L&L Book Club: Mistborn, The Final Empire

Hello from my cozy cabin at Camp Wannaknit!* If you missed out on the details about Camp Wannaknit, you can read them here. I’m SUPER into it. Like, I know I’m supposed to be into it since I’m hosting it, but I want you to know just how much I’ve committed to the premise.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk7xGAUn0ST/?taken-by=doctor_llama

The other day Mr. Llama came home from work and asked, “Did you get a chance to go to the store today?”

I looked right at him and said, “Oh, geez, I really MEANT to. But I just got so busy. There was a nature walk, and then a mandatory hour of staring at birds. And then, you know, there are things I haven’t knit. Like, all these patterns and all this yarn, and I realized that there just isn’t time for the store at all.”

I actually had gone to the store, but what fun is it to just say that? I got really into making my own yogurt recently, which I mostly blame on my obsession with Netfix’s Anne with an “E” and I needed yogurt stuff. He doesn’t usually read these, so it’s safe for me to tell you that 0% of my leaving-the-house-motivation had to do with getting him some more Snapples. I did get them though, since I did happen to be at the store, so I feel like that’s a major wifey-win.

And you know how I know this marriage is meant to be? He didn’t even hesitate, he just smirked and dryly said,

“Neat. What kind of birds?”

If you can find someone to share your life with that will not only tolerate your wit and sarcasm, but will elevate it, lock that down. We’ve been together 10 years now, married for 6.5 of them, and I feel like over the years we’ve really honed each other’s sarcasm game. Also, he unironically watches Project Runway with me.

*Camp Wannaknit=My couch. But next weekend I’m going to go on vacation in an actual cabin, and I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself over how on theme I’ll be.

This week I’ve been reading…

Jac’s been pestering me to read the Brandon Sanderson series, Mistborn, for a while. So this week I finally got around to it, and I’m mad I put it off so long! Jac read book one (The Final Empire) a while ago, and has been patiently waiting to read book two until I read the first one. Because we are nerds like that, and like to go through a series together when we can. And then call each other about the books, and send text messages asking if she’s gotten to [this part] yet?!

Anyhow, I’m a bad friend for not reading this one sooner. It was everything I could want in a book. I’m sorry that I can’t be as eloquent or witty as I want to be here, I have a much easier time writing well about things that suck. Which I guess says more about me than the books.

The only complaint I had was that the opening was really dry. In the fine tradition of fantasy novels, Brandon Sanderson gives his characters difficult-to-pronounce names that makes tracking who is who difficult in the beginning. Like, they aren’t as bad of names as Robert Jordan with “Randal Thor” and “Alan Mandragon”, but they bordered on Patrick Rothfuss levels of looking like he had shook up some scrabble tiles, dumped them out, and gone with whatever random letters fell next to each other. That’s a very minor complaint though. Once you decide how to pronounce “Kelsier” in your head, the reading is smooth.

This book is like if Leverage and Lord of the Rings had a torrid affair. Book one, The Final Empire, is the love child of their steamy one night stand. The story centers around a heist. The main characters need to pull off the perfect con. I LOVE a good heist story, and this one is great. The con to infiltrate the noble society, steal their treasure, and ultimately take over control of the city happens on the backdrop of a high fantasy world. Jac described it to me before I read it as:

“If Sauron had won, and now it’s 1,000 years later and this is what the world looks like.”

It’s really well executed, and I did not guess the big twist at the end. Brandon Sanderson sums it up really well (which, in retrospect, would make sense).

“A thousand years ago, the prophesied hero from lore rose up to overthrow a great and terrible evil. Only, he lost, and the Dark Lord took over and has been ruling with an iron fist for a thousand years. Ash falls from the sky in this barren land, and mists come every night, deep and mysterious. In this setting, a gang of thieves decides that the prophecies were all lies and that they can’t trust in some fabled hero to save them. They decide to take matters into their own hands, and plan a daring heist of the dark lord himself, planning to use the emperor’s own wealth to bribe his armies away from him and take over the empire.”

I’m pumped for book two! I already downloaded it from audible, but it’ll be a week or so before I get to it. The library just notified me that it’s finally my turn to read The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish, so that’s next on my list.

Currently on my needles…

I’ve been all in on Camp Wannaknit patterns, and I’m rushing to push out one more before camp is over because that’s who I am. I made a hat, finger-less mitts, and a pillow sham all in brioche. I’m in the middle of a pair of brioche socks too, because I had yarn left over from the mitts, and it’s enough to make socks, and I was a girl scout just long enough to know you should use every part of the buffalo skein. Also, I’ve become an instagram addict looking at everyone’s Camp Wannaknit photo prompts. Jac is giving away a skein of yarn each week to one lucky photo-prompt poster, and this week is “scary stories.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlHbq_UHXRv/?taken-by=doctor_llama

No one has DM’d me macabre horror stories about yarn yet, and it feels like sort of a missed opportunity.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlIsXYfHukf/?taken-by=doctor_llama

~Megan-Anne

You’ll never be able to see the names from the Wheel of Time series the same way again. You’re welcome.