What feels like a long time ago and practically a different life,
I wrote this review of The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. In that review I was excited – I was reading a new Mistborn book by Sanderson, one that
basically came out of nowhere and pleasantly surprised fans, and one that I was
reading months before Sanderson’s rabid fan base was going to see it. It seems
to have surprised Sanderson nearly as much, because a small side project, one
that wasn’t planned to have sequels has grown into a fully-fledged trilogy (EDIT: I have been informed that The Alloy of Law is a stand-alone, and technically Shadows of Self is the start of the trilogy).
I’m now a few years older and a lot more overwhelmed in life. My
reading tastes have evolved and grown a bit. I’ve become a bit more bitter and
jaded at a time when I’ve also become more hopeful as I often intentionally
pull on the blinders to the world around me and simply enjoy fatherhood.
Anyway…I’m getting a bit too self-indulgent.
After a having a copy of the sequel to The Alloy of Law, Shadows of
Self, for over a year, I finally got around to reading it, in spite of just
how much I wanted to immediately see a sequel 5 years ago. Anyway, for whatever
reason (perhaps all the reasons?), I can’t say that I’m equally as excited
after reading Shadows of Self as I
was back then – I literally stayed up half the night to immediately write my
review of The Allow of Law,
immediately requested an interview with Sanderson (and was granted that request
in short-order). Now…well, I finished reading the book a month ago and am just
now reviewing it, I haven’t done an interview in years and don’t plan on doing
one now. So… is this lack of enthusiasm me or the book? (It’s me, but really,
that’s not what I want to dwell any more on).
Shadows of Self is an excellent follow-up to The
Alloy of Law – it does everything a sequel in a fantasy trilogy setting should do.
The scope grows, the stakes are larger, more is explained, characters grow and
history is revealed, things get dark, and for fans of Sanderson’s Cosmere, goodies abound. And Sanderson
revels in his strengths – the magic is right in the reader’s face, there are
adventures and battles, and the world of Mistborn
is further revealed. Which of course only leaves more questions to be answered.
As I said, this is a very solid second act for a trilogy not-trilogy.
Which brings me full circle to the indulgence of self. Hell, this
review jumped the shark, went off the rails, tipped back the bottle a while
back. Hell, I’m just excited that for the first time in years I won’t have a
backlog of reviews to write and I can’t believe that anyone is still actually
reading this. Bless you for that, but really, I’m sure there’s something better
that you can be doing with the time.
Anyway…read Shadows of Self
– it’s a fun book that fans of Sanderson will love. And I suppose I should read
the final next book in the trilogy: The Bands
of Mourning. I should probably even ‘review’ it, though will I be able top
this piece of …
Mistborn
Mistborn: Amazon
The Well of Ascension: Amazon
The Hero of Ages: Amazon
Shadows of Self: Amazon
The Bands of Mourning: Amazon
3 comments:
Alloy of Law is a standalone, technically.
Shadows of Self is the first book of the trilogy, Bands of Mourning is second, and the forthcoming (and unwritten) Lost Metal actually closes it out.
It's weird.
Thanks for the clarification Joe. I guess I haven't kept up with the details around this. Anyway, one more Was and Wayne book than I expected, so that's a good thing.
Yeah, Alloy of Law was supposed to be a novella to refresh Sanderson between larger books. It turned into a regular sized novel for anyone else.
Then, it worked well enough that he decided to throw a full trilogy into that time frame instead of jumping right up to the 1980's era technology trilogy
All that in between volumes of the Stormlight novels - though there will be a gap between Bands of Mourning and Sanderson writing The Lost Metal.
More Mistborn is always a good thing.
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