the alloy of law (book)

rating

starstarstarstarstar

date

05 january 2026

genre

fantasy

author

brandon sanderson

part western, part sherlock holmes detective novel, part high fantasy, the alloy of law is an interesting entry into the mistborn series. we have a timeskip of over 300 years here, which is especially interesting considering that the hero of ages essentially left us off with a blank slate of a re-created world, with the remaining survivors of the near-apocalypse tasked with re-creating a new society. suffice to say, it's kind of a lot to find out that this fantasy world experienced pretty much earth-like industrialization and it's the turn of the 20th century now, except magic (well, allomancy and feruchemy at least) is still a thing.

the primary protagonist is waxillium "wax" ladrian, a nobleman (which apparently is still a concept, even though it's more of a "these people come from rich families" thing and less one of specific priviliges now) who left his family and society to become a lawman in the less civilised roughs, which means he's pretty much a stereotypical western sheriff, guns and all, when we meet him. oh yeah, there's a lot of gunplay and gun descriptions in this book. but since this is still mistborn, wax is also an allomancer (specifically one who can push on metals) and a feruchemist too (he's able to manipulate his weight). a bit of tragedy happens and then his uncle dies, setting off the events to get him back into society - into the unsubtly named capital of elendel.

here the mystery detective plot starts off: a group of criminals called the vanishers have been robbing train cars in spectular and seemingly impossible ways and at some point also started abducting women. wax at first is drawn to this case out of personal curiosity as a seasoned detective. later on it's intensified by the abduction of his fiancée-out-of-necessity (don't ask) by the vanishers. he's joined by his former deputy, wayne, who has a faible for hats, stealing, imitating accents and being generally witty and annoying, as well as marasi, his fiancées half-sister and aspiring criminologist/lawyer/prosecutor/sharp-shooter. cue gunfights, investigations, a lot of banter that can range from hilarious and smart to utterly insufferable. as is customary for a mystery like this, wax stumbles over people from his past involved in what's going on and obviously there's more to these heists than what's visible at the surface of it.

compared to the previous books in the series, this is a very obvious departure. it's at a much smaller, almost personal scale, which makes sense since this book started of as a small, transitional novella, which happened to spiral into a full novel. it's much more character-focused and we mostly just get glimpses at what the world around wax looks like, what kind of society has been rebuilt after the end of the hero of ages. it's an approach i like and respect a lot, but it's still a bit frustrating at times to only get drip-fed the information of what happened in those 300+ years we didn't see. the epilogue of the book does set up both a bigger conflict and a more direct connection to the first trilogy, so i'm sure there will be more of that again in the future.

the prose for the most part is much-improved in my opinion compared to the first trilogy. the dialogue feels a lot more natural and the three main characters feel very fleshed out, even if i didn't vibe with wayne that much. unfortunately for the first time with sanderson's writing, there are action scenes here that were too long-winded for me. while the action in the first trilogy felt very snappy and fun to follow, the gunfights here get too long and sometimes disorienting.

the alloy of law is a good and interesting entry in the series and a good starting point for the next era of mistborn. it just didn't personally grab me as much as era 1 did.