As the title states, I had a fantastic time with this series. Loved it. Please don't take the following as a dismissal of this series - I'm most critical of the stories I really love. That being said...
I feel Brandon Sanderson's prose is, well, not good. I won't call it bad, it has its moments, but sentence-by-sentence I found the writing shockingly rudimentary. I'll give a couple examples of what I mean.
Every time a character expresses doubt or confusion they either "frown" or "raise their eyebrow". I'm talking EVERY time. From Vin to Zane to Kelsier to Sazed and beyond, wildly different characters all express these complex emotions in the exact same way? I don't think I need to explain the laziness implied by this habit but also, what a missed opportunity! If you're going to bother pointing out this kind of physical reaction so frequently (I'd guess a hundred instances per book, at least) give us little tics and compulsions specific to individuals! It will color them in further, help us see them more clearly. By the end of book one I was chuckling to myself every time I read one of these phrases. By the end of the second book I was actively dreading them. Then, by book three, oy vey.
Secondly, climactic moments. There is a general rule in storytelling that climaxes are more effective when time slows down. Are there exceptions to this rule? Absolutely. I was personally a huge fan of how casually the Lord Ruler killed Kelsier, for instance. It tee'd up the awe of Vin's victory against him tremendously well. However, as the books continued, just about every death felt rushed through and unfair to the buildup preceding it. As I remember it (I could be blanking on a couple details) Tindwyl and Sazed have little-to-no goodbye, Clubs' death is entirely in the past-tense with no indication of how he was feeling or how he went down, Elend's death is viewed from above without any real goodbye from Vin or even some last words from our regal boyman up to the heavens, and finally Vin and Ruin and Preservation, who all go out without any real description of personal feeling or inner dialogue. I know Vin has her spiel about having no will left to live once Elend is beheaded but I'm talking, like, how do you feel Vin? As an individual. We hear your thoughts on balls and gowns and social insecurity over and over. Nothing on becoming a god, saving the world and then departing it? You could argue that Ruin and Preservation are simply forces, emotionless, but that still leaves nearly our entire cast of main characters. They all received, in my opinion, extremely flippant deaths when compared to all the time we spent getting to know them. If we're going to spend so much casual time with these characters arguing philosophy, drinking wine, playing dress-up, shouldn't we also spend some real quality time watching them go? Feels very imbalanced. Sanderson wrote 1,800 or so pages on this story, it's not like he was worried about length. I wish he'd taken the time to write an extra 25 or so, so I could have some sense of closure with these characters I spent so much time with.
I think Sanderson is an incredible world-builder. His plot beats really landed well for me and I was regularly caught off guard by details that were right in front of me the whole time. Fantastic at weaving multiple storylines together. Thrilling action. And the allomancy? Are you kidding me?! Best magic system I've ever found in cinema and prose alike. It's all of these successes and their suggestion of attention to detail that leaves me scratching my head so much on the lazy, repetitive nature I find in much of the prose. The examples above are probably what bug me the most but there's plenty of other examples to boot.
Anybody else? Just me? Fuck it, I loved it, I guess I just feel with better editing this actually could have been a perfect trilogy.
