Mistborn Trilogy

So I finally read the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. It's the new fantasy blockbuster book series that's taking readers by storm, and it's been on my radar for quite some time now (but I have an aversion to standing in lines, and when I saw that the online queue for the first book in the trilogy was over 500, I kind of gave up and figured, "Eh, I'll read it someday.")When a friend let me borrow her boxed set of the trilogy, "someday" became "now." What was really fun about reading the trilogy was that my husband was listening to it on audible at the same time. Sometimes he was further ahead than me, and sometimes I was further ahead, but we had a lot of opportunities to discuss the story and characters while we were experiencing the story at approximately the same time.Enter a world that appears to be on the very brink of disaster. Ashmounts (volcanoes that are constantly spitting ash into the air) make it hard to farm, hard to breathe, hard to live. Humans have been divided into a harsh caste system in which skaa serve the aristocrats and are barely considered human. They have no rights, they have no hope. And over them all reigns the Lord Ruler — a creature who has lived for a thousand years and keeps his iron grip on the throat of the world through his own immortality, his inexplicable control over enormous creatures known as koloss, and bloodthirsty, zealous priests called Steel Inquisitors. But one battered, heart-broken, scarred skaa finds a new purpose deep in the Lord Ruler's mines when he "snaps" and discovers that he is Mistborn.Upon escaping from the mines, Kelsier — a master thief and charismatic leader — recruits the world's greatest and most trustworthy allomancers to help him in a single-minded, crazy scheme: to kill the Lord Ruler and free the skaa and unleash a new world order.Among his recruits is a young woman named Vin. A common, skaa street thief for her entire life, Vin never guessed that her extra dose of what she calls "luck" was anything more than that. But when Kelsier discovers her, he teaches her that this luck she has relied on her entire life to keep her alive is a far more powerful tool and ability than she ever imagined. Intrigued by his insane-seeming plans, and enticed by the idea of being part of something bigger than herself... and the possibility of having allies one can trust... Vin agrees to become part of Kelsier's crew.First the things I liked.Kelsier. He is my favorite. I really loved the way his crazy ideas and eternal optimism often caused a wry sarcasm to emerge from his friends and comrades. I loved the way he operated and his seeming utter lack of concern for his own safety. Kelsier was just crazy enough to work, and he had complete confidence in his own skill and power. That doesn't mean he always succeeded at everything, or that his plans always worked out perfectly, but he had so many contingency plans laid aside that it hardly ever mattered when things went awry. Things happened around Kelsier, and he got things done. I really loved him.Elend. Next to Kelsier, Elend was my favorite character. He starts out as this philosopher/scholar who knows that the world is broken and has grand plans for how to fix it, but no actual experience in the world. Mostly he just wants to annoy his father by being perfectly horrible at everything his father wants him to be good at like social politics. Elend's story is fantastic, and he stole my heart.Breeze. This will seem odd to people who have read the books... but yes, Breeze takes the #3 spot. He's hilarious and extremely complex, far more so than he'd like people to realize. And he cares more deeply than he will ever let on.Sazed. I won't say too much about him, he's a Terrisman and a servant who upholds Kelsier's vision and helps teach Vin about the ways of court as she will be infiltrating the aristocracy to further Kelsier's plan to overthrow the Lord Ruler. He was one of my favorites in the first two books. Didn't really like anything about him in book 3, but I'll get to that in a minute.I enjoyed the world-building that was evident in the story. You can tell that Sanderson has put an extreme amount of thought and care into the technical aspects of his story. The first book is basically a full semester's worth of classes on how the magic system in this world works. The politics and geography are very well thought-out and explained as well. As each story progresses, you learn a little bit more about the world and very little time is wasted on anything that doesn't matter to the story or further the plot.The writing is good and flows well. And the story is quite clean. There is a lot of violence, but there is very little swearing. There is some weird innuendo in the second book with one of the villain characters that would be objectionable for younger readers - it is portrayed as a negative thing, but it's still a bit more than I felt was necessary.However.You knew it was coming, didn't you?The main thing I didn't like about the trilogy was the story. It is extremely slow-paced with bursts of excitement that hardly seem worth all the plodding. I think it was probably around page 250 that I really started to get into Mistborn, which is a long time to read even if you can manage nearly 100 pages an hour like I do. The story is just very, very slow... and most of it revolves around the magic system and how it works. You can tell that Sanderson is exceedingly proud of the magic system he's developed (and it is a very good system) but I could have used a little less lecture and quite a lot more plot... if you catch my drift.Well of Ascension was even worse. The story seemed to be leading up to an adventure-y sort of quest, but it never actually happened. Instead, you spend the entire book inside the main city, besieged on both sides by two armies, trying to figure out how the much smaller numbers of the besieged city are going to get out of this with their lives (let alone still in control of the city!) and... honestly, I wanted to tear my hair out. I kept shouting at the characters to just DO something already and stop chatting about it! And then I didn't even get to go on a quest. Sigh. The main problem with this book is that it is.... boring. There is quite a bit of excitement at the end, but I recommend skipping the first 400 pages of set-up to get there.Derek says I need to put a "spoiler alert" here... so... yeah... SPOILERS!!!I'll sum it up for you here: Elend wants to set up a democratic republic, the people don't realize a good thing when they have it, they kick him out of office, the main characters dither, Vin feels that something is calling her and that perhaps she might be the new Hero of Ages and perhaps she should go searching for the Well of Ascension... she finally does... and that's where you should start reading, because that's where the story gets interesting. (Also, as this is inside my spoiler warning, my favorite character only being around for the first book generally detracted from my enjoyment of books 2 and 3).SPOILER OVERHero of Ages started out with promise: the state of the world is getting worse, the ashmounts are spitting out even more ash than ever and the mists are starting to come during the days, and they're killing people now (something they've never done before). Elend goes to a village and helps them fight off an army of koloss. The story unfolds a lot more information about yet another variation of the way that magic works in this world... it's interesting. Elend and his army end up besieging a city and trying to figure out how to get to the information that they need inside without killing lots of people or turning into a Lord-Ruler-esque tyrant (a valid conundrum, but not really making for an exciting story), meanwhile Vin wracks her brain to figure out a way to "fix" the world.Meanwhile, Sazed is having a crisis of faith and spends the entirety of the book pouring through the 500 religions he has gathered and trying to determine which one is true. That does become important later, but.... spoilers!I really wanted to like this series. I really, really did. But the best I can give it is 3 dragon eggs, because while I appreciated a lot of the aspects of the books and they kept my interest enough to read through to the last page, I wasn't all that impressed in the end. And while I felt that the end made sense, it was ultimately quite dissatisfying. There were definitely things I liked, and I would probably recommend it to people who care more about technical details than story, but for me, it just fell a little flat. I think it's also quite possible that this particular series suffered from far too much over-hype that the story couldn't actually live up to.  Have you read this series? What did you think of it? Have you ever read a book that was over-hyped and were disappointed in the reality of the story? Or read a story that actually exceeded the hype?