Long read, with spoilers for the original Mistborn series, Mistborn Secret History, and some vague Stormlight Archive spoilers with warning in the subtitles.
Honestly, it’s been about four months since I read Mistborn Secret History (SH from here on), and I wasn’t planning on reviewing it. However, unfortunately for you, dear reader, my husband has read SH recently and our discussions have stirred my memory.
When I started this blog, I aimed to write on each book I read after I finished it, and not to read anything else until I’d gotten my thoughts down. This was partly so that I didn’t wait too long and forget too much, but also because a fresh review is more likely to give a truthful description of the reading experience.
I don’t remember if there were aspects about SH that I liked. My husband’s reread has only reminded me of the parts I despised. As such, this could be a one-sided blog, fogged by a few month’s distance from my actual reading of it.
On the other hand… it probably says something that I’m still pissed off about this novella enough to want to break my own blogging rules just to call it out. So, here we go…
Mistborn Spoilers Ahead – It’s Reductive
My main problem with SH, as my quick Goodreads review reminds me, Secret History is a bit reductive. SH takes many of the best, most uplifting moments of the original Mistborn trilogy, and just hands the responsibility of them over to Kelsier. That great moment where Spook figures out that hemalurgy is awful and Vin’s affected by it? It’s just Kelsier. In the original trilogy, that moment was the finale of Spook’s character arc across three books, but in SH, it’s just a passing fiddle from Kelsier.
Let’s take a look at another character climax moment; Marsh ripping free Vin’s earring. Once you’ve read Secret History, that moment isn’t the culmination of Marsh’s inward fighting anymore, it’s Kelsier’s fist ramming into Ruin because punching gods is cool.
Now, that’s how I feel about that moment, but if I’m being completely honest then I can see that Kelsier’s fiddling doesn’t entirely undermine Marsh’s actions in that moment… however, it is a distraction against what was otherwise a brilliant moment between Marsh and Vin. Now it’s Marsh, Vin, and weird, wibbly elements from beyond the veil.
OK, so let’s consider another aspect. The bit where Vin gains the powers of preservation. I don’t even like this part of the original trilogy… but originally, it was supposed to be this big moment where Vin proves that she’s let go of her inner darkness and destructive tendencies and can now ascend to Godhood in the role of Preservation to defend her planet.
In SH, Vin only ascends to the power because Kelsier’s already got the power, and is giving it to her like a Christmas present. This majestic moment from the original books is now graffitied by ‘Kelsier woz here’. Sigh.
There’s even a suggestion that Kelsier is directly at fault for Elend’s death at the end of the trilogy, too, ‘Elend ended with a sword in Marsh’s neck, and looked directly at Kelsier, transcending the three Realms. // Marsh slammed an axe into Elend’s chest.’
If you go back to that moment in the original books, then you’ll see that from Elend’s perspective it’s less clear that Kelsier is almost actively distracting him to death. However, how many people are going to go back and reread that moment in light of getting confused over this line? Besides, the original trilogy was never going to mention Elend actively seeing Kelsier because it would kinda spoil the neatness of everything tying up at the end for Kelsier to reappear in the narrative…
But isn’t that exactly what SH is doing? I really regret reading it, even if it’s going to be necessary material for future Mistborn Era 2 books… and possibly elsewhere for books contained within the Cosmere…
Before I move onto other topics, I just want to quickly write that I used to be a huge fan of Kelsier. Unlike many readers, I was taken completely by surprise when he died early in book one. I was incredibly upset, but finding out he’s actually just ascended hasn’t cheered me up. If anything, it’s tainted my view of the character and made me angry somehow.
Stormlight Spoilers Up Ahead – Issues with Scale
Here’s an aspect that didn’t bother me as much as it bothered my husband, but he brought up points that I didn’t argue with.
In SH, magical aspects and characters from elsewhere in the Cosmere are brought to light, and these are (as far as I’ve read, which isn’t everything) most prevalent in the Stormlight Archive series. Now, when this happened in my read through, I kind of rolled my eyes and got on with it, but for my husband who hasn’t read Stormlight, it was a more difficult experience.
Here is this character, travelling between realms and hinting at the far wider scope of the universe… yet instead of being a great marketing ploy to encourage the reader to read SA, instead, it alienates and disgruntles the reader.
I have it all the time with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It has taken me so long to catch up on all that stuff, and I still feel like I’m often being left out of the loop by the various jokes that only super fans could possibly understand.
I’m not saying that pandering to these super fans is wrong, but it does cause problems for the average reader’s enjoyment.
Aside from the series FOMO of reading about characters like Nazh and Cephandrius in Secret History, it represents another problem for the reader who has only encountered Mistborn, which is that the scope of the original trilogy is diminished in retrospect.
To explain, when reading the original series, one is struck with the feeling that if our heroes don’t succeed, then this will be the end of everything. Secret History undermines that by introducing the idea that humans can simply pass through portals. Indeed, perhaps all of Scadrial could have been evacuated, but even if our heroes had failed, it wouldn’t have been the end of everything. It seems that characters such as the Drifter (Cephandrius) would have continued to be able to pass on memories of Scadrial’s history and civilisations to other humans existing elsewhere in the universe.
It wouldn’t have been the total end that the original series presented.
Now, if you’ve read Stormlight, this isn’t surprising in the slightest. However, my main point here is that this interplanetary travel is introduced far more eloquently in the Stormlight Archive, whereas Secret History simply doesn’t have the wordcount to lower its reader into this revelation without weakening Mistborn’s central apocalyptic threat. And that kinda sucks.
Summary
I’m just going to repost my Goodreads review here to conclude, I think:
I wish I hadn’t read it because I don’t like how it affects my reading of the original Mistborn era 1 books. In my opinion, it reduces the impact and meaningfulness of certain character arcs that I really liked in the original trilogy.
Also, I’m a big believer that anything that’s this important to the overall narrative should be told through the main series, not via DLC.
Lastly, I’m going to add that I really don’t like the revelation at the end of Mistborn Era 2 Book 3, and that I didn’t feel like the stories contained within SH were enough to sell it to me.
Despite this, there were some really great moments. There was a lot of stuff to like in Secret History, and overall it’s a lot of fun. If it wasn’t, I’d be rating it lower.
Sorry, but it’s not worth more than a 5/10 to me.
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