Normally when I’m taking a short ride in the car with my family, I never take along a book.  It would be rude to read when everyone wants conversation and attention.  Yesterday, however, while driving to our church, on a Sunday, with my family, I greedily carried along  The Alloy of Law.  I was at the end of the book, and the ending was that good.  How often have you read about a gunfight between the good guys and the bad guys where they use magic to to push the bullets harder, create speed bubbles to escape flying bullets, soar into the air while pushing off metal and other unimaginable tricks to win?  I’ve never read a book like that, and that’s what makes The Alloy of Law so good.  It’s new and it’s different.  A departure from the typical fantasy, but with a familiar setting and an intriguing magic system.

The story is about a former lawman, Waxillium, who returns to his home in the city after twenty years in the Roughs.  He quickly becomes involved in a robbery/kidnapping  operation.   With the help of his former partner, Wayne (Yes, we have Wax and Wayne as the main characters!) and a University student studying law, Marasi, the three of them try to get the bad guys and stay alive at the same time.  I really liked how this book was tied to the Mistborn world, with lots of references and connections to the original story.   I was wishing I had read Mistborn more recently, so I could remember more details, but this is a good opportunity to re-read it.  I liked the characters Wax and Wayne, they have a fun repartee.  Wayne was really interesting with the way he could impersonate people by ‘collecting’ their accents. Marasi however, I didn’t find as believable.  Something was missing, I felt that I didn’t really understand who she was and what her purposes were (sorry Brandon!).  But the story is excellent, the solutions imaginative and the ending, as mentioned above, is a page-turner.

Here is an excerpt from The Alloy of Law, and yes, it took some digging, but I found a plant reference, just for this blog  (Try and find a book without one, I don’t think that it exists).  “Well, they already knew he was Twinborn—that was  a matter of public record.  His disappearance wasn’t going to do much to help patch his family’s reputation. For the moment, he didn’t care  He’d spent almost every evening since his return to the city at one social function or another, and they hadn’t had a misty night in weeks.  He needed the mists.  This was who he was.  Wax dashed across the rooftop and leaped off, moving toward Demoux Promenade.  Just before hitting the ground, he flipped a spent casing down and Pushed on it, slowing his descent.  He landed in a patch of decorative shrubs that caught his coat tassels and made a rustling noise.  Damn.  Nobody planted decorative shrubs out in the Roughs.”

Don’t we love our decorative shrubs?  And thank you Brandon for not having him land in the ‘bushes’!  Read this book!  It’s great!   To find out more about The Alloy of Law and all his other works, check out Brandon Sanderson’s website.