Spoiler-Filled Review of The Bands of Mourning
Disclaimer: This is a SPOILER review of The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson. If you have not read this entry yet, I advise you to rusting leave this page immediately.
Read a Spoiler-Free Review of The Bands of Mourning HERE
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?
Months after the death of Lessie, Wax and Steris go to their wedding. However, it is interrupted by a water tower falling on the church, which lead to their wedding being delayed.
Wax goes home to find MeLaan and another Kandra – VenDell – asking Marasi Colms for help to seek the missing spike of the Kandra ReLuur, who came back wounded when seeking the Bands of Mourning. VenDell lectures Wax about Investiture and proposes theories about combining Feruchemy and Hemalurgy. Then, Wax realizes that his sister has been kidnaped so he joins the team to find ReLuur’s missing spike.
MY THOUGHTS
In The Bands of Mourning , we see most of the side characters grow noticeably. Steris Harms goes from a flat-background character to a likeable side character over the course of this book. Wayne finally moves on from Ranette and it is implied that his relationship with MeLaan will be further explored in Wax & Wayne 4 and it was not a one-time thing between the two.
Marasi is no longer a secondary character, but a third main character along with Wax & Wayne. As a character, Wax does not go through too much but by the end of this book he finally accepts Lessie’s death and the way it happened. Wax and Steris slowly start falling in love with one another.
The Bands of Mourning was quite the mix bag for me. I was enjoying every bit of this book until I reached the airship plotline, where I started feeling cold towards this entry. I did not like the shift in tone that happened, and I think that this “reveal” about the Lord Ruler was not planned thoroughly and this whole plotline could have been handled better. Do not get me wrong, I love the new technology in Mistborn Era 2 – The Allomantic Grenade is awesome by the way! – but I think that the airships do not belong in this era, but in Era 3 or Era 4.
As soon as I read the prologue, I called out the twist that will be revealed in the end (Wax’s sister being with The Set) and when I finished reading Part One, I had that theory confirmed basically. It was painfully predictable, yet enjoyable.
This book was saved by the characters spending most of the time together on page, which is an improvement on Shadows of Self, where I critiqued this point. Wax & Wayne are allowed to be funny this time around thanks to the amount of scenes they share together compared to the previous book.
Thankfully, The Bands of Mourning starts being interesting again in the last act. This saved the book from being my least favorite Cosmere story, which is bizarre considering its strong start!
CLOSING THOUGHTS
This has been my least favorite Alloy Era book so far, which – again – is an unpopular opinion, since most fans regard The Bands of Mourning as the best book of Era 2. With all the critiques that I mentioned in this review, I still enjoyed this book quite a lot actually! This kind of book reminds me why I despise the star rating system, as it may not reflect what the reviewer thinks about a certain book.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Harmony’s Bands! Read this book.
