Book Review: The Alloy of Law

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson

I liked the Mistborn series quite a bit, so this novel, set in the far future with new characters but the same magic system, seemed a sure fit. The main character, Wax, is a coinshot (can push metals) who also has the ability to make himself heavier or lighter. His buddy Wayne can make a bubble around himself to make himself go faster relative to other people, and also has the ability to heal himself from damage. Wax is the Bruce Willis type of character, the extra-tough lawman who has trouble fitting in because he can’t seem to shut his cop brain off. Wayne is the comic relief, as he’s a powerful sidekick whose slight non-neurotypical outlook makes him “not the hero.” So if you’re wondering what kind of book this is, imagine a superhero buddy-cop police procedural, with magic.

The book starts out in “the roughs” which are like the wild west, and Wax suffers his character-forming tragic event. Soon after that, he’s back in the big city, living up to the duty of being the heir of his father’s estate, trying to fit in with high society and find a wife. The theme of a rough-and-ready man trying to feel comfortable in fine garments already felt like a workable motif. Then Sanderson gives us the plot: some highborn women have been kidnapped and a mysterious crime ring called “the Vanishers” appears to be behind it.

I got this as an audiobook, and I didn’t like the female character M (I can’t remember the names) but in retrospect, I can’t credit Sanderson with this because I think her character was mostly fine. I just don’t like the way she was voiced. The narrator used too much falsetto for her, which is what you do to show contempt. (Try it sometime. Narrate a conversation you had with a stranger and use a falsetto for their voice. Makes it sound like you despise and disrespect them, doesn’t it?) Also I didn’t like M because she was a very young woman who was throwing herself at Wax due to hero worship. I’m sure there are certain readers who love the idea of a gritty forty-something hero with starry-eyed women half their age throwing themselves at him, but it wasn’t my kind of “fantasy.” This is very minor, and it didn’t ruin the book for me, but it was just a slightly off-taste in the novel. I should have liked her The women in this are much more present than they were in the Mistborn books, and I should credit his growth as an author. However, the combination of the hero-worship, the December-May flirtation, and the falsetto jarred what was otherwise a fun escapist romp. The other Mistborn novels didn’t do women well, if at all. This one at least had three or four named female characters.

The rest of the Mistborn series had a lot of fantastic depth and philosophy which made up for the fact that it’s a bit testosterone-steeped. This one didn’t have that subtlety. Wax and Wayne have agency, but many of the other characters seem like NPCs in an RPG where the designers skimped on on AI. For example, they’re at a party and the vanishers attempt a kidnapping, and Wax and Wayne end up going Kill Bill on them and slaughtering them. The bad guy makes decisions, and one of the partygoers makes a decision, but everyone else (except for Wax and Wayne) just kind of stand around being victims or waiting for their turn to be slaughtered by W&W. In battle scenes, having the hero fight and kill dozens of soldiers or kolos is bad, but at a party having the heroes kill dozens of people makes me think that they’re either psycho serial killers, or that the victims were just AI ninjas waiting to attack whichever player comes into that area. If a hero kills that many people (outside of battle), he’s either not a hero or they’re not people. It didn’t feel like a battle, so the discordancy bothered me. I’d gone into this thinking it was a realistic police procedural type, and then it ended up being a superhero battle. It took some mental readjusting. He’s not Bruce Willis, he’s Batman, mowing down faceless bad guys. None of the criminals back down even after he kills a bunch of them, break and run away, or start killing hostages, or anything messy. They just act like evil robot henchmen. I guess that’s why we’re okay with the “good guy” killing a bunch of people at a party and getting a pat on the back for it. After the first battle scene, I readjusted how I thought of the story. Okay, he’s a superhero, not a cop. He’s not Wyatt Earp, he’s Neo.

After that first pitched battle, we get back into the police procedural realm, where Wayne does some persuasion and intimidation to steal information from the regular police force so that W&W can solve the crime and save his bride. (I liked his fiance. She could be a fantastic character in the series.) M helps their investigation by trotting out all the sociology and crime statistics those of us who were really into Malcolm Gladwell in the early 2000s are extremely familiar with, including citing the “Broken Windows” theory, an anachronism which threw me out of the story. M served as the research assistant to give them bits and pieces of crime statistics while reassuring everyone that even though she’s a feminist, she’d rather leave the fighting to the heroes. She doesn’t like shooting actual people. She also gushes over and fantasizes about Wax, whom she sees as a famous legendary hero. These all served to make sure she was letting the reader know that she was not a hero, just a sidekick helper, and she wasn’t trying to be uppity or something. It was odd in a way I can’t put my finger on.

If I had one major complaint about the book it’s that it relies too heavily on fighting scenes. A good fight scene, when you’re invested in the characters, can really beef up the tension. But after a while they get tedious. I loved when they were using solutions to solve problems that were something other than “kill everyone.” Wayne manipulating the bad guy to tell the secrets was great. Wax and M using her obscure allomancy to save the day was creative and fun. Wax and M talking to the gunsmith about cool different weapons worked. Wax and Wayne mowing down bad guys like a first person shooter on easy mode bored me.

I think this is the start of a new series, and Sanderson has a great foundation with the magic and philosophy (most of the original characters are now gods of one sort or another, worshipped by different people in different ways) so there’s potential. I’m curious enough as to whether the series finds its footing as it goes along that I might check out the next one.




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