“Ash fell from the sky...”

This is the first Sanderson book I’ve read. I’ve watched a bunch of his lectures, which are amazing, but have never gotten around to reading any of his work!

So, what do I think?

The world building and magical lore is really interesting! And I was a big fan of the flawed Vin and her Terrisman friend, Sazed.

Things I didn’t enjoy so much:
*often jumped to the POV of random characters who weren’t significant to the plot (there were enough people to keep track of generally, so this just made this more complicated or confusing than it really needed to be, IMO)
*I did feel that the book was maybe 100 pages too long. There were chunks that felt really slow or repetitive. In fact, I became very conscious of being constantly reminded of metals and ash and jumping around like Neo from Matrix... *I didn’t really get the Inquisitors. Even when we got an explanation, we didn’t actually get an explanation, which made me feel like we’re just glossing over the bits that maybe Sanderson didn’t have time to work out the how (described in another book, maybe?).
*I was also expecting there to be more to the whole “useless metals” thing, so that was a disappointment.

But, that aside, whilst the first half felt very predictable, as we got deeper into the story there were a bunch of twists that re-kindled interest and kept me wanting to know how the thing would play out.

This was also published over a decade ago and, with him being a very prolific writer, I imagine his more recent books will only get better.

Based on my experience, I’d rate this a high 3/5.

If you’ve read any of his work, what is your favourite series?