Movie Review: Frozen

I was extremely hesitant to see this movie.  So much so that I did do so until this Monday (2/17/14) when it was released on 11/27/13 (yes, it's still in theaters, which is very surprising since it comes out on 3/18/14),  My reasons for hesitancy have to do with reading some less than stellar speculations about how Disney was now out to ruin Hans Christian Anderson's fairytale The Snow Queen, which it's loosely based on.  After seeing the movie, I'd say it's more inspired by or to put it another way kind of a fanfiction of The Snow Queen (but then I could make the argument that everything is a fanfiction of something, which is a whole other blog post).  When I first discovered that Disney reworked and watered down classic fairytales I was extremely annoyed in the way only a teenager can be.  I much preferred the darker and bloodier versions, but now as an adult, while I still do lean towards the morbid, I can see the value in what they've done.  Disney does tend to imply in a way that they were the originator of the tales whether it's done directly and purposely or not, but this seems like it was more for their past projects.  Most of us immediately think of them when we hear such titles as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, or Cinderella, and it's hard for me to presume that they would not want it any other way.

Regardless, I decided to venture out and see Frozen after hearing 99% wonderful things about it from friends and family alike.  I actually went to see it with my brother who was on his second time.  Let me start out with the soundtrack, because this is important.  Prior to even the opening credits, I had chills running down my spine from the haunting beauty of the boy's choir that precedes it..  This was an excellent meta move from a film entitled Frozen.  Like so many things I've been hesitant about (A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series mind you; Harry Potter; The Hunger Games; FFVII), I was completely wrong to wait.

Frozen is about two sisters Anna and Elsa who happen to be princesses, and I mean to say it in that way.  Their being princesses, while integral to some story parts, really is not all that important. They reside in the kingdom of Arendelle with their parents, the king and queen.  Anna is a feisty ginger ingenue, while Elsa, silvery-blond, is more mature and reserved, and this is not just because she is the elder.  Elsa has the power to literally create winter, and when the two sisters are girls, this is just a game.  They romp and cavort through the ice and snow while inside their castle until Elsa accidentally strikes Anna in the head with a wintry spell, stunning her and making a strand of her hair turn ice white.  Their parents seek help from trolls who not only heal Anna but also remove all memories of her sister's magic.  After this Elsa stays mostly locked in her room trying desperately to learn how to control her abilities, while Anna wonders why they've became so distant as the two girls grow up.  During this time, their parents are lost at sea.  Anna and Elsa are left alone in their solitary castle, where they doors have not been opened for years, and they don't even have each other for company.

When Elsa comes of age, the kingdom prepares for her coronation, and Anna, excited to finally see people, wanders the town and meets Prince Hans of the Southern Isles.  The two feel a mutual connection in that they're both sort of goofy and clumsy, even "finishing each others 'sandwiches'" as their duet suggests.  They decided then and their that they're going to get married, and Anna asks for Elsa's blessing.  In a total paradigm twister for a Disney film Elsa tells her that she can't marry someone she's only known for a day, which makes complete sense.  During the ensuing argument, Elsa loses control of her powers and bestows eternal winter upon Arendelle, before fleeing to the northern mountains.  There she comes to the realization that only in solitude can she be her true self without fear or judgment, so she casts off all shackles to literally let her hair down (it's been bound up as tight as she was prior to this, easy but still excellent symbolism) and create a glorious ice palace for herself while singing "the cold never bothered me anyway."  Her clothes change as well to a flowing, diaphanous blue gown, starkly different from her queenly and conservative garb.

Meanwhile, back in Arendelle, Anna is determined to get her sister back and heads to the northern mountains alone leaving Hans behind to take care of her kingdom.  While getting supplies Anna meets Kristoff, a mountain man with his reindeer Sven, who reluctantly agrees to help her since his ice collecting business has been ruined by the winter that never ends.  During their journey north Anna imparts how she got into this situation, and Kristoff gives her a look when she reaches the part where she and Hans were going to get married after knowing each other for one day.  I really liked that the movie had not one, but two characters who had never met nor spoken to each other, call Anna out on how bad of a move that marriage would've been.  It's as though Disney is really trying to make up for all the times that they had this very situation happen, and they're saying, "No no no, we realize now that's not the way to go.  Give us a break, we were just working within the confines of the times of our work!"

While journeying up the mountain Anna and Kristoff meet a living snowman named Olaf much to Anna's greater shock since that was the name she and Elsa always gave their snow creations.  Olaf leads them to Elsa's ice palace where the sisters are reunited, but the snow queen is still terrified of hurting Anna and refuses to return to Arendelle, insisting that her place is here alone in the cold.  Anna persists in her persuasion, which agitates Elsa's emotions to the point where she accidentally uses her powers against her sister again striking her this time in the heart.  Horrified by her actions, Elsa creates a giant snow monster to chase them away so that she won't hurt her her sister nor anyone again.  While they flee Kristoff notices that Anna's hair is turning white and realizes something is very wrong.  He decides to take her to his adopted family, the very trolls that healed the princess the first time.  They tell them that Anna's heart has been frozen, and unless it is healed by an act of true love, then she will become frozen solid forever.

Back in Arendelle, Hans decides to lead a search for Anna.  He enlists the help of the Duke of Weselton, a guest at the coronation who insisted afterwards that Elsa was a sorceress who needed to be taken care of.  He grants Prince Hans the use of some of his men, but makes sure his lackeys understand what they need to do should they encounter the ice queen.  When Hans and his men reach Elsa's palace, the ensuing battle knocks the queen unconscious so that she can be brought back and imprisoned in Arendelle.  Hans pleads with her to undo the winter she so wrought, but Elsa insists that she doesn't know how.

***Warning - Major Story Spoilers Ahead***

When Anna reunites with Hans and begs him to kiss her to undo the frozen curse, he refuses in order to reveal his amazingly unexpected (at least to me) Face-Heel Turn where he reveals he never loved her or had any interest in her.  He merely wanted to marry her to gain control of her kingdom since he has twelve older brothers and nothing else left for him at home.  At no point in any of Hans' scenes did I even get an inkling that he was going to be the main villain, and I was actually scratching my head prior wondering how they were going to reconcile Anna's two love interests in Kristoff the rough, but loyal, mountain man with Hans the slightly silly, but still responsible, prince.  I liked them both!  Hans is good-looking and handled things in Arendelle very well while both Anna and Elsa were indisposed, even doing things like handing out blankets and warm clothing to the people and making sure they had enough supplies.  The only hint that's given is in the beginning of the movie where he tells Anna about his twelve brothers and how they treated him growing up, but nowhere in his attitude is the nefarious schemer Anna sees now.  She is completely destroyed by this news as he leaves her to die from her own sister's touch.  Hans then lies to the people of Arendelle saying that Anna is dead, but they were able to say their wedding vows prior to her demise, essentially making him the king.  He then charges Elsa with her sister's death, but the snow queen manages to escape prior to execution.

Olaf the snowman manages to find Anna and builds a fire at the risk to himself.  She admonishes him for this, and he then delivers one of the most poignant and heartbreaking lines in the film saying, "Some people are worth melting for."  He tells her that Kristoff is in love with her and helps her to the frozen fjord to find him.  Hans confronts Elsa and tells her her sister is dead because of her.  Her ensuing despair at this causes the storm to cease, which gives Kristoff and Anna the chance to reach each other.  However, when Anna sees Hans is about to kill Elsa, she throws herself in between her sister and the sword, freezing solid in that moment so the blade shatters off of her ever winter skin.

Elsa grieves for her sister, but in the midst of her tears, Anna begins to thaw for her sacrifice was an act of true love.  Elsa then realizes that love is the key to controlling her powers and is able to thaw Arendelle and even make it so that Olaf can survive in the summer.  Hans is sent back to his kingdom in disgrace, Kristoff and Anna share and kiss, and the two sisters reconcile with Elsa promising never to shut the castle gates again.

Maybe its the fact that I've romanticized winter or maybe it's the fact that I love a good twisted paradigm, but I found Frozen to be phenomenal.  The enchantress is not evil and the handsome prince is not good (though he had many of us fooled for a while).  I loved the contrast between the two sisters.  Anna, fiery and positive to Elsa, cool and reserved.  The story was first and foremost about the relationship between the two of them.  The romantic aspect was there, but it took a back seat to what really mattered.  It reminded me of Brave in that that film was all about the mother-daughter bond, but I felt Frozen was a superior film due to the extraordinary lengths Anna goes to in order to find her sister and bring her home (not saying that Merida didn't, but I just felt that in Frozen it was more profound).  There is also the idea of the sacrifice.  The "act of true love" wasn't the typical Disney kiss, but rather the true love between siblings.  Even though Elsa was the one who caused her to be in her position, even though Anna believed at the time she was losing her last chance to live, she didn't care and threw herself in front of the blade anyway.  Maybe it's the bravery and self-sacrifice that draws me to this tale.  The willingness to risk everything for the sister you love despite the fact that they'd essentially become estranged while living under the same roof.  Even after all those years Anna didn't care.  She wanted to know why they'd become so distant and nothing was going to stop her from finding out.

This is a movie I would love for all young girls especially to see.  It's continuing a path I'm happy that Disney is starting to take in that there are greater loves than just romantic.  There are better things than a prince's kiss.  Is this the first Disney movie to show the princess ending up with a commoner?  No, of course not.  Aladdin did that back in 1992, and in Brave the princess didn't end up with anyone at all!  It is the first Disney movie I can recall where the enchantress isn't evil, and I love that.  I love that that paradigm has been flipped.  Even though her powers can be very destructive, her intentions are not, and intentions most certainly matter.  Everything Elsa does is out of responsibility.  She locks herself away in order to protect Anna.  She flees to the northern mountains for the same not realizing that she's frozen the entire kingdom.  When this is proven to her, she's absolutely horrified that her people have suffered because of her actions.

Both of the sisters are exemplary characters, Olaf the sidekick is not only a good comic relief, he also provides good insights and the one very poignant line I mentioned above.  The real love interest is someone that Anna actually gets to know (she even meets his family, shock!) before making a commitment, and the villain of the story isn't revealed until nearly the end.  There's much to be said for good timing on a villain reveal.  The longer you leave that, I've found, the better the tale.  There was a bit of a red herring with the Duke of Weselton, but he was more of a silly side note than a true big bad.  I think everyone who knows common Disney paradigms and enjoys when things like that are twisted will get much enjoyment from this wintry tale.  I give it five stars and will be seeing it for the second time later today.

Empathetic Dreaming

Being plagued by disturbing dreams is either the mark of a disturbed mind or perhaps the mark of a writer, which is essentially the same thing.  I was in my parents' old bedroom in a house we no longer own being chased by two men who wanted my attention for a very unwholesome reason.  As I braced myself against the door, I saw that my two swords, replica Masamunes from FFVII were against the wall as they are in my current bedroom.  So I grabbed the longer one (Mercy), flung the door open, and you can guess what happened next.  They both ran onto it one after the other (guess mine was longer after all...)  It's about a five foot blade, and they were taking up about three feet of it, and I could feel it.  Not feel it go into them, but feel the pain in my own flesh.  Then (because dreams are strange like that), there was just one guy bleeding in my upstairs hallway, crying and in pain.  He rolled onto his back and just begged me to make it end, so I stabbed him through the spine and I suppose into the heart, and I felt that, too.

Then I went downstairs, and there were a whole bunch of people, friends, acquaintances, people I didn't recognize, but I knew I knew in that dreamlike way.  I told them all what I had done and they wanted to see the blood on the sword.  It was more than halfway down, painted on the steel, and I wanted to know how to get it off.  Someone said that I could get "white wash," and that would make it clean.  Then the dream shifted into something else, but I remembered this part when I woke, and the beat of my heart was all crooked, and blood stained the back of my tongue.

Point of View

A few weeks ago I was driven near mad by something I just couldn't fathom.  I wanted to know how cats see the world when their pupils are all thin and slivery.  Is it like they're constantly looking through a crack in a wall or a slit in a picket fence?  I had no idea so I brought it to Facebook, but I don't think I was understood.  One response suggested that I purchase cat eye contact lenses (which I'm planning to do anyway for other reasons), but even if I were to do so I'm still seeing the world through a circle whereas felines view it through a thorn.  This conundrum also affected the story I'm working on, Northern Lights, although I was able to cleverly sidestep the question in narrative, it still bothered me intrinsically.  It also didn't help that I'd changed my work desktop background to Grumpy Cat so every time I booted up I was forced to stare at her near luminescent green eyes with slit pupils in her trademark, irritated face.  I've always been good at point of view and empathy, but this seemed beyond even my skill.

Then one day at work I was helping out my friend Andrew on something or other and I mentioned that he should look at the column highlighted in pink.  His response was something along the lines of "Which column are you talking about?" and that's when I remembered that Andrew is colorblind, like totes colorblind, green is pink and down is tooth-fairy.  I can't make this stuff up.  I had to pause for a moment because then I remembered the concept of qualia.  I first learned about this from VSauce on YouTube (and you should totally click those links, because this stuff is just fascinating).  It's complicated and philosophical, but what can be easily taken is that you can never understand how someone else sees the world.  Essentially, you are alone in your experiences and that makes one feel both very humble and very lonely.  Even with the words of a thousand tongues, it's not possibly to convey exactly what you're seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, or tasting nor is it possible for you know what someone else see, hears, smells, feels or tastes.  Because we can only live in our own heads, we can never know how someone else experiences reality.  As a writer this should seriously bother me, because that's what we constantly strive to do, but understanding the antithesis is very useful, because knowing the limitation is liberating; it doesn't have to be a flaw.

Recalling the concept of qualia brought me such peace of mind.  There is absolutely no way I can ever know how a cat sees the word with constricted pupils, just like I can never know how someone who's color blind sees the color orange.  Maybe my concept of orange is really wrong and what I'm actually seeing as orange is purple, but because the majority of the world sees and agrees that orange looks that particular way that's what we call it.  But there's a chance an alien species will come here and declare, "Nah brah, that's purple" and which one of us will be wrong.  This isn't even scratching the surface that we can only see a minute fraction of the visible spectrum, which means were not even on the level of the bees.  Not being able to know is a comfort, because it means I can stop driving myself crazy in wondering about this impossible point of view.

3 Gates of the Dead Review

Jonathan Ryan's 3 Gates of the Dead came recommended to me by an old high school friend whose opinion I value highly, and I was not disappointed.  I am not usually one for mysteries or thrillers, though I have dabbled in them before (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo of The Millennium Series for one); my usual staple is of the fantasy and fairytale ilk, but I'm more than happy to step out of my boundaries for a good, rousing tale, and Ryan blows this out of the water.  I finished it in two days.

This novel introduces Aidan Schaeffer, an assistant pastor for the Knox church in Columbus, OH.  The story opens with Aidan dealing with the aftermath of his ex-fiancee Amanda's desertion and his subsequent crisis of faith, which was exacerbated by that event along with his parents' death in a house fire.  It becomes very clear that these tragedies were not the cause of his doubts, but merely a catalyst to bring them to the forefront.  I was immediately drawn to Aidan because of this as I have had similar issues, and the questions he was bringing up to his friend Brian were the same ones I've brought up to my husband (who is oddly enough also named Brian).  Aidan is in a far more delicate position than the average Doubting Thomas since his business is to believe and to be a source of unshakeable faith for the congregation.  Despite knowing what will happen he brings his issues to Mike, the head pastor and his boss, fulling expecting to be fired on the spot, but Mike who has also been his mentor for many years, takes this news in stride and tells Aidan that he'll help him on his journey to regain his faith.  Aidan pursued a biology degree in college so he's very level headed and turned to theology because he saw it as a rational step.  The doubts had always been there fueled by indulging in Dawkins and Hitchens, but he'd always been able to keep them at bay until the double whammy of his fiancee and parents.

As most mysteries go, things are never going to remain so "simple" as a crisis of faith and Aidan soon discovers that Amanda has been murdered in a highly ritualistic and frankly eerie way.  He is initially a suspect, but his innocence is soon proven, but this heartbreaking wrench just throws him deeper into territory he is not prepared for.  Both he and the detective who suspected him, Jennifer Brown, are baffled by Amanda's murder as there were strange markings found on her body.  Adding to this is the strange supernatural events that have been occurring: the footprints found in the snow with no forensic evidence to indicate who made them, the findings by a "ghost hunting" group that Aidan is led to, and the cryptic note left by Amanda charging to him to find "Father Neal" and what horrors will happen if he does not.  Aidan Schaeffer is literally a man chased by the dead and haunted by the ghosts of his guilt.

This book gave me goosebumps.  I had to stop reading at around the half way point the night before and do something else before going to sleep.  Aidan is such a well written and relate-able character.  All of the doubts and contradictions he brought up about the nature of God were things that I myself have pondered still without satisfactory answer.  I liked how Ryan was not trying to force religion down our throats, which is an amazing feat in a story about a preacher who has been thrust into a world of supernatural phenomenon.  Usually crisis of faith stories end with the character having an amazing revelation and finding God again.  It's trite; it's boring; it's expected.  This story did none of those.  Aidan's journey back to his faith is still in question by the end, but he has made progress.  While there were a few things I did figure out on my own, they didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story, and far more revelations were utterly shocking.  There were a few things Aidan references that I believe I might have had a better grasp on if I were more familiar with contemporary Christian culture, but these were few and far between.  Ryan did an excellent job explaining most things that weren't common knowledge, but in a way that wasn't presumptuous and that didn't take me out of the story.  Once I started reading I was in.  He wove in the love aspect of the novel very well.  It was an expected angle, too, but came off in a perfectly natural way.  For a pastor Aidan is is very witty and snarky, which I chalk up to his fiery Irish blood.  I also loved the nerd culture references.  In a way that contributed to the creepiness of the tale, because these were so seamless that when the kooky stuff started happening it really got to you because you start thinking, "Oh my God...this is happening in the real world with real people who know about Star Wars and Harry Potter.  Ahhh *chils*"

Aidan's struggle does a lot to present pastors in a different light and this is not a bad thing.  It makes one feel less awful for doubting if people who are in the upper echelons do so it makes it okay for the rest of us.  Most of all, it shows that they're human with human failings and human questions.  It makes me think that faith is not necessarily unshakeable even for those who seem constantly unshaken.  It's more mutable and wavering like the tide, but above all of it really was the message of hope.  The people that really mattered never gave up on Aidan, and I think that says a lot about what true Christianity should be about.

I give this book four and a half stars and I can't wait for the next installment The Dark Bride.

The Well of Acension (Mistborn 2) Review

In Sanderson's second installation Elend Venture is the current king of Luthadel with Vin as his personal mistborn bodyguard, but the young monarch holds a very precarious position as his father, Straff Venture, is camped outside his city's gates with an army bent on conquest.  This fact is compounded when another army (that of Lord Cett) shows up, and of course there are still assassins trying for Elend's life.  On top of this, Vin discovers a mysterious Watcher during her nightly patrols who tests the limits of her mistborn abilities.
Sanderson again tells far more than he shows.  The most blatant instance of this comes when Elend meets with Dockson, and afterword the author insists that Dockson doesn't like Elend.  Okay...what?  At no point in the prior exchange was there ANY sign of animosity between these two individuals.  Their conversation was polite and there was nothing in the narrative or dialogue tags to show what Dockson felt.  We don't find this out until afterward where Sanderson tells us that it's so, and has Elend bemoaning the fact.

I also found reason to dislike Vin in this novel among other things.  She has inherited OreSeur the kandra, a creature that can take the shape of people (and later animals) that it consumes.  Vin is still upset that the kandra, well, essentially ate Kelsier after he died in order to impersonate him for a time, even though this was the Survivor's plans all along.  Her treatment of OreSeur just bugs me and seems out of character with someone who has been trodden on and abused her entire life.  Kandra follow a contract that allows them to live in human society.  They are forced to obey their human master/mistress by this with few exceptions.

*sigh*  I am very glad I didn't waste my time finishing this novel.  I tried...I really tried to get through it.  I really tried to let my fascination with the Deepness cut through my ever growing ennui and fuel a desire to find out what the hell that was.  I really tried to maintain my interest despite the stodgy dialogue and constant telling instead of showing.  I tried to latch on to some of the attempted intrigue with Zane who ends up not only be the elusive Watcher, but also Straff Venture's bastard mistborn son who constantly hears "God's" voice telling him to kill everyone he meets especially his father.  I tried to care about this stuff, but it all just seemed so forced and trite.  No one really had a strongly discernible personality, and I honestly just stopped caring and resorted to reading the Mistborn wiki to find out how both this and the third one ended.  Having done that I'm even happier that I didn't waste my time in finishing because I'm less than impressed.  The first novel was okay.  The idea was new and fantastic; what would happen if the villain won.  Brilliance pulled off in a not so stellar way, but I was still able to slog through it.  This one has the two armies besieging our protagonists, but it just doesn't hold a candle to a ragtag bunch of thieves and spies trying to overthrow god (which, let's face it is essentially the plot of every Final Fantasy), and Sanderson's writing just wasn't compelling enough to hold me to this story without those dire odds.  Maybe this one just begins slower because it's mostly about politics, but reading what the end is, I just sort of shrug my shoulders and say, "Eh..."

Two stars and I (obviously) won't be reading the third or fourth or however many of these there are.  Maybe I'll give Elantris a try...but not right now.

My Adventures in Editing a Paranormal Romance Novel: What I've Learned from Critiques/Reviews

I've been trying to be more attentive to this blog, since I seem to get so caught up in life that I often neglect it.  I'm happy to say that I've written two book reviews in the past month, and although I've always known that reading makes one a better writer, I'm also finding that critiquing makes me more critical of my own work in a beneficial way.

I just now posted a review of Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn novel, and one of my biggest issues with the story was how much the author told instead of showed.  Because I discovered this paradigm in another, it's causing me to turn a more critical eye to The Serpent's Tale and wonder if there are more instances of this phenomenon that I can cut out in my next edit.  Am I making sure I'm showing what the characters are like through dialogue and action rather than just telling what they're like?  I know for a fact that Maya often remarks both internally and aloud on Uriel's strength, but in the wake of seeing this in Mistborn, I want to ensure that I'm not falling into the show vs. tell trap.

I think an even more important observation is the harsh review I gave of the first Mortal Instruments.  I was disappointed in that book for a variety of reasons.  One, I really, REALLY want to find a novel based on fanfiction that is favorably received by a sizable portion of the population, but I have yet to see this occur.  This..is a bit discouraging since my novel is based on a fanfiction I wrote back in the year 2000, and it would be nice to see some validation of such a paradigm while I'm still in the editing stages.  Unfortunately, nearly every novel I've seen that can claim such (50 Shades of Gray, Mortal Instruments) has such glaring issues that I can't call such a claim anything positive.  Of course it's possible that there are novels out there that don't promote this as their claim to fame, but this presents the problem of assumption.  There are many stories I can see parallels in, but I never want to assume that perhaps it's based on something I've read, viewed, or played, because, well I find random and weird connections in everything.  I could begin a conversation course that would end in Death of the Author versus Word of God, but you should already how I'd arrive at that crossroad.  Of course perhaps the novels not making their fanfic base a claim to fame is a good thing and maybe the authors are assuming or targeting their works towards an audience that is clever enough to figure this out themselves without needing it advertised.

Besides the above, Mortal Instruments presented a critique that I desperately want to avoid in my paranormal romance novel.  I absolutely hated the character of Jace, the bad boy (initial) love interest.  He was a complete jackass and douche whom I had no attraction to at all.  I was discussing this with a friend and we decided that you want a character to be a "bad boy," but not a "bad guy."  Essentially, you want to pull off the bad boy status without making the character just an asshole.  They need to show redeeming qualities even before the big reveal as to why the character is a bad boy after all (because you know there HAS to be a reason) aka the character should have a show multiple layers that keeps the reading interested and wondering why they're putting on this veneer of douchebaggery.  But you don't want your reader to hate the character even if the main female lead does or isn't sure.  It's a definite balancing act.  Even worse than Jace is of course anything pertaining to Twilight (cries tiny tears) and I want NO association with that at all.  It's bad enough just mentioning the term "paranormal romance" usually garners it as a response because apparently it's become the paragon of what paranormal romance is.

Fellow writers and intelligent thinkers this HAS to be changed, but this shows that even faulty writing has merit.  It stands as an example of what not to do and how to improve your own works.  It's also encouraging to realize that a novel doesn't have to be perfect to be published as long as the right representation is discovered and convinced.

Mistborn: The Final Empire Review

Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire does something I've yet to see a novel do: show what would happen if the villain won.  A thousand years ago the hero of prophecy set forth to save the world.  He failed and now the Lord Ruler reigns as both immortal emperor and god.  The descendents of the people who supported him are the nobles and aristocracy, while the descendents of the people who opposed him are known as the skaa and are treated as slaves.  Ash rains continuously from the skies blocking out the sky and making the sun appear as a molten red ball.  People have never seen green plants or flowers and the ash floods the world by day while the mists come at night.

The novel starts out really strong in the prologue with Kelsier, a man known as the Survivor since he's the only known one of a horror called the Pits of Hathsin where a metal known as atium is mined (more on that later).  Kelsier visits a group of plantation skaa at the end of the day after their backbreaking labor is done.  Elusive and legendary, Kelsier is both a beacon of hope and a cause for alarm among the skaa since he openly defies the nobility and associating with him could have any skaa beaten and/or killed.  The lord of that particular plantation no longer participates in that since Kelsier murders him that very night setting the tone for what's supposedly going to be a vengeance story, but then the gears switch over to the actual main character of the tale.

Vin is a street urchin currently working for a thieving crew headed by a brutal man named Camon who consistently beats her.  Vin is around sixteen years old and has been abandoned by everyone she thought she could trust.  Her brother Reen, who also beat her, left her long ago, fulfilling his words of "everyone will betray you" by doing so himself. The thieving crew operates in Luthadel, the largest city in the Final Empire and where the Lord Ruler resides, and Vin is useful to Camon for her ability to calm peoples' emotions, which is very useful for when one is trying to scam the nobility.  Vin is aware that she has some sort of power that she can't explain, but also knows that it's in limited supply and too quickly runs out.  She often spares some to use on Camon to avoid being beaten though this has backfired on her when he realizes she's doing so.

Kelsier comes back into the picture during an attempted job by Camon's crew to secure a canal route and thereby steal from one of the city's noble houses.  Kelsier is less than impressed with the way Camon has been treating Vin, ousts him and his crew from their lair and secures it for him and his crew taking Vin into his employ.  Kelsier's crew consists of a bunch of various characters including his brother, and the Survivor of Hathsin's big scheme is to do no less than to overthrow the Final Empire and kill the Lord Ruler, which everyone thinks is insane seeing as the Lord Ruler is (supposedly) no less than God, and, well you can't defeat God.  Kelsier vehemently disagrees with this belief and hates that everyone has fallen for it even unto the point that By the Lord Ruler is a common exclamation.  He thinks the emperor is a very powerful fraud, but a fraud nonetheless.  In this the novel shows some Gnostic leanings as that ideology states that the being we believe to be God is actually not and is rather an entity who claimed the title.  Whether Sanderson has studied this mode of thought or not I don't know, but you can definitely see its influence in his novel.

Before all of this can happen however, Vin needs to be brought into the realization of what she is.  Kelsier kept her in his crew because he recognized she wields the same power he has.  She's Mistborn, a person born with the ability to use allomancy or manipulate metals in a method they refer to as burning.  When Vin was calming emotions, she was actually burning brass to use a power called Soothing, but there are numerous other abilities a Mistborn has at their disposal.  Most people if they can use allomancy can only use one aspect of it and are called Mistings.  There are ten known metals, which work as opposed pairs for both physical and mental enhancements, and (we find out later) an eleventh "secret" one, which suggests to me that Sanderson was dabbling a bit in Qabbalistic theory as well.  This really solidifies when we find out more information about the Inquisitors (oh boy...), men with spikes hammered through their eye sockets that stick out the back of their heads.  Granted this is just the first book so there are probably more than eleven metals, which rips my Qabbalistic theory apart, but it works for this first installment and STILL stands true for the Inquisitors (I refuse to give up on making this my theory of everything!).

Crash course in allomantic metals! There are metals that grant physical and mental enhancements and they're generally paired.

Steel - people who can burn this are called Coinshots and use it to Push on nearby metals.  If the object weighs less than they do they'll fly through the air.  If it weighs more than they do they'll be pulled toward it.  I guess if they weigh the same it'll be a stalemate (random thought).

Iron - this is the opposing metal to steel so Lurchers, as they're called, Pull on nearby metals and it's similar to what Coinshots can accomplish with Steel.

Tin - Tineyes have the ability to enhance all of their senses, which makes them great as lookouts.  The disadvantage to this is that they can easily become overwhelmed since the volume is turned up to eleven all the time they're burning their metal.

Pewter - used by Pewterarms or the much simpler term Thugs, this metal allows the user to enhance their physical prowess so Thugs are useful in physical altercations.  Pewter is also useful if the user is injured as it gives the ability to carry on in the face of serious wounds or weariness.  Of course once the pewter runs out the Thug is faced with the full brunt of what they've endured, and they could potentially die from their wounds.  This would also be disastrous if they were carrying something really heavy...

Bronze - Seekers can burn this to find out if anyone is using allomancy in a particular vicinity.  I guess the area range is dependent on the strength of the seeker.

Copper - Mistings who can burn copper are called Smokers and they essentially create a smokescreen or (in their vernacular) a Coppercloud (which is their other name) from Seekers.  This ability is priceless to thieving crews who want to hide their metal burning from Inquisitors, Mistings or Mistborn.

Zinc - this metal inflames the emotions of people in the vicinity and Mistings who can use it are called Rioters (for obvious reasons).

Brass - this is the one that Vin has been unknowingly using all of her life, and it serves to sooth peoples' emotions so the Mistings that can use it are known as Soothers.

Gold - this one is rare and Vin doesn't find out about it until later in the story (I have some feelings about that, but I'll divulge later).  Gold shows what you could've been in the past.  It's rarely used since something like this can obviously cause emotional trauma and regret for what could've been.

Atium - ah the big one!  Atium is sort of the MacGuffin of the story and a big driving force behind the plot.  As gold shows the past atium reveals the future.  Burning this extremely precious metal will show a target's future moves so that the burner can easily avoid them.  Of course if the other person burns atium, as well, all possibilities will be visible since the original burner will then alter their course of action, which will then alter their opponents course of action and so on and so on.  Both people burning atium will bring the fight back to equilibrium, with the only advantage being if one person runs out.  Atium is what was being mined in Hathsin from whence Kelsier escaped and his master plan is to find the Lord Ruler's source, which will make him vulnerable.  The fact that a "deity" needs a source of power that will show him the future throws another wrench into the idea of his godhood.

The Eleventh Metal - this one doesn't even have a name and is in fact legendary.  Kelsier does manage to get his hands on it, but he doesn't know what it does; he only believes it can somehow defeat the Lord Ruler.  This may actually be the true MacGuffin of the story.

Alright...enough exposition and introduction of the plot.  Let's get to what I liked/didn't like!

Vin is pretty much your average orphan, foundling, urchin, etc. with mystical powers who is going to save the world (shocker).  I'm okay with this.  She's a fairly interesting character who definitely shows a lot of growth.  Her other part in Kelsier's plan (besides training her to use her powers as a mistborn) is to play the part of a young noble women and spy/infiltrate the aristocracy as Valette Renoux the niece of Lord Renoux who's actually an imposter planted by Kelsier.  Lord Renoux has been dead for a while (probably killed by Kelsier, but I forget), and she definitely is drawn out of her abused child shell with this task.  It's a total 180 from living hand to mouth, subsisting on scraps, and sleeping on the floor to having her own room/bed, dining and dancing with nobles, and not being beaten every day.

Kelsier's crew is made up of various Mistings: Breeze, an aristocratic looking man who serves as their Soother; Ham, their Thug, Kelsier's brother Marsh whose the Seeker; Clubs, the Smoker who owns a carpentry business that's often used as a cover (hehe, double entendre here); Lestibournes later referred to as Spook is the group's weirdly accented Tineye, and  Dockson who isn't an allomancer but serves as Kelsier's second in command and hates the nobility as much as the Survivor of Hathisin does.  Finally there's Sazed, a Terrisman who acts as steward to Lord Renoux in the plot.  He can use Feruchemy a contemporary but opposite ability set to Allomancy where users of the former use metals as holding units for power.

Honestly, I had to use the Mistborn wiki to remember all of these.  A lot of the crew is so forgettable and not fleshed out that I seriously had to force myself to remember how they fit into the narrative.  Breeze stands out due to his aristocratic speech since he deals with the nobility so much, and Sazed is memorable due to him being a Terrisman, which I'm guessing is another race like elves/dwarves especially owing to Sazed's description.  Spook has a soft of weird accent and is (of course) lovestruck with Vin, but Sanderson actually starts explaining certain aspects of some of these characters more than halfway and almost three-quarters of the way through the book!  He'll also brought up the term "kandra" in respect to some random noble's servant and I sat there scratching my head wondering what the hell he was talking about.  About fifty or so pages later the term is mentioned again in front of Vin and she questions it and I found that to be poor writing.  It would've been far better to bring up the term initially in front of a character who could be used as the foil to explain it.  My guess is he wanted to introduce it and leave it mysterious, but it came off as sloppy.

I had a tough time remembering what each metal did and what the name of each Misting who controlled said metal was called.  There was a lot of flipping back to the glossary at the end of the book to refresh my memory.  I feel that Sanderson could've done better with that by working descriptions of each into the narrative when they're mentioned in the beginning.  It was disruptive to be constantly checking on what the hell a Coinshot or a Tineye was when I was nearly through the book.

The dialogue in this novel is far too simplistic for what the story is about.    Besides Spook and Breeze there didn't seem to be much individualization in how each character speaks.  Nothing really sets them apart much in mannerisms either (unless we're told it does..more on that in the next paragraph).  The nobility is the same way.  I can't count how many times Sanderson mentioned something was said in an aristocratic way instead of just saying it in an aristocratic way.  Even the Lord Ruler has this very generic speech pattern.  He does call Vin a child, a lot, which I'm guessing is Sanderson's attempt to make him seem condescending.  It doesn't really work out all that way to distinguish him, and I felt the same way about the Inquisitors.  I almost wanted him to make them have this very distinct speech pattern due to what had been done to them; it would've made them seem far more creepy and other, which I'm assuming he'd want to do.  We're more told what a character's personality rather than shows, which leads me into my next point...

Sanderson is a HUGE perpetrator of telling instead of showing.  He'll often have a character think something along the lines of He's so strong! in the midst of a fight and then he'll go into showing how this is so where he could've easily dropped the thought bubble.  This telling besides showing takes away from some of the more brutal parts of the book as well.  There's one scene where Kelsier has the entire crew attend a public execution so that they can be reminded what they're fighting against.  He then makes a speech while in between paragraphs Sanderson reminds us that four more skaa have been killed, and that's literally what he says, "Four more people died."  It's so amazingly drab and doesn't begin to explain the horror of what they're seeing.  We're told throughout the novel that skaa women are consistently raped and then murdered by noble lords so that no halfbreeds are (supposedly) born, but the only time this is really ever seen is in the prologue, which is honestly what drew me into the book in the first place.  Don't get me wrong, I don't need to consistently see graphic rape scenes (I've been accused of not going into detail with one of those myself, wtf...), but Sanderson seems to work on a system of narrative where we hear people mentioning it to characters instead of having it shown within the work.

What kept me reading was the idea behind the Lord Ruler being a god usurper.  Unentitled apotheosis has always been an interest of mine.  The beginning of every chapter had a blurb that appeared to be the hero's story about how he defeated something known as the Deepness (shivers) and THAT definitely interested me.  I really wanted to know what this Deepness was and what he had to do to defeat it.  I also began to believe that the hero of legend was actually the Lord Ruler, but something had gotten into him and changed him into the emperor/tyrant god that he became.  Maybe he didn't defeat the Deepness...maybe the Deepness took over him.  This had a bit of a Cthulhu vibe and I'm a sucker for anything Lovecraftian. 

I struggled between giving Mistborn: The Final Empire 2 or 3 stars, but I think I can give it 3 due to the fact that I'm interested in reading the next installment.  Despite the flaws Sanderson did manage to intrigue me and make me want to know more about this Deepness and what the Lord Ruler was really protecting mankind from even if I do have to take it along with the mostly generic characters, overly verbose dialogue, telling vs. showing, and uninteresting fight scenes.  I think despite all of that it was still worth my time in reading it, and if you can get past the foibles I mentioned, it's worth your time, too.