"Bands of Mourning" review & reactions

Review

Finally, a return to the scale of a Cosmere novel! Not that I would have minded more of the intimate setting of the first two, but…this is really what I’m here for. Being so late in the series, I don’t have much to say without spoilers, but overall a very solid novel. I think my favorite of all of the Mistborn so far, really.

Spoiler review

Omg Khriss showed up!!! I kinda cheated, I knew she crosses worlds based on the sidebar of the interactive reading order chart I’ve been using. But I didn’t know she showed up here! I checked at the end to make sure I was right though. And she asked about red shifts in time bubbles!! (Which planet knows about relativity??)

Honestly I thought the mystery ship was gonna be Khriss’s rocket ship all the way up until they found Allik. But I guess still possible she got here through more magical means and not technological. Or that she hid her spaceship better than that. Or she landed in the south and that’s how they have airplanes/helicopters/dirigibles/whatever flying contraptions?

Anyway yeah uh that was the highlight for me, even moreso than KELSIER IS ALIVE!? Or was alive 300 years ago, so obviously is still alive. I guess our end-of-book revelations have been:

• Marsh is alive
• Lessie was alive (idk if this one counts)
• Kelsier either is or was alive

So pretty sure both brothers have to still be around.

He looked back at the statue, then poked at the spearhead with his toe. Then he hit it with his heel. Then he hit with a rock. Finally, he twisted it a few times. It fell right off, clanging to the stone beneath. It had been practically hanging free. And Wax was wrong, only the head was of metal—the oversized spear was wood. Aluminum, you say? Wayne thought with a smile. Now, he didn’t care much for what rich folks said was worth money. Unless it was, by itself, worth more than a house. Little Sophi Tarcsel, the inventor, did need more funds.

I loved this the first time through. And then when it turned out that THIS is the actual Bands…yes, Wayne, I’d say that’s worth more than a house. Here’s hoping Sophi Tarcsel shows up in Lost Metal to fulfill the last part.

Things I didn’t like:

• Steris was a bit too self-deprecating. Like, I know it’s her thing but…“Hey help me quantify how useless I am!” ehhhhhhhhhh couldn’t she have been like…preparing witicisms for later and then been like “omg how pathetic is this” that would have served the exact same purpose but so much less ugh way to get there. Or like “Help me prepare how to apologize to Wax for distracting him on this trip because he has to protect me.” idk that really irritated me, she’s basically grown 0% at the “realizing she has value” despite the amount of screen time she’s had and the literal obvious value she’s shown which is just silly.
• Definitely saw the sister-is-a-bad-guy from miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiles away but didn’t see the sister-recruited-the-uncle so I forgive this.
• Okay so. We have the Set. And within the Set we have Arrays. Cool. And then we have Sequences. Sequences are set-theoretical things. Also, we can talk about both sets and arrays as data structures in computer programming. But, the three of them together do not fit! I don’t understand this! Why, oh why, was “Array” picked as one of the titles? (Sequence sounds cool af, so keep this one.) This is a very reasonable and normal complaint!