Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire - Mistborn Book One

I promised this a week ago. But it's here.

And the cover art is amazing too

Brandon Sanderson's first book of The Mistborn is amazing. It had one of the most original and plausible magic systems I've ever encountered. The magic is based on different metals, with different effects. the metal 'burn' for a certain amount of time and then they are finished. You need to expend some energy to get some energy. I can't wait to buy the next two in the series. It's a good thing they're completed.

Set in the final empire - a barren, ash-filled world of overlords and underlings, with a hereditary magic passed through the noble line. The story focuses on a half peasant, half noble street thief who has inherited some 'mistborn' magic and has been using it intuitively as a good luck charm for her crew. She is found by a man in charge of a group of magical gentlemen thieves who have the cooked up the plot of the century: Overthrowing the evil overlord who has ruled for a thousand years.

This is an amazing book and the other two look as promising. Brandon Sanderson Started the trilogy after wondering about what would happen if the bad guys won, and he has pulled it off spectactularly.


::EDIT::
I thought I pressed the publish button three days ago. Turns out I didn't. Sorry!

What books mean to me - part 1

I read an awful lot. It wasn't always like that. There was a time where I refused - absolutly refused - to read anything but Enid Blyton's Famous Five. And then, one day in Eastbourne Central Library's most excellent children's section, with their seasonal displays of Sylvanian Family in the glass fronted issue desk, my dad said something along the lines of  "For goodness sake Hanna. Try something new." 

So I did. I tried Enid Blyton's Secret Seven, which I didn't like, and Enid Blyton's Adventure series, which I did like. And my dad sighed and no doubt thought he'd take the smaller victory. Wise man that he is. I doubt he even remembers that Saturday now.

That was the start though. I tried those, someone introduced me to Arthur Ransom's Swallows and Amazons, and the rest of the books in that series, Noel Streatfeild, Jenny Oldfield's horse stories and more. I started reading at every spare moment I had, and my dad, and my uncle did - do - the same.

And then one day I ran out of stuff to read whilst visiting my uncle, and he gave me Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong, and I loved it. And I realised how much I loved the genre. And I still do. I consumed everything else of hers that I could get my hands on. After that I moved onto people McCaffrey had collaborated with. Mercedes Lackey, Jodie Lynn Nye, Elizabeth Moon and that moved me on to people like David Webber, Diane Duane...

I would say that now, about 60% - 80% of the books I read are science fiction or fantasy. There are a lot of other writers I also read, in a lot of other genres. I have books I read because the are a good story. They're well written and I engage with the characters so I'll read them.

I started this post with the intention of talking about what the books mean to me, why I read and have read. This post would be better entitled what I read and how I go there. I'll have to write another post on what I was actually going to write.