Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson

There is a pleasure in getting to know an author well enough to trust them. The understanding when you pick up a book, it will be well written and engaging. A understanding that what they want to write and what you want to read match up. It is different than the feeling of picking up a book by an author you have never read. It is more comfort and safer. For me, Brandon Sanderson has reached that level. The discovery of the author is largely gone, and what it leaves is the unfolding of a wonderful story.

Shadows of Self Summary

“Shadows of Self” is the fifth book in the Mistborn Series and the second book in the Wax and Wayne part of that story. After the first three books, the world has been recreated, and the story takes place hundreds of years later at the beginning of a technological age. Things like electricity and cars are just now being discovered.

The story has three major protagonists. Waxillium Ladrian who is a wealthy and powerful nobleman who spent years in the Roughs as a bounty hunter and lawman and who returned to the city upon the death of his uncle and continues to work to protect people. Wayne, his deputy in the roughs, who has come to the city seemingly almost entirely out of loyalty to Wax. He appears at first to be the opposite of Wax. He is poor, ill mannered and a thief. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that he is, if anything more devoted to protecting people than Wax is. Finally, there is Marais, who is a constable in the city guard, though she was previously studying to be a lawyer.

They are tasked with hunting down a rouge kandra who is killing people in the city and clearly has some bigger plan. She has removed the spike that give the kandra their sentience and so is mad, but can use hemalergic spikes to give herself abilities and intends to use them to take down Harmony the god of this world (and a character from the first half of this series but I wont spoil which one.)

Skipping the twists and turns of the story that keep it interesting while exploring the characters we get to the most surprising part of the story. It turns out that the kandra he has been tasked with hunting down and potentially killing was Lessie, the woman he loved and married and had accidentally shot in the head. A shot he had assumed had killed her because she was human, but as a kandra she had survived easily.

Being the middle part of a series this book both doesn’t tie up everything. The three of them can stop Lessie and protect the city, but they also believe that there is someone else behind Lessies attempt to take down Harmony, almost certainly another god. But at the end of the story, Wax is too distraught over the events of this book to care.

What I Loved about Shadows of Self

The characters in this series are brilliant. Wax as the main character is trapped between what he wants and his responsibilities in almost every way. From the need to run his house when he would prefer the simple justice of the roughs to the need to protect people and the love of the person he is protecting them from.

Marasi is mildly less interesting to me in this book than in the last, but I still enjoyed her character. She has become the assistant of Constable-General of the fourth Octant and continues to use her ability to analyses people and events, but while she does a lot in the story, it doesn’t feel like it advances her personality as much as the others.

The real standout of course is Wayne. He is clearly the funnier of the characters, but it becomes even clearer in this book that much of that comedy is a mask. He is far smarter than he typically lets on, and considerably more moral as well. One of the most important aspects of his character is his inability to use or even touch a gun because just before he met Wax he killed a man in a botched burglary and has never forgiven himself.

Outside of the characters, the growth in complexity and understanding of the magic system of this world is interesting. Because this is a much more fleshed out magic system than in many fantasy books it lets it feel as if it is advancing along with the technology of the world. They have discovered new alloys which allows for new abilities and the value of those abilities has changed as technology has advanced. A coinshot while still useful is less impressive when anyone can use a gun, though because they can also push bullets and see where metal is still useful.

Finally, I love the complexity added to this entire series by having one of the major antagonists be so similar to the protagonists of the last series. Having a group of people dedicated to taking down the government is brilliant because it lets you see the first three books from a different point of view and makes the moral arguments in these books far more interesting.

What I liked Less about Shadows of Self

The mystery of this story had a great conclusion, but the truth is that for much of it I was less interested in what was happening in the story of this book and more interested in the larger mystery of the series in connection to Wax’s uncle and Harmony. Those are of course connected to the mystery in this book, but it’s a Brandon Sanderson book and finding flaws isn’t easy.

Beyond that, there are fewer new characters I cared about. Most of those new characters were antagonists or connected to Marasi’s job as a constable and while none of them were bad in any way I just didn’t care all that much about her boss or coworkers beyond their direct involvement in the story. This story didn’t really need any more characters, but having read a great deal of Sanderson, I know that’s he’s more than capable of continuing to add characters I care about later in a book series and would have like to see that happen.

My Overall Thoughts on Shadows of Self

This isn’t my favorite Sanderson series which remains the Stormlight Archives, but it beats out The Reckoners and some standalone books though I still haven’t read everything by Sanderson but overall it’s still high on the list of the best fiction books I have read this year.

As a singular book, this isn’t where anyone should start. I could make an argument for beginning at Alloy of Law if you loved the more advanced technological setting of the later Mistborn books, but this is still the fifth book is a series and you will get more out of reading them in order because though few of them are entirely necessary there are a lot of references to things that happened in previous books and while Brandon does an excellent job of filling you in on basic information, you’d need if you started here it just isn’t necessary so pick up the first three books of Mistborn and get to know Vin. Then get to know Wax and Wayne. They’re not the same, but they’re excellent. But it’s still a good addition to the story and one that, I believe, will make the story that follows it stronger.