Mistborn Trilogy: Interview With Fantasy Author

New York Times Bestselling Author Brandon Sanderson

Nov 21, 2008

Brandon Sanderson, author of the Mistborn Trilogy, shares insights on creating an original fantasy story, the themes he uses, and what makes his story unique.

Suite101 sat down with Brandon Sanderson, writer of the Mistborn trilogy. His final installment of the series is Mistborn: Hero of Ages, which recently hit the New York Times Bestseller List and is being made into a role-playing game. His first fantasy book, Elantris, received 3 hardcover printings and has been translated into 16 languages. He has recently been chosen to complete the final book of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series.

Suite101: How did you come up with an original idea for your fantasy trilogy Mistborn?

Sanderson: Mistborn is epic fantasy series that came from two ideas, one of which was, what if the dark lord won. I’ve read a lot of fantasy. I love epic fantasy, but a lot of it deals with the concept of the hero’s journey against this great dark evil. I wanted to say, what if the hero didn’t lost? What if Frodo kept the ring? What if Harry got to the end and Voldemort killed him? Then I asked, why haven’t I seen a good fantasy book that does the heist genre with characters that have different magical powers that combine together to accomplish a great goal as magical specialists?

So those two ideas came together to become Mistborn, a world where a thousand years ago, evil won. A gang gets together and says, the prophecy wasn’t true and the hero didn’t save us. It’s really the background for the story of a young woman who is recruited into a team because they need somebody who can be their mole among the nobility. Their faces are too well known so this girl named Vin is brought into the team, trained to use the magic in the world and the backdrop is that it’s this team trying to overthrow the empire. It’s her story.

Sanderson: To encapsulate it into one, I would say it’s "Never give up". Things start off pretty dark in the Mistborn series and yet the leader of the team Kelsir, I’d say his main theme as a character is that he smiles and laughs even though everyone else is beaten down. He almost does it belligerently and says, I’m not going to let them take my smile away from me.

Sanderson: I would say my magic systems are a big separation. I love really spectacular, interesting magic that’s very rule based and almost a science unto themselves. A new set of laws or physics. I always say I want to write books that feel like the great epic fantasies of the past that you’ve read, but that don’t read like them and the distinction is not using the same stories. I love epic fantasies, I love Robert Jordan’s work, Tad William’s work. I’m of the generation who grew up reading all of those people and are now trying to say, what else can we do with the genre?

Suite101: You have a pretty large fan base. What kind of feedback have you received from your readers?

Sanderson: They seem to really like and connect with the characters and enjoy the magic systems. Some of them beg me to do more books in series I’ve finished. I like to end things. Elantris was a stand alone, Mistborn is a trilogy, and now I’m moving on to doing something else. People really like to ask, will you please do more of this and more of that? I listen to that and we’ll see, but mostly a lot of my feedback recently has been thumbs up from people who love The Wheel of Time books.

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