Title: The Lost Metal
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Series: Mistborn #7, Wax & Wayne #4
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 507
Published: 2022, Tor Books
My Grade: 5 out of 5
Review Summary: A slightly anticlimactic and very depressing ending to an incredible series.

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

For years, frontier lawman turned big-city senator Waxillium Ladrian has hunted the shadowy organization the Set—with his late uncle and his sister among their leaders—since they started kidnapping people with the power of Allomancy in their bloodlines. When Detective Marasi Colms and her partner, Wayne, find stockpiled weapons bound for the Outer City of Bilming, this opens a new lead. Conflict between the capital, Elendel, and the Outer Cities only favors the Set, and their tendrils now reach to the Elendel Senate—whose corruption Wax and his wife, Steris, have sought to expose—and Bilming is even more entangled.

After Wax discovers a new type of explosive that can unleash unprecedented destruction and realizes that the Set must already have it, an immortal kandra serving Scadrial’s god, Harmony, reveals that Bilming has fallen under the influence of another god: Trell, worshipped by the Set. And Trell isn’t the only factor at play from the larger Cosmere—Marasi is recruited by offworlders with strange abilities who claim their goal is to protect Scadrial . . . at any cost.

Wax must choose whether to set aside his rocky relationship with God and once again become the Sword that Harmony has groomed him to be. If no one steps forward to be the hero Scadrial needs, the planet and its millions of people will come to a sudden and calamitous ruin.

MY REVIEW

I did not expect to enjoy the second era of Mistborn as much as I actually did. So far, I’ve read all of Sandersons books in publication order and everything just gets better and better. His plans for Mistborn is to follow the planet Scadrial through different phases and now that I’m finished with both eras, I can’t wait for what he has in store for the third era.

So 300 years after Era 1, the magic system is still the same, but I truly enjoyed and found it fascinating how the magic system kept developing. Science was applied to understand the metallic arts on a deeper level and it just made so much sense. What will this look like, even more hundreds of years in the future?

I also really enjoyed the development of Wayne. Lots of focus on him in these books. I remember thinking of him as annoying and exaggerated in the first book, but he really gets depth and a major role in the conclusion.

The story is slightly different from the previous three books as well and it reminded me of Well of Ascension with the new political viewpoint.

Ending-wise, it was a little bit flat, not as explosive as the Era 1 ending. Satisfying, yes. Happy, yes. Extremely sad, absolutely. Maybe that event was supposed to be enough for the reader? I did feel like it was too easy. It was anticlimactic. And so many questions unanswered regarding the metallic arts. I didn’t feel that after Era 1, but I also didn’t know that there were more to it, while now, I do know that there are so much more to discover about this magical system.

But overall, things were happening all throughout the book, no slogs. Exciting, character developments I really enjoyed with both Wayne and Steris. 5 out of 5 for yet another Brandon Sanderson book.