 So, Shadows of Self, it's pretty much just a continuation of the Alloy of Law, which means it's pretty good. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So, I really do mean it when I say that this is just a continuation to the Alloy of Law. Like, it's really not a different type of story, and it's really not a new story, it's just a continuation of the old one. Like, we have wax continuing to be a lawman. He's going around solving crimes, stopping crimes, fighting bad guys, you know, there's that. We have him still trying to figure out what's going on with his uncle and the weird revolution that he's apparently planning. And in this one, we have a new bad guy and a new angle at which this is all being come at from. And we also do get a lot more information about the government and how that works, which I'll talk about that in a minute, but I did enjoy that. And, yeah, overall it's just like, it's Brandon Sanderson, so you know there is a minimum level of quality that you're going to get hit with, you know. All the action scenes are still pretty good. All the characters do go through more development. You know, I liked that a lot. Like, I enjoy just seeing them become, well, become themselves, I guess is the best way of putting it. And, yeah, there's nothing in it really that bothered me that much, I don't think. So the plot to this one is that there is a Candra who, if you forgot, those were those like jelly people that would eat somebody's flesh, take their skeleton and then impersonate them. And anyways, there's one of those going around and she's also using hemilurgy to like steal allomantic and free-rochemic powers. And she's apparently going to assassinate the governor and she's also causing a bunch of other trouble. And so most of the story is just about them trying to catch her. And the thing about this one that made it a little bit better than the last one I thought is that it leans more into the mystery aspect and we, as the readers, get a lot more clues about what's going on. And we get a lot more clues that can actually help us figure it out before it happens. Now, I still didn't personally, so all the twists and stuff about what was really going on did still hit me at the end and I still really liked it. But, you know, you could figure that out yourself beforehand if you're very sharp-eyed and sharp-minded. Now, I'm going to say more about this in the spoiler section, but I just really, really liked all the development we got with Wax's character in this one because it would be so, so easy to just take Wax where he was at the end of the last book and then just leave it at that You know, he was a lawman out in the roughs who accidentally killed the woman he loved and then he came back and he just wasn't adjusting to his new life and then he tried adjusting to it and it just was a little too much. Now, he's trying to find this awkward middle ground that will serve everybody the best and, you know, he's still genuinely a good person and all that. Whereas in this one we actually see a little bit more of his opinion on like the government and how it operates and we also see more of his opinion on like, well, who am I and why am I doing the things I do? And so that's pretty great and, like, more so than for the plot. Like, I still want to read the next book to know what happens plot-wise, but much more than that I'm interested in Wax and what he's going to get up to. Now, I said that they go into the world-building of the government a little bit more and that is good. I liked that it was cool, it's an aspect of stories that isn't really touched upon all that much, especially not in fantasy. The only thing that got me was it just feels a little weird because apparently the way it's set up is that it's like an elected assembly that runs most things and then the assembly also elects the governor who's like an executive, you know, he's like president or prime minister basically. And so this assembly is like half people who are elected by guilds which are, I guess, kind of like workers unions or labor unions and then the other half are made up of noble houses which is, you know, it's hereditary, like that's what Wax does. And I found that kind of odd because, like, I don't know, it's just that when the world got destroyed and then rebuilt when harmony, you know, put everything back together, all the old nobles had their power bases completely destroyed and everyone was, for lack of a better term, pretty much equal, so it seems a little weird that they would set up this government in such a way. You'd think it would be more egalitarian where like everything was run by the guilds or everything was just more similar to a modern democratic republic. So it just, it wasn't like a huge issue, it just felt odd to me. And speaking of harmony, we actually get to see more of him in this which I was more than okay with, you know. I liked seeing how he had changed but he was still Cezed, you know, he was still the guy we knew. And granted at the end there's a little bit of a difference, we see, or rather we see a much starker difference from his old self but nonetheless, I'm intrigued with this because, like, you know, he's a god now and he has to look at, like, the well-being of the whole world. You know, he's not concerned so much with looking after his friends the way he was in the original trilogy. So it's definitely changed him and I do want to see where that goes too. The one thing in this book that I would really call a problem, and even though it's not a huge one, it's just kind of frustrating, is that we just don't get any new information about the revolution that's been going on. Like, we see Wax's uncle a little bit in this and they talk about what he's doing and we get a little teeny bit of information about his organization but we don't really know what they're doing or why or how. All we know is that they exist. You know, that's kind of all that this book does with them is that it reinforces the fact that, yes, they exist. And so it's just a real missed opportunity, I think. Like, I feel you could make this, you know, much bigger mystery that goes across the entire series rather than just one book and you could put little clues throughout and I know that'd be very difficult to write so I don't blame Sanderson for not doing it but nonetheless I am still a little disappointed that we didn't get that. So that's it for the spoiler-free section. Obviously, if you liked Alloy of Law, just keep reading this one. It's just more of the same. If you didn't like Alloy of Law, I don't know if it'll change your mind because, like, this isn't really the same as the original Mistborn trilogy so if you're going into this expecting, you know, big epic fantasy, epic battles and stuff you're probably going to be disappointed and I don't think that this series is going to turn into that at any point. It might, I could be wrong but, you know, it's just, yeah, it's much smaller scale and much more character-driven so if that's not your cup of tea then, well, you probably wouldn't like it that much but if that sounds interesting to you or if you liked the last book then, yeah, read this one. So now spoilers. Obviously, the one big one is finding out at the very end that Wax's old girlfriend, Lessie who he thought he killed, was actually a candra. She was actually sent by Harmony to keep an eye on him and she was killed off by Harmony in order to make sure he left the roughs and went back to Elendell and went back to the place he's supposed to be and so she wasn't actually dead but then at the very end he kills her for real and, man. Jesus, I, what can I even say to that? So that was just some crazy shit because, like, I wasn't expecting it at all for starters like, she does take on Lessie's face once or twice but when that happened, I just assumed she was doing it to mess with Wax and to try and throw him off and up until basically the last two or three pages of the book I was thinking that she was just pretending to be Lessie to fuck with him but no, she really was her and it's kind of ambiguous as to whether she was really in love with him or not like, I'm leaning more towards believing that, yeah, she wasn't in love with him because she straight up says she was but at the same time, I just don't know and at the end, like, Wax feeling just so betrayed by Harmony and betrayed by the world like, that's part of why I'm so interested in seeing where his character goes after this because, damn, that moment was like, at the risk of being cliched that moment was a gut punch, like, that hurt that physically hurt, I felt, I've never felt so bad for a fictional character before well, maybe once or twice, but just very rarely have I felt so bad for somebody that's...oof so yeah, that's it, I just want to talk about that spoiler bit for a minute this is, you know, a shorter review, I don't have all that much to say but, you know, please check out my Patreon page because YouTube likes to demonetize my stuff all their names are here, thanks especially to my $10 up patrons which are Appo Sabalainen, Christopher Hawkins, Joseph Pendergraft, and Melanie Austin and obviously all the rest are great too and if you watched this far, thanks, please subscribe and rate the video and comment on it so that it gets shared, because I like having it get shared because, you know, that's how I exist, you know, I gotta pay rents and stuff anyway, bye