Mistborn, Revisited: Why I Changed My Mind

A couple of weeks ago, I posted my review of Mistborn. I’m keeping that review up because it reflects how I originally felt when I finished the book. But since then, hardly a day has passed without me thinking about its characters, their choices, or their conversations.

Why I gave it four stars

I originally gave Mistborn four stars. Truthfully, I almost gave it 3.75. My initial star rating came down to the writing style. Brandon Sanderson’s prose is clean and accessible. Economical, even. But it didn’t impress me in the way the prose of some other books has impressed me.

In my first review, I described his writing as more intellectual than emotional. I still think that’s accurate. I just don’t think it tells the whole story.

What stayed with me

As I write this, I’m scrolling through the annotations I made on my Kindle Scribe when I first read Mistborn, and they absolutely still resonate. I keep returning to dialogue about the masks we wear, about the truths behind contradictory beliefs, to Vin’s hope that she might have found people who truly trust one another, and to the question of whether love can ever truly recover from betrayal.

These moments stayed with me long after I closed the book. They tugged at me, bringing beliefs into focus that I didn’t even realize I held. Have I worn certain disguises for so long that even I believe them now? Can I hold the tension of competing truths without trying to resolve them? Am I, like Vin, still seduced by hope? And will I, like Kelsier, always be haunted by what I cannot know?

Why I’m changing my rating

When it comes to the human condition, truth can be as slippery as an eel. The characters in Mistbornstruggle to grasp it, just as I often do. That’s where I connect with the story most deeply.

I originally thought I needed exceptional prose and glittering revelations to rate a book five stars. I don’t. For me, the stories that linger are the ones that usher me deeper into the complexities of the human condition and invite me to sit in the disquietude of its messy contradictions.

In this regard, Mistborn delivers. So I’m updating my rating.

5 stars.