You know that feeling when you finish a movie or series and you still haven’t had enough?
Yeah, same here.
There’s nothing better than a deep dive ‘behind the scenes’ of the show. Ever tried it with a book?
Though the ‘extras’ aren’t usually as easy to find at the end of the book like they are with our old DVDs, they exist.
So, here at D&S, we want to bring you a bit of that with our reviews so you don’t have to look too far. This is our first in the deep dive behind the book series.
Our first look at the book extras is with the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. So if you haven’t read at least the first book yet, go ahead and read it, then come right back.
This story has a unique magic system with a basis in actual science. The world-building is stellar. The characters are interesting and the heist is well executed.
Brandon Sanderson reasoned with himself, “What do I want to be the hallmark of my career? What am I going to add to the genre? I want to write fantasy that takes steps forward and lets me take the genre in some interesting direction.”
How did the series come about?
“I had been looking at the Lord of the Rings books and movies, and the Harry Potter books, and I felt that because of their popularity and success, a lot of people were going to be using this paradigm even more—the unknown protagonist with a heart of gold and some noble heritage who goes on a quest to defeat the dark lord. So I thought to myself, “What if the dark lord won? What if Frodo got to the end in Lord of the Rings and Sauron said, ‘Thanks for bringing my ring back. I really was looking for it,’ and then killed him and took over the world? What if book seven of Harry Potter was Voldemort defeating Harry and winning?” I didn’t feel that this story had ever really been approached in the way I was imagining it, and it became one idea that bounced around in my head for quite a while.” – Sanderson
Why a heist?
Sanderson considers himself a huge fan of the heist movie genre and the idea of teams getting together to form a cohesive unit to accomplish something. It wasn’t something he’d seen in fantasy at that point so he put his characters in a situation in which they could come together with their unique talents just like in the movies he liked to watch.
What about the Feruchemy?
Sanderson had a horrible case of insomnia in high school and wished there was a way to store up energy for when needed and take it away in order to sleep. Allomancy, the magic system in the book, was a separate idea that came about through the revision process.
Was Mistborn a planned series?
“I wrote the books in the trilogy straight through. I had the third one rough drafted by the time the first one had to be in its final form so that I could keep everything consistent and working together the way I wanted it to. I didn’t want it to feel like I was just making it up as I went along, which I feel is one of the strengths of the series.” -Sanderson
Want more from Brandon Sanderson and extras from his series check out his website here.
Have you read the Mistborn series? What did you think of it? Leave your comments below.
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