The Alloy of Law

Well, that was as fun a romp as they come. This is definitely Sanderson in peak form.

When Lord Edwarn Ladrian dies in an unfortunate accident in the mountains, Waxillium Ladrian, his nephew and lawkeeper out in the Roughs, becomes the only surviving member of House Ladrian. Returning home to the city of Elendel, Wax is faced with the daunting task of saving House Ladrian from financial destruction. A task that sees him arranging a marriage to Lady Steris Harms, a wealthy aristocrat. But when Steris is kidnapped, the latest victim of a gang of thieves called the Vanishers, Wax makes a promise to her father to rescue her. Alongside Wayne, his old partner from the Roughs in town who's hot on the trail of the Vanishers, the duo dive headlong into a mystery where it fast becomes clear that the heists are the least of the Vanishers' plans.

The very existence of this novel is a testament to how rich the world of Scadrial is. Originally intended to be a side adventure, The Alloy of Law started out as a novella which eventually blossomed into an unplanned, second Mistborn trilogy, completely overthrowing Sanderson's plans for a trilogy of trilogies surrounding Mistborn. Set three hundred years after the events in The Hero of Ages, Scadrial is now a world poised on the brink of an industrial revolution, for whom the events of the first trilogy are little more than matters of legend and religion. With recent inventions such as electricity and automobiles, Scadrial is an entirely different world from the one readers of the first trilogy will know, ruled over by the benevolent Harmony.

I lay the blame for the amount to which I enjoyed this book entirely at the feet of my expectations of it. Considering the basic idea was originally intended for a novella, I went into this expecting a light, fun read, and that is first and foremost what I consider The Alloy of Law to be. It contains none of the gravity, the epic sense of events that are rife within The Final Empire as the beginning to a trilogy. Though, funnily enough, The Alloy of Law is a novel centered around a gang of thieves, except this time we happen to be on the other side of the law.

The major draw of this novel was to see how Scadrial has developed since the fall of the Final Empire. Set three hundred years after The Hero of Ages but also seventy years before what was to be the intended the second Mistborn trilogy, I didn't expect Brandon Sanderson to reveal all the cool ideas he has planned for that intended second trilogy, and on that count I was both surprised and disappointed. Though light on the worldbuilding, Sanderson does indeed take the time out to give us a little taste of what Scadrial looks like currently.

The first big change for me was the common existence of Twinborns, wielders of both Allomancy and Feruchemy. Allomancy today is very diluted; Mistborns, capable of burning all eight metals, seem to be a thing of the past. The same goes for Feruchemy, with most Feruchemists only manifesting one power, and there's no mention of what modern day Hemallurgy looks like. Also touched on are the existence of many various religions, which are modern day versions of the ones we saw budding in the first Mistborn series, in addition to Sliverism, which is the old worship of the Lord Ruler still being practiced. The City of Elendel seems to be the center of a modern-day democratic nation, whose extreme outer borders, the Roughs, have an air of the Wild West about them. All in all, it's a stage that really sets the feel for the story, but it's clear Sanderson is holding out on some of the juicier ideas he has for Scadrial's development, which we'll probably get to see in the forthcoming two Alloy sequels.

Sanderson's characters are, as always, very distinct, unique people. From Miles Hundredlives, a man with the power of the Lord Ruler, to Lady Marasi, the attractive scholar with a few tricks up her sleeve, everyone feels like characters entirely themselves. The dynamic duo at the helm of this particularly wild wagon ride are Lord Waxillium Ladrian, a traumatized ex-lawkeeper with an astounding level of paranoia, and his sidekick Wayne, ex-crook turned lawman. My favorite of the lot is actually Lady Steris, Wax's fiancee who for me provided an incredible amount of serious humor given her very severe personality, and who really sucker punched me at the end of the novel with a discussion she has with Wax about their future.

The writing I found to be standard Sanderson, efficient and tightly paced with a liberal dose of groan-worthy attempts at humor. What stood out for me were the way he handles his battle scenes.

One of my biggest complaints with the original Mistborn trilogy was how very technical his battle scenes feel. Even the events in A Memory of Light felt like I was reading a play by play of an action scene script. Earlier in the year, I happily announced after reading Words of Radiance that he clearly corrected this fault by producing some of his most incredibly charged fight scenes to date, one of which was one of the most emotional moments of the book, but it's clear to me now he actually corrected this flaw in his writing a few years ago.

The fight scenes in The Alloy of Law, especially the finale, was one of the most intense, heavily charged fights I've ever read. The ballroom scene at the start of the book made it clear this was going to be a fun romp, and Sanderson doesn't disappoint to the very end, delivering a fight that reads like a moment straight out of Ray Stevenson's Punisher: War Zone. With Wax and Wayne, two Twinborns going head to head against a Twinborn with the power of the Lord Ruler, it very simply delivers.

The mystery at the heart of events, to be honest, never quite drew me in. It served it's purpose of keeping me interested in unfolding events in the book, and the revelations at the end which are clearly intended to hook me and ensure I read the next one weren't particularly necessary, as the appearance of a certain character pretty much guaranteed that anyway. His very existence in modern day Scadrial, coupled with the amount of fun I had reading this, raised so many questions there was no way I wasn't going to grab the next Alloy-era Mistborn book.

All in all, my only real complaint with this book is that I didn't get to see as much of present day Scadrial as I wanted, but with Sanderson holding the contract for two more Alloy-era Mistborn novels, I'm not worried about that facet of the book. I was repeatedly warned to enter this book expecting a light, fun romp compared to previous Mistborn novels, and that's very sound advice that I'll in turn pass on to prospective readers, as it definitely fits the level of gravity involved in this particular read. An unashamedly heavily tied-in sequel to Sanderson's groundbreaking Mistborn trilogy, this is definitely Sanderson at his peak in my books. As fun a romp as they come, and one heavily recommended.