 Alright, so we finally got it. We got the Lost Medal. It is the finale of Era 2 of Mistborn. And I know I'm months behind on this, but that's just how things wound up working out for me. You know, I had other stuff I was working on. I didn't get to it immediately. Whatever. I'm here. And the thing is, I saw some other reviews that other people were putting and several people said something along the lines of this is the greatest Mistborn book, this is the greatest Cosmere book, or this is one of the greatest Cosmere books, or something like that. And, um, I will be honest, I disagree with them. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now, I'm not saying that the Lost Medal is bad, far from it. I think it's pretty good. Like, it is a very satisfying ending to this particular series. It's not a finale to All of Mistborn, it's just a finale to Mistborn Era 2. It's like the end of the story of Wax and Wayne and Starris and all them. And as a, an ending to that, it's pretty good. It's just not as great as everyone was making it out to be. And frankly, a big part of that is just how tightly it ties into the rest of the Cosmere. Like, the Lost Medal is officially the point where you have to have read pretty much everything else in this franchise in order to understand everything that's going on and the story is no longer really standalone. And that's, I mean, I knew this point was coming eventually, but it comes too soon and I don't like the way it's done. Also, I'm wearing a jacket because it's like 40 degrees in here. I have no idea why, but it's just, it's just freezing in here right now. So, jacket wearing it. And in addition to just being way too tightly connected to the rest of the Cosmere and you having to know a lot of other things in order to truly enjoy this. And the book also kind of just almost feeling like a trailer for like other cooler stuff that'll happen later in other books, which you'll have to wait years to read. And yeah, like other than that, most of the characters in this series, like most of the major ones at least, like their arcs are already complete or at least close to being complete. And so there's not a lot of room for them to grow or develop in this final book, which is a shame. Like not all of them, you know, I'll get into more detail about that. But you know, like Wax, for example, he had great development over the first three books, but there's not a lot of places for him to go from here. So in this book, even though he's the protagonist, or at least I assume he's the protagonist of this series, he is just kind of there. Like, you know, he's there to fight bad guys during action scenes. He's there to be the anchor through which a lot of the rest of the story is built around. But he doesn't really change. He's kind of the same at the beginning as he is at the end. And it doesn't really feel like he is progressing along with the story. It just feels like the story is happening around him in some ways, if that makes sense. Now again, I want to point out the climax of this story is really good. The ending of the story is good. I enjoyed it. It's just dragged down by knowing that this is only a piece of the whole. You know, like we know there's going to be a lot more after this and we know there's a lot more surrounding this. And it just doesn't feel like we're getting a complete experience. Like in the original Mistborn trilogy, that one started off with the characters trying to overthrow an immortal demigod. And then they did it at the end of the first book. And then after that it becomes, okay, let's fight a literal god of destruction. And so you're wondering how in how are they ever going to do this? How are they going to survive this? How are they going to win? And because at that stage, we're either unaware of the wider Cosmere or we're only vaguely aware that there's a wider Cosmere out there, it still works pretty well because we know the heroes can possibly fail. You know, we aren't necessarily thinking they're going to, but we are left wondering how are they going to get out of this? Can they get out of this? And it comes pretty close, like especially because at the end of Hero of Ages, like again, a literal god of destruction is running around unopposed for a little while. And then he dies and we have that moment at the end where Cezed's wondering, oh, what are we going to do? And he realizes, oh, I can just combine the powers of two gods and it's amazing. But here we know the story is going to continue. You know, we already know that there's going to be a Mistborn era three and era four. And even if you don't know that at this stage, well, it doesn't really feel like the planet is at risk until the last second. And it doesn't really feel like humanity is at risk until the last second. And it doesn't feel all that much like the characters are at risk. Like it feels like some of the stuff they care about is at risk. Yes. But that's not focused on quite as much. And also again, like they just keep bringing in all this other information about how, hey, there's other planets out there with other gods and stuff. Like the main villain of the story is autonomy, which is another shard of adenalsium, otherwise called trell a lot. And so weirdly enough, the story being self-contained or mostly self-contained to this planet makes it feel really small when we know about everything else going on. Now, the story here doesn't really do anything wrong per se. It just doesn't quite reach the level of its predecessor. And it doesn't quite reach the level that I feel it could have reached with some changes to the story. But in addition to, you know, the villain being autonomy, being trell, being another shard of adenalsium, and the heroes having harmony on their side, like again, they have a literal god on their side this time. Whereas before, they were fighting ruin pretty much alone or rather, at least at the end of Hero of Ages, they were fighting him alone. But, you know, even throughout that whole series, preservation was on their side and he was just barely able to hold back ruin for a limited amount of time. And he was basically telling them, like, look, I can do this for a while, but you're going to need to figure this out on your own. Whereas harmony here, I just, I get that when you have a god on the side of the good guys, you have to find a way to handicap him so that he doesn't just solve the story himself. But it just feels kind of lame how throughout most of this, harmony is just restrained by the powers of trell. And that's why he can't do anything or do much to help the good guys, you know? And in addition to that, the ghost bloods feature pretty prominently in here. I'll get a little more into that in the spoiler section, but they play a pretty big role in the story. So we see people from other planets and stuff, and we wouldn't really know what is going on with them if we haven't read the rest of the Cosmere. And it's not done in a cool, like, cameo way or just hinting at it so that the people who are familiar with it can know what's going on and go, oh, I understand that. Whereas people who aren't familiar with it can just go, oh, okay, that's a little mysterious, but still cool. Let's move along with it. Like, it's not done that way. It's done in a way where you just straight up will not understand what's going on if you haven't read other parts of the Cosmere, like Elantris. And the epilogue to the story is basically all about how schedule the planet that Mistborn takes place on relates to the rest of the Cosmere and relates to how are they going to work with these places? How are they going to defend themselves from these other places? Like, it doesn't really feel like any sort of ending or any, excuse me, it feels like the ending doesn't really have that sort of finality that you need to have a good ending to a series. Like, again, the original trilogy, you can just read that by itself and feel like, okay, at the end you got a whole completed story. Like, if you didn't feel like going on and reading Era II, you could just stop there. Whereas this one, it feels like, okay, I guess I have to read Era III in order to know where this goes. Like, we wrapped up the story with all the characters and everything here, but we aren't going to know what the fate of this planet is. You know, it's not going to end and just be like, yep, and then they rebuilt and things were great from then on, the end. Like, it's just, it's not as satisfying that way. Like, I'm going to compare this to probably the biggest interconnected universe that has ever happened, frankly, and that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Like, with the first several movies there, like Iron Man and Thor and Captain America, you could just watch those on their own. You know, like, they were totally standalone stories and whether you liked them or not, that you just watch them and that's a complete story. And there were references to other stuff that would come later and to each other, but you didn't need to understand all of those or watch all these other movies in order to enjoy these. You know, you can just watch Iron Man 1 on its own and that's just a good, fun movie. And also, I realized not long ago that's been almost 15 years since Iron Man 1 came out and a lot of people forget, like, just how small the MCU felt back then, but because, like, at the end of, I believe, Iron Man 2, that's when we see Thor's hammer in the after-credits sequence and we go, oh man, it's Thor and we don't know exactly where that's going, but it's kind of exciting, gets us drawn in, but Iron Man 2 is, like, a finished story. You know, like, the villain doesn't get away at the end and they'll be like, oh, he'll be back in Thor or anything like that. It's finished and it's done. And Mistborn Era 2, The Lost Metal, does not, it doesn't have anything like that. You know, it doesn't have the small hints that are exciting. It feels almost like this is the book where everything comes together. And in the MCU, that was the first Avengers movie, you know, like, that was when everything finally came together and it was this big, epic team-up and they fought bad guys and it was really cool. It was the greatest thing ever back in 2012. But The Lost Metal feels almost like, okay, this is where everything comes together. Like, we need to have read everything else up until this point in order to understand what's happening here, but it doesn't feel like a big, epic team-up the way the Avengers did. You know, this feels like if I watched Captain America and in order to understand what was going on in the story, I also had to watch Thor and Iron Man and Iron Man 2 and if I didn't, then I'd be lost. I guess it's just a little disappointing to me that the moment where everything comes together was not a big crossover event like how it probably should have been. It's just a continuation of this same story and again, it's not bad. It's just not what it should have been. And I will say though that the character stuff in here is still pretty solid, but it is weaker than the earlier books. You know, like I mentioned earlier, most of the major characters their arcs are done. You know, Wax's arc is done. Marassie's arc is just about done. Like, she gets a little bit of development here, but not that much. Really, the only major characters who change substantially in this one and get more development and more depth to them are Wayne and Starris. And Starris is not exactly a main character. I mean, I liked seeing her change here, don't get me wrong, but really the only character who was super great and I was super invested in here and wanting to see where they changed and where their arc went was Wayne. Now, again, Wayne's development here is great, but he's still pretty much the only one. And that's kind of a shame because in Era 2, the character stuff and the character development and the depth and everything has been the best part of it. And that's been one of the only areas where I would truly say it's way better than Era 1 because in Era 1, the characters weren't exactly shallow or bad. They just weren't nearly as deep as the characters in Era 2. And part of that is because they're older, I think. Like, at the beginning of the story, Wax is already like 40 years old, whereas Vin was 16 at the beginning of the original Mistborn series. And both stories take place over the course of years, but basically Wax already has a very long life behind him and a whole bunch more ahead of him. And after going through a horrible tragedy at the beginning of the first book and realizing that he has to change and thinking, like, can I even change? Do I even want to live a life that's different? He kind of tries to hold on to the past and still be a lawman while trying to be a senator and trying to go back to Elendale and take up the responsibility for his inheritance and all that. But it's really only in the Lost Medal where he is officially retired from being a cop and is just a senator full time and is trying to help things that way. And it has now settled down with Starris and they have children and stuff. Like, he has clearly changed a lot. Like, by having someone be older and having them live a lot more life before the story even begins, you can just give them more depth. You know, like, pretty much by default, the longer you live, the more complex your personality becomes. So that's great. And I mean, again, Wayne, same thing. He's not as old as Wax, but he has a long life before this series even begins. And in this book, we finally dive deeper into that and we see how he is wracked with guilt over things he's done, particularly over killing that one man back when he was very, very young. And we also see, like, a little more of how he really wound up in that situation. And we see him as a kid and he wants to try and improve the world and try and make up for some of the bad he's done. But he also realizes over the course of the story that you can't force people to forgive him. And it's just, it's really, really good. I'll go a little more in depth in the spoiler section. But that is the gist of it. Like, Wayne is great to start and changes a lot. And I just loved watching him do that. And, you know, beyond all that, this book is pretty much what you would expect. You know, it's a Cosmere novel. There's a lot of fun action scenes in there. The story has mysteries. It's very tightly plotted and the pacing is generally really good. The characters are fun to watch. It's fun to watch their interactions as well. It's like, it's just, yeah, it's basically what you'd expect. That's not a bad thing. It's just what you would expect. If you have come this far, if you've already read all of Mistborn up to this point, then yeah, I still recommend it. Unless you're like really tired of it and you just don't care anymore. I don't know if this will change your mind. But, you know, if you have not read any Mistborn, if you're not familiar with the Cosmere and you're still watching this, then I'd, yeah, I would recommend getting into this series, but, you know, start at the beginning. Start with The Final Empire. And think that's about it for the non-spoiler section. And yeah, like I said, this is a pretty good book, but it is disappointing that we've officially reached a point where the Cosmere is so interconnected that you need to have read basically everything else before you can continue. So that's disappointing, but not the end of the world. So that's it. Spoiler section now. Um, and your mother's a whore. Your mother's dead? That's good. Okay, so the basic plot of this put very, very simply is that the set, who are the people on schedule working for Trell Slash Autonomy, are trying to use Harmonium, which is a magical medal created by Harmony, in order to make a super bomb. And the climax of the book involves them putting that super bomb on a ship and just sending it towards Elendale. And Harmony says that it might set the atmosphere on fire and just destroy the entire world. And at the very least, it'll definitely destroy the city. And so Wayne and Wax both get there and they realize, okay, we have to disarm this somehow, but it's full of booby traps. So the only person that can disarm it is Wayne because he can, you know, slow down time temporarily. And he just, you know, throws Wax off the ship. And then he, man, it's kind of weird. Like he becomes a Mistborn right before this because he apparently inhales some Lorazium dust, which remember Lorazium being the metal that you swallow in order to turn yourself into an Allomancer. And he apparently was able to get some of that and he swallowed some of it. And so he's able to burn both Bend Alloy and Duralumin at the same time. And he's able to disarm the bomb. And then he dies in the smaller decoy explosion. And I think that the scene where he briefly gets to talk with Harmony before moving on to the beyond, whatever that is, is really great because, I mean, it's just, it's a good end to his character arc. You know, he didn't do this out of guilt. You know, it's made clear he didn't stop this bomb because he's still trying to make up for the bad things he's done in his life. He stopped it because it needed to be done. You know, people needed to be protected. He was the person that was in the right place in order to do it. And he was the only one that could have done it really because he was the only one in that place that had enough control over burning Bend Alloy in order to do that. So it's just, you know, it worked really well. It was a phenomenal ending. Did not quite bring a tear to my eye, but it came close and just, you know, a great ending to his character and a great end. Okay, maybe not a great ending to this series as a whole, but, you know, still a decent climax where we're wondering, okay, can the heroes stop the bomb? Here's the thing, though. Like I mentioned, he breathed in some Lorasium and Harmony says that that was because of the Harmonium explosion. Like, basically Harmonium is a combination of Lorasium, which comes from, you know, preservation, and Atium, which came from Ruin. And both of those featured somewhat prominently in the original series, but now because the powers of both gods are combined, that their metals are also combined. And apparently when you set off the explosion with it, it creates some Lorasium dust. And so both Wax and Wayne inhale some, and so they both become Mistborn. Or at least it seems implied that Wax became a Mistborn because it seemed implied that he was burning Pewter while he was swimming away from the ship, which he couldn't do before. But then it doesn't really mention anything in the epilogue, so I'm not totally sure what's going on there. And also in the epilogue where Harmony says it is talking with Kelsier, he specifically says we can't make more Mistborn because the explosion does not create more Lorasium. So like, does it create more Lorasium or doesn't it? I'm genuinely unsure. And the final bit I want to talk about in the spoiler section here is, again, the Ghostbloods. And I didn't want to go into detail in the non-spoiler section, but they just, you're expected to just know a little too much. You know, like, I still feel like at this stage in Mistborn you should be able to just read Mistborn and understand it all. But we meet a character named Moonlight who's a member of the Ghostbloods, and she's a fun character, don't get me wrong. But she is from Cell. That is the planet where the Emperor's Soul and Elantris take place. And she is a Forger, which is, you know, the type of magic introduced in the Emperor's Soul, like where you make a little stamp on something and then change its memory, so you change it. Basically, I'm vastly oversimplifying, but that is the gist of it. And she uses that on herself and other things. And the last we see of her, she turns herself into an Elantrian and uses that to fight some bad guys and then leaves and then other characters are like, okay, we're gonna have to go find her. So they presumably go looking for her. But the thing is, in order to understand that, you would have to have read both Elantris and the Emperor's Soul. And I think that most people who read this will have read that because, you know, you would have had to have already read six books before this in the Mistborn saga. So reading a few more in the Cosmere is not that much of a stretch, but still you shouldn't have to. You know, it's not done in a way where like, oh, okay, this is like mysterious powers from another place. That's kind of cool. It's done in a way where you straight up will not understand what's going on if you haven't read those. And that's just probably the best example of how this is getting too interconnected. And yeah, I just can't say I'm a fan of that. And I know this is a short spoiler section, but it was just kind of some scattered disconnected thoughts there that I couldn't get out in the regular review without spoiling stuff. So yeah, that's about all nothing about my recommendations has really changed. It's just you're irritating to me how the Lost Metal is the point where everything finally connects, but it doesn't really feel like a big epic moment where everything connects. That's all. Goodbye. Huge thanks to everyone who watched this whole thing, all of my nonsense that I put out there, it's appreciated. And a huge thanks to all my patrons as well, especially my $10 and up patrons, whose names are Oppo Sabalainen, Olivia Rayan, Brother Santotis, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Dan Anceliovic, Dark King, Dio, Echo, Flax, Great Griebo, Johnny St. Clair, Karkat Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Microphone, Mist Boy, Peep the Toad, Robbie Reviews, Sad Martigan, Celia the Vixen, Stone Stairs, Tesla Shark, Vivek Dis, and Wesley. And of course, everyone else whose names you see here. If you want to get your name put on here, consider becoming a patron. 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