 followers. This blog has been updating almost weekly for a year now and it has little over a hundred (very much appreciated) readers. Blog statistics tell me that each blog post gets less than 10 visitors, and whilst I’m aware that many people read from their feed or their emails, I’d be lying if I said that this statistic, among others, wasn’t disheartening. It’s easy to interpret these as being signs pointing towards me being boring or unlikable, and on some days this is all too believable.

But enough whinging. Rationalism tells me that people like myself form the bulk of the internet’s content creating community. It may feel like there’s an abundance of successful people with large audiences, but that’s merely because you don’t hear about or see those with followers in the hundreds. And whilst part of me does wish for an audience to give my words and creations some gravity, a larger part of me acknowledges that most of what I do is out of either enjoyment, practice or ventilation. Even if I did feel defeated at the notion of talking to myself, I’ve proven to myself before that just giving up these outlets for discussion and creation causes me to slowly crumple inwardly, making for more moments of anguish and irrational upset than before. So hey, if nothing else, it’s therapeutic!