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Chaos_reads@ramblingreaders.org reviewed Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, #5)

More Thriller than Fantasy

No rating

It's hard to write a review that is not a comparison to either the first book of the series or to the other Sanderson series. But as I haven't written reviews to those, that's not an option.

So as a stand-alone book, this one tones down the fantasy elements a bit. Mind you, there are still present and very much in the foreground, but the magic/alchemy system has grown so complex by now that the book wisely choses to not depend on a deep understanding or even base it's story to much on discovering more unknown details about it. It rather just treats some characters as having super hero-like abilities to fancy up the action scenes and more than one time offer an easy way out (narrative-wise) to otherwise pretty dead-end situations. The thriller part can't really decide if it wants to be serial-killer hunt or whodoneit. It introduces some …

It's hard to write a review that is not a comparison to either the first book of the series or to the other Sanderson series. But as I haven't written reviews to those, that's not an option.

So as a stand-alone book, this one tones down the fantasy elements a bit. Mind you, there are still present and very much in the foreground, but the magic/alchemy system has grown so complex by now that the book wisely choses to not depend on a deep understanding or even base it's story to much on discovering more unknown details about it. It rather just treats some characters as having super hero-like abilities to fancy up the action scenes and more than one time offer an easy way out (narrative-wise) to otherwise pretty dead-end situations. The thriller part can't really decide if it wants to be serial-killer hunt or whodoneit. It introduces some distracting characters to finally return back to the central cast for the resolution, which in hindsight wasn't that elegant. I'm personally a big fan of the magic system and the 'discovering long-lost knowledge and abilities' concept so this book let me down a little. I treat it as a bridge to the third which hopefully returns to old form.

Traumkämpfer reviewed Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, #5)

One of the weaker books

3 stars

Either I’m getting kind of tired of Brandon Sanderson’s writing style or this book in particular didn’t resonate well with me. It wasn’t boring and the story was interesting enough, it just felt kind of annoying at times.

I must admit that it’s been around ten years since I read the first Mistborn trilogy and while the fourth book in this series worked quite well as a standalone, this one was having a lot more references that I no longer understood. I wish there had been more explanations for those than endless repetitions of how pushing, pulling and metalminds worked.

Of course, as usual, the ending was very well written and made up for a lot of the shortcomings.

Chris Young reviewed Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson

Probably unnecessary

2 stars

I really enjoyed the original Mistborn trilogy. I read the first book of this second trilogy quite some time ago and wasn't keen. I then picked this up cheap and thought I'd give it a chance. I was disappointed. I'm not sure if it's just that too much time has passed between reading the original books (or indeed the first of this new set) meant I didn't understand the references, or the fact time has passed in the series itself and the setting (a sort of wild west/industrial age) doesn't appeal to me as much. I'm not against fantasy set in more modern time periods, this just didn't interest me much. I'd even go as far as to say I found it quite dull and didn't really care what happened to the characters. It's a shame as I usually enjoy the author's output.

jussi

rated it

Mar 25