"The Alloy of Law" review
The Alloy of Law is much more urban fantasy than the high fantasy of the rest of the Cosmere, in a Scadrial that is suddenly…the Industrial Revolution? Electricity? Railroads? Fifty-story buildings? What? Yeah, okay. I wasn’t convinced by this for the first 20% or so, but of course this is Cosmere, so I fell in love with the characters and the plot was amazing and I loved it and it’s a great book. Of course.
Wayne is my favorite (he’s the one with the hat on the cover), and he’ll be your favorite too because he’s the best. The first few chapters are all from Wax’s POV, but we do eventually get POV chapters from all of the main characters as well as the primary antagonist. Wayne’s POV chapters are also the best, because Wayne is the best.
I’ve not changed my mind about how decidedly boring descriptions of metallurgists Pushing and Pulling metals in order to jump around are. There’s still quite a bit of that in this novel, and imo it’s the novel’s second-biggest flaw. The biggest is that once again the author views a relationship between a roughly-twenty-something woman and a roughly-forty-something man as not immediately off the table unacceptable don’t even consider it, and that irritated me for the entire book.
Other than that, this novel is a very entertaining crime novel set on Scadrial. It’s pretty self-contained - not all threads are wrapped up at the end by any means, but you do get a relatively satisfying conclusion. If you liked The Final Empire and didn’t like the turn for the more epic of Well of Ascension or Hero of Ages, you’ll probably like Alloy of Law. If you want to say “ah yes I’ve read something in the Cosmere” but you hate epic fantasy, you’ll probably like Alloy of Law. If you are a die-hard epic fantasy fan, and you will ONLY read something that has warring armies with the fate of nations at stake, you might not like it. Compared to other Cosmere, the stakes are low, the scale is tiny, and the time frame is miniscule. But it’s still very clearly Cosmere.
(Oh, and I noticed an unnamed Hoid appearance all on my own for the first time!)
P.S. Make sure you read the short story “Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania” afterwards! It finishes the story from the newspaper. Really fun short story that’s also nothing like most Cosmere.
