The Bands Of Mourning

 The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson was an enjoyable ride that I couldn’t put down. There are already so many different reviews of the story that I thought just my personal views would be the best. 

This was book three of the second set of the Mistborn series. If you haven’t read the first two then part of the story will be lost on you and you will have to go back and find it out. 

This was my second time to read it and it took me a while to remember the plot but once I got to the point where I knew what was going to happen I couldn’t stop. It drew me in and didn’t let me go. I have been steadily moving my way through the quad of books with just one left to go before I finish. 

The best part of the book was Steris. She had been played as a mousy librarian like character in the first two books, stuck in the idea that she is not very valuable. However after her wedding to Wax was interrupted by Wayne she truly started to shine. Not only could she find enjoyment in searching through boxes of tedious ledgers to find a few cents she took pleasure in just finding small ways to be useful. Without her ingenuity the climax wouldn’t have been as successful as it was. In addition when she fired Wax’s modified shotgun propelling her off the roof of a moving train she moved away from her simple world straight into adventure.

The rest of the book had Wax trying to move on from killing his wife for the second time and be the man he wanted to be. In the last book the god Harmony used him to take care of a rogue Kandra, who just so happened to be his wife. Wax couldn’t forgive that but when he got the whiff of a mystery he couldn’t let it go. In doing so he learns to open his heart to the strange young woman who tries to plan for every eventuality - ‘being framed for murder, page 27’ - and he solves the problems that have been plaguing him for the past few years. It had a satisfying ending and left us ready for the next installment. His story, while good, was very predictable without a lot of surprises.

Mistborn is not an epic fantasy but it has enough elements to qualify for the fantasy realm; the alien ship certainly wouldn’t be my first choice but Sanderson makes it work. It ties quite nicely with the first trilogy and I am eager to see how he finishes the story.

So in all I give the story a good 4 stars out of 5.