Mistborn: The Final Empire
First edition cover
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| Author | Brandon Sanderson |
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| Cover artist | Jon Foster |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Mistborn |
| Genre | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Tor Books, Macmillan Audio |
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Publication date
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July 17, 2006 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback), Digital Audio Download |
| Pages | 541 pp (first edition, hardback), 24 hours |
| ISBN | (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC | 62342185 |
| 813/.6 22 | |
| LC Class | PS3619.A533 M57 2006 |
| Followed by | Mistborn: The Well of Ascension |
Mistborn: The Final Empire is a fantasy novel written by American author Brandon Sanderson. It was released in July 2006 and is the first novel in the Mistborn trilogy, followed by The Well of Ascension in 2007 and The Hero of Ages in 2008. Sanderson began work on the novel while trying to get his earlier novel Elantris published. After writing two early iterations, he shifted focus to his Stormlight series but chose to delay its publication in favor of completing the Mistborn series, as he thought it would serve as a better followup to Elantris.
The Mistborn series is set in a roughly medieval dystopian future on the world Scadrial, where ash constantly falls from the sky, all plants are brown, and supernatural mists cloud every night. One thousand years before the start of the novel, the prophesied Hero of Ages ascended to godhood at the Well of Ascension in order to repel the Deepness, a terror threatening the world whose true nature has been lost to time. Though the Deepness was successfully repelled and mankind saved, the world was changed into its current form by the Hero, who took the title "Lord Ruler" and ruled over the Final Empire for a thousand years as an immortal tyrant and god. Under his rule, society is stratified into the nobility, believed to be the descendants of the friends who helped him achieve godhood; and brutally oppressed peasantry, known as skaa.
Central to the Mistborn universe is the presence of magic. The most widely known discipline of magic is called Allomancy, which allows users to gain magical powers by swallowing and "burning" specific metals to gain supernatural abilities. Allomantic potential is a genetic trait concentrated in the nobility, though skaa Allomancers exist due to crossbreeding between the nobility and the skaa. Normal Allomancers have access to one Allomantic power, but an incredibly rare subset of Allomancers, called Mistborn, have access to every Allomantic power.
Three years prior to the start of the novel, a half-skaa thief named Kelsier discovers that he is Mistborn and escapes the Pits of Hathsin, a brutal prison camp of the Lord Ruler. He returns to Luthadel, the capital city of the Final Empire, where he rounds up his old thieving crew for a new job: to overthrow the Final Empire by stealing its treasury and collapsing its economy.
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