NewCountry reviewed The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson (The Mistborn Saga, #6)
Review of 'The Bands of Mourning' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Time to read: 7 hours 43 minutes
Rating: 8/10
Feeling a Strong 7 to a light 8 on this one. My favorite Wax and Wayne book so far. Though thinking back on Shadows of Self that book also has some great character work for Wax and Wayne and the final twist is so emotionally great. It's good that this book then builds off of that twist and develops a character arc for Wax that emotionally comes together beautifully in the finale, bookending the book quite nicely as it opens up with Wax's... basically childhood rummaging as a future lawman, as well as setting up the choice Wax has to make at the ending of the novel.
Minor thing: The villains are kind of weak. Looking back on it, Lord Ruler kind of hard to top as a villain and Sanderson has never quite been able to match his presence as a character. Ruin is also great but they're more of an entity than a tangible person. Miles is the closest Sanderson has probably gotten to having a villain with presence like Lord Ruler did so far in Era 2.
Suit is cool for the times he does show up, but his screen time is underutilized for the type of character he is. I guess my main problem is that he's not fleshed out enough to care about his ideology, though it is cool to see his internal thoughts and how he says he's committed to the cause for ideological reasons but he does want to rule in his lifetime so there is that element of selfish desire for power in his actions. And now he's dead so no of him I guess lol. ONTO TRELL WHICH IS HYPE.
It's behind both Warbreaker and Final Empire for me pretty clearly (maybe that makes it more of a 7 IDK). But it's still solid. I really liked it. The ending was cool. More worldbuilding is always welcome. I love seeing that. The mistborn series world, seeing it and technology evolve with the power system along with my boy ~~Sazed~~ I mean Harmony, It's probably my favorite thing about Era 2. The characters are also great, but the worldbuilding and power system is my favorite thing, so seeing stuff like the machines made to use allomancy as literal power for machines is jsut great. Finally seeing humans/cultures outside of the "mistborn core city" is also exciting. I also fucking love the wider cosmere hints and teases and the whole "Trell"/other god attacking Harmony/the Planet. It's so great.
ALSO THAT FUCKING ENDING! HOLY FUCKING SHIT! IS KELSIER ALIVE?? WHAT???????