Brandon Sanderson - The Alloy of Law

Title: The Alloy of Law
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Pub. year: 2011
Pages: 336
Editor: Tor Books

Summary: Three hundred years have passed since the events of the Mistborn trilogy and Scadrial has changed.
Electric lights now illuminate its streets, buildings soar into the skies, and the planet is a hive of commerce. Waxillium Ladrian has spent twenty years in the dangerous frontier wilderness known as the Roughs. When a family tragedy calls him back to Elendel, he imagines that he is leaving danger for the safety of urban civility.
Little does he know what grave dangers await him.....

Me, being a fury-fan of Sanderson's work, that's no news for you I think. So well, me jumping at this not-so-next-but-still book of the Mistborn series is no news either, right? Tor has published the first 6 chapters online this autumn and I was feverishly waiting for each new part to come up. I tell you, those chapters, that's a good third of the book, but read them anyway. They're worth it.

This new book is a bit leaving behind the usual Mistborn atmosphere to take a much more Western novel side. The hero, Wax, is an "old" sherif of the Rough coming to town to save his family heritage. He cannot resist the temptation to investigate a series of heavy robberies happening around the city, and helped by his faithful Wayne, will stick himself where he shouldn't have, obviously.

I loved finding here the usual humour Sanderson uses in his books, since on the magical side it was not as good as it was. Sure, allomancy is still here, it's even combined with feruchemy (don't try to remember the names of the combinations at the end, I got a headache from that), but somehow it's not really the point. Here, the story is really focused on the robberies, the mystery solving, etc. But the humour! It has a name, and it's Wayne: dear, awesome grumpy Wayne, obsessed with hats, always a stupid joke on the tip of his tongue, master of "exchanging" what he needs against what lays in his pockets. And man, the guy can make speed bubbles and fight like you've never seen it. How much better could this get?!

Alright, let's be fair, I maybe didn't enjoy this book as much as the others. Some characters lack a bit of deepness (I didn't even like Marasi, sorry), the story is pretty classical and very westernish, far from the mysterious intricate Fantasy Sanderson usually serves us. But for a pretty classical story, it was really good. And I'm telling you, passing on that, it's like passing on a cookie fresh from the oven, just because there's not as many nuts as in the previous one.

But there's plenty nuts in there, dirty fellows!


And for the first time ever, you can listen to an extract of the audiobook from Macmillan Audio.
Like it? Come back this week for a chance to win it!

"Aw, biscuits," Wayne said. "Did you have to hit him in the head?
That was my lucky hat he was wearin'."

Posted in: 2011,adventure,Brandon Sanderson,fantasy,Tor Books,western