The Final Empire book review

The Final Empire is the first book in the widely acclaimed fantasy Mistborn series. This novel set in a dystopic world where the dark lord has already won and now rebels must fight back with unique magic powers, a small degree of political skulduggery but most importantly a selection of names that would get them teased so much in primary school that the parents might want to consider home schooling.

The first thing that drew me into this book was how intriguing the setting was. With a unique magic system and a captivating world, once the book starts revealing its secrets… I was hooked. The most exciting thing was how wizards in this world can ingest metals to access magical powers that they can use to, for example, sooth other people’s emotions or push psychically against metal objects to launch themselves into the air. While this magic system sounds like a very dodgy, pop-up ad that advertises huge body-building gains by only consuming 20 grams of iron a day, it is actually one of the things that separates this book out from the crowd of thousands of generic fantasy titles.

The only minor complaint I had with this book is that I didn’t feel like the characters were described in enough detail to let me fully picture them in my head. This led to the unfortunate situation where I imagined that the tyrannical dictator of the world looked like Lord Buckethead (see pictures of Lord Buckethead here). By the time the book got around to telling me what the Lord Ruler actually looked like, I couldn’t get the image out of my head so now the Dark Lord forever more has a large black bucket over his face.

But that small problem didn’t stop me getting hooked and losing my entire social life while I romped relentlessly through this book (not that I have a social life to lose anyway, what can I say my hobbies are board games, reading books and writing blog posts…). This book gets you addicted with almost perfect pacing and makes you care about the characters so you never want to put the book down.

Overall the Final Empire is an interesting fantasy book with a fascinating concept and world building that drags you in time and again. If you are a fantasy fan then it is almost certainly worth a gander but even if you aren’t, I would still recommend at least giving it a go.

P.S. Don’t trust any adverts saying that you can get ripped if you just click on the link below and start taking 20 grams of very expensive iron flakes which you can buy exclusively from their company. Your wallet and more importantly you stomach will thank you.