The Final Empire By Brandon Sanderson - Audiobook

Mistborn: The Final Empire Brandon Sanderson 5 out of 5	Published 2006 First Sentence "Ash fell from the sky..."
Publisher's Description: In a world where ash falls from the sky, and mist dominates the night, an evil cloaks the land and stifles all life. The future of the empire rests on the shoulders of a troublemaker and his young apprentice. Together, can they fill the world with color once more? In Brandon Sanderson's intriguing tale of love, loss, despair and hope, a new kind of magic enters the stage — Allomancy, a magic of the metals.
Dear Reader, I am very glad one of my friends turned me onto this series. The fantasy realm that Brandon Sanderson has crafted is tight. I would describe it as similar to feudalistic, pre-industrial earth. There are two classes; the Skaa and the nobleborn. The skaa are under the harsh enslavement of the nobleclass. There is a demi-god ruler referred to as the Lord Ruler. 1,000 years ago an event occured that gave the Lord Ruler his divine powers and the structure of the world was reformed. Now ash falls from the sky, every thing is gray or black, even plants and the sky. At night mists cover the world and have mystical properties. Also at the time his transformation the Lord Ruler gifted all of his supporters a magical condition of allomancy. Allomancy is the magical power of being able to burn specific metals to access certain superhuman abilities. The original supporters have long since passed away but their descendants make up the nobleclass. The heredity of allomancy is passed from generation, because of this the Canton of Inquisition forbids a noble person from procreating with skaa. If they do choose to rape a skaa woman they have to kill her soon after to avoid any halfbreed people.  The two main characters, Vin and Kelsier were both born as skaa but due to the fact that the nobleborn have illegally fathered children, they are mistborn.  They ingest small bits of metals and acquire special powers. For example Pewter gives inhuman strength, tin enhances all of the 6 senses Steel allows you to push metal objects, iron allows you to pull on metal objects, This makes them be able to fly and jump by balancing the pushes and pulls of the metals around them in the city.  Bronze allows the allomancer to soothe people or groups of people depending on how skilled they are.  Copper burning masks their usage of allomancy from other allomancers. Some people only have one of the 11 metals and so they are known by their various names such as a thug, a Smoker or tin-eye. If you're born with more than one ability to burn metals then you can burn them all and are mistborn. The mistborn are the highest echelon of powerful warriors. Atium is a metal that allows the mistborn the ability to see the shadow images of all possible moves their opponent is and could make. This allows them to intercept or dodge blows seconds before the person moves. Atium is so precious and powerful it is also used as a currency  Vin is a young girl who has lived a rough skaa life as a bandit/ thief. Her brother Ream raised her and also beat and degrading her. As the story starts he has recently abandoned her. Kelsier is the charasmatic leader of a group of skaa who plan to over throw the Lord Ruler. Kelsier has a particularly strong agenda again the noble class and the lord ruler since they beat his wife to death in front of him and sent him to the Atium mines to be worked to death. The idea of overthrowing the Lord Ruler is crazy since he has godlike powers and seems immortal. Rebellions of the past attempt many times to kill him but they had never succeeded. All the odds seem again them but little by little they work on a strategy to weaken the noblemen, deplete the army in the capital city of Luthadel, and to rally the skaa masses.  Vin is discovered by Kelsier and his crew, he essentially gives her a new family and a new chance at happiness.  Her character has a lot of growing to do from being a battered street urchin to a badass mistborn.  Sanderson builds up a lot of awful so that the reader can grow more and more angry and the ugly world of, "The Final Empire." The reader definitely will be rooting for the underdog to find a way to take out all the bad guys and like a video game defeat the final master bad guy. There are some really great unexpected plot twists that I can't tell you about but I can say that the story is very enthralling. I also love how detailed he gets when he describes a battle between allomancers, the coins that they drop and the breastplates that they push off on when they are deflecting and flying around each other. He's set up a great starting point for many other adventures and mysteries of the metals to unfold.  The theme of religion and it's use in society is addressed in a noteable way. The lord ruler is both their supreme leader and their god. The skaa are supposed to believe this and their for submit willingly to their enslaved lives.  In the tradition of Firefly and Battle Star Gallactica the author gives the people a unique curse. In this world they don't say, " My God!" they say, " Lord ruler!" The Final Empire has a clear caste system, the rich and powerful and the weak masses. There are some parallels to the way people viewed African Americans in the south before the civil war and these fictional people. Ellend, a nobleman, and his friends wonder out loud if skaa are as intelligent as the people of the nobleclass are.  There's a little My-Fair-Lady-action going on when they teach Vin to play the part of a rural noblelady named, Lady Villette. She has to grow her hair out, wear ball gowns, high heels and learn all the house names and alliances. ( Sort of Game-of-Throney) They have her attend balls as a spy and she ends up meeting her love interest there. Her teacher, Sazed, is a cool character, kind of like the Giles role from Buffy. He knows all the stuff and has the patience to teach her despite her desire to go play in the mists.  The plan of the 'crew' ( Kelsier's crew of allomancers and Vin) seems gallant and a little hopeless. How the plot resolves was unexpected and that is a rare statement for someone who likes to read. I should says likes to listen since I almost always do the audiobook version of books. On that note I did like the voice of the narrator, Michael Kramer.  Yours, Marsha

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Invisible Man

Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 4.5 / 5	Published 1952 First Sentence "I am an invisible man."
Publisher's Description: First published in 1952 and immediately hailed as a masterpiece,Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be. As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist rally where they are elevated to the status of trophies, Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that throws our own into harsh and even hilarious relief. Suspenseful and sardonic, narrated in a voice that takes in the symphonic range of the American language, black and white, Invisible Man is one of the most audacious and dazzling novels of our century.
Dear Reader, Wow, this book was incredibly difficult to read - some scenes just made me feel so awful. I picked it up to celebrate Black History Month back in February but only just recently finished it, for a number of reasons. Mostly there were a bunch of other books read at the same time, but also this book often felt like a lot of “hurry up and wait” - there were long stretches where I couldn't put it down, but those alternated with long stretches of much drier material. Overall, though, what a great book. It is easy to understand why this was the 1953 National Book Award winner for fiction - Ellison was the first black winner of the prize, and he certainly deserved it for this seminal work.  I read up quite a bit on this book and its author while reading, because I was interested in the story behind it all. Ralph Waldo Ellison was named after - you guessed it - Emerson, and I have to wonder if his namesake influenced his leanings towards becoming an author. Certainly his friendship with author Richard Wright also influenced his writing career. I was interested to learn that Invisible Man was inspired by both men’s disillusionment with the Communist Party’s (in this book, this part is played by the Brotherhood) dedication to the black cause (or more specifically, lack thereof) following the end of WWII. I will not soon forget quite a few vivid scenes from this book - namely, the scholarship boxing match, the incidents with the college trustee Norton both on the farm and in the Golden Day, the nameless protagonist’s experience at the paint factory (and his hospitalization thereafter), and, of course, his experiences with the Brotherhood which take up the second half of the book. I couldn't believe all he had gone through! It is understandable that he decides, ultimately, to go underground and become the eponymous “invisible man” (as he believed he was one already). I appreciated the namelessness of the protagonist, which made him an “anyman” with whom readers could identify, each in their own way.  I think in particular the story of Tod Clifton resonated with me, for its timeliness: Clifton, a young and unarmed black man, is gunned down by a policeman near Bryant Park in the middle of the day. I couldn't get over how eerily familiar all that sounded at this moment, what with the Ferguson and Madison incidents (to name just two of too many) in all too recent memory. It felt like someone had read this book and then taken notes, it sounded so uncannily similar to all that has been happening in our nation recently. It so upsets me that 62 years later, this story hasn't changed, despite all the advances we think we've made in the name of equality.  This book is a book composed of dark humor and intense satire. The hero’s absurd situations reminded me quite a bit of the feel of a Russian novel like The Trial (which I have been reading concurrently), which makes sense as the protagonist was supposedly modeled - as evidenced by his lack of a name - on the lead character from Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. For a much better exposition on the book than I can ever perform, this review speaks so wonderfully about the main theme of the book being that the narrator is simply used as a pawn - unseen by, invisible to, those who are using him for their own ends. (Amusing aside, though, the review’s author complains about Harper Lee never writing another book!) Okay, I've babbled enough, and I really can’t say more than just: Read this book. Everyone. Please.  Yours, Arianna

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