Still a great ending to this series. This was one of the best endings to a book series I’d ever read back in 2013, and it’s still in that category eight years later. It’s an ending that is so good it single handedly elevates everything that came before it, which was already pretty damn good to start with. It’s one of those endings that makes so much sense in retrospect but is almost impossible to predict. Sanderson expertly sets your expectations throughout the whole trilogy and then satisfies some, but completely overthrows others. I’m trying to be unspoilery here outside the spoiler tags because the surprise is worth preserving.
SPOILERS The bait and switch he does with Vin and Sazed is just so good. Sazed spends this whole trilogy just quietly growing in esteem, and it becomes clear that his arc is the backbone of the entire thing. And yet his ending, in which he embraces the powers of both Ruin and Preservation to become Harmony, and uses the knowledge stored in his metal-minds by generations of Terris Keepers (of which he is the last) to make the world anew, doesn’t undercut the importance of Vin, or take anything away from her. She may not end up being the Hero of Ages, but she is still a hero. Nothing that happens to Sazed or that Sazed puts into action would have been possible without Vin END SPOILERS.
Though this original trilogy isn’t my personal favorite of Sanderson’s series, he does some foundational work here setting up the rules of the Cosmere and opening up opportunities for story in both later Mistborn books, and in other Cosmere stories like the Stormlight books. But you can still appreciate the story constructed here without going further in the Cosmere, if you wanted. (This is obviously not the option I would recommend.)
The only reason I can’t give this a full five stars is that the Spook stuff really just didn’t hold my interest, and I don’t think it did last time either. I don’t dislike it or anything, but it didn’t fire me up, either. Every time we got a Spook POV I just wanted to be with another character. This is obviously personal preference.
[4.5 stars]