The following is an author’s annotation that relates to a specific chapter of the book MISTBORN: THE FINAL EMPIRE. Note that the following is NOT the text of the actual chapter, but a companion to the chapter, revealing “behind the scenes” information. If you have not read the book up to—and including—this chapter, you risk serious spoilers! Please, if you haven’t read MISTBORN, go visit the sample chapters, or perhaps purchase the book via Amazon.

You can navigate between annotations by using the list of links on the left. The very first annotation has a more detailed explanation of what is going on. If you want to start there, go to this link. Note—thoughts in the following annotation that might spoil later chapters have been hidden. You can reveal them via the button on the left, and they will appear in red. Not all chapters have hidden text—in fact, relatively few of them do. Thanks!

Book Wrap-Up

Well, there you have it, the complete annotations for THE FINAL EMPIRE, Book One of Mistborn. The paperback of this comes out in just about three weeks, so my goal of getting all the Annotations posted before the paperback release has been achieved.

This was a very fun book to write. In a couple of months, Book Two will come out—which was, in turn, the most challenging book I think I’ve ever written. (But we’ll talk about that during the annotations.)

Every book has things that turn out just like you imagined, things that surprise you, and things that never quite work out. In this book, the ‘heist’ feel for the book is the one that never quite worked out. I sit and look back through the pages, and can still imagine the book as it was in my head before I wrote it. It’s kind of an odd feeling to then have this book, which shares some attributes with the imagined novel, yet deviates in some important ways.

The power of the characters was what worked well—the thing that I wanted to have happen, then was pleased when it finally worked out. Kelsier’s surprise at the end was a similarly nice payoff, as was the way that Allomancy worked out. Elend was a surprise, as was the amount of time I ended up spending in the ball scenes.

All in all, I’m very pleased with this book—I think it’s better than Elantris, if not as ‘meaningful’, and achieves just what I wanted. A second book to show off what I can really do.

I hope you enjoyed reading it.

The Final Empire Project: November 2001-July 2007

Brandon Sanderson