Brandon Sanderson

Return to #1 New York Times bestseller Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn world of Scadrial as its second era, which began with 'The Alloy of Law', comes to its earth-shattering conclusion in 'The Lost Metal'.

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 Elendel and the Outer Cities only favors the Set, and their tendrils now reach to the Elendel Senate—whose corruption Wax and 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.

The Mistborn Saga (Volume 7)

The Lost Metal

Kireth Sandhu

People are elastic, Wax thought. We can keep reshaping ourselves. And if we’re not quite the same as before, well, that’s good. It means we can grow.

He wasn’t wearing a hat, which meant he had to just be himself. The true him, the one that knew this pain. They’d ridden together on many a dusty path. This pain had been his invisible friend since childhood. The pain of knowing what he really was. The pain of being worthless.

This was a funny reminder of covid for me

“Wait!” Steris said, then dug in her handbag. “Masks.” She distributed the cloth masks to everyone, even Allik, since a wooden one wouldn’t filter the air for him. They took the masks absently, or maybe even with a bit of an eye roll. All except Wax, who smiled at her as he put his on.

“Your impermanence is outlived by the beautiful internal shells you create—like sand medallions from the ocean, so are the bones of the human being. A lasting testimony of your presence on Scadrial.

“Has it ever struck you,” Moonlight said, “how art is so destructive?” “Art?” Marasi said, frowning. “Destructive?” “Each new movement consumes the one that came before,” Moonlight said, starting them forward as the traffic began to creep into motion again. “Chops it up and feeds on the corpse. Takes the bones, but drapes new skin on them. Each new piece of art is in some way a parody of what has come before.”

“Seems unfair to grouse at a man for getting discombobulated by definitive proof of an afterlife. Dark gods. Death himself dyin’. Rusting ghosts. Guess we gotta keep goin’, but after this, I don’t wanna see anyone complainin’ when I’ve traded for someone’s favorite shoes or whatnot. Hear me?”

But that had been a false impression of control, hadn’t it? Acknowledging that made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t that the world was growing more complicated. It was that he was letting himself see it had always been complicated.

The mists felt like a friend from his youth that he still knew but rarely talked to.

But maybe your ma was right about the bad guy being a mesa. Being the land itself. Maybe that’s what she was saying, Wayne: It’s the world that we have to worry about. Individual men, yes, they can be evil. But we should worry more about the world itself making them so.”

The two sat in silence for a time. They did that more and more, during their infrequent meetings. Perhaps because both knew it was better than arguing.

The Lost Metal quotes

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