The Lost Metal by Brandon Sanderson : Review

For years, frontier lawman turned big-city senator Waxillium Ladrian has hunted the shadowy organization the Set—with his late uncle and his sister among their leaders—since they started kidnapping people with the power of Allomancy in their bloodlines. When Detective Marasi Colms and her partner Wayne find stockpiled weapons bound for the Outer City of Bilming, this opens a new lead. Conflict between Elendel and the Outer Cities only favors the Set, and their tendrils now reach to the Elendel Senate—whose corruption Wax and Steris have sought to expose—and Bilming is even more entangled.

After Wax discovers a new type of explosive that can unleash unprecedented destruction and realizes that the Set must already have it, an immortal kandra serving Scadrial’s god reveals that Harmony’s power is blocked in Bilming. That means the city has fallen under the influence of another god: Trell, worshipped by the Set. And Trell isn’t the only factor at play from the larger Cosmere—Marasi is recruited by offworlders with strange abilities who claim their goal is to protect Scadrial…at any cost.

Wax must choose whether to set aside his rocky relationship with God and once again become the Sword that Harmony has groomed him to be. If no one steps forward to be the hero Scadrial needs, the planet and its millions of people will come to a sudden and calamitous ruin.

God I can still remember finding out that some author named ‘Brandon Sanderson’ was chosen to complete the Wheel of Time series and wondering who the hell that was and why they thought anyone but Robert Jordan could do the series justice. Then I went out and bought a copy of Elantris to see just what his writing style was like and I found that I couldn’t stop reading until I had caught up on all of his books at the time. While the Mistborn trilogy I probably my least favorite of all his books I absolutely love the Era 2 books and have been looking forward to this book for years. The Lost Metal was a fucking epic conclusion to what has become one of my favorite series of all time.

I’m honestly not sure where to start with this review because I loved absolutely everything about this book and it was so full of information and Cosmere connections that I don’t know that I can say much without spoiling some awesome things. So what I will do is say that if you’re a fan of Brandon Sanderson’s I think you will love this book IMO and if you’ve never read anything by Brandon Sanderson then I think you need to get yourself down to the nearest library or bookstore and remedy that. You’re missing out on a great series and one of the best authors in the world.

I had so many questions when I started reading The Lost Metal and amazingly most of the questions I had were answered and the answers were just amazing. Wax and Wayne continue to be one of my favorite dynamic duos of all time and I love reading about them. Though surprisingly Sterris and Marasi’s stories and scenes were probably my favorite part of the story. I feel like they got more screen time in this book and their scenes were the ones I looked forward to reading the most this time around. The saddest part of this book for me was the ending because I know its the end of Era 2 and I don’t know what I’ll do without a new Wax and Wayne book to look forward to.

My only concern with The Lost Metal is just how many connections to the Cosmere there are in this book. Sanderson has always maintained that he writes his Cosmere books in such a way that you don’t need to know anything about the Cosmere to enjoy them but I can’t help but feel that that isn’t the case with this book and series. It felt like every chapter had some sort of connection to or revelation about the Cosmere that you could easily miss if you haven’t read the rest of the books and in this book those connections definitely impact the story in some fairly large ways. I’ll have to talk to someone who doesn’t know much about the Cosmere to see if they were confused by anything when reading this book.

I really can’t recommend this series and author enough to people. I think there is a Sanderson book for everyone and I would highly recommend anyone who has not done so yet go read one of his books.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.