Mistborn: Secret History

Brandon Sanderson

Jan 2016 · Sold by Dragonsteel, LLC

About this ebook

Note: This novella is included in Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection, now available in print, ebook, and audiobook from Tor (US/Canada) and Gollancz (UK/Commonwealth).

Mistborn: Secret History is a companion story to the original Mistborn Trilogy.

As such, it contains huge spoilers for the books Mistborn (The Final Empire), The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages. It also contains very minor spoilers for the book The Bands of Mourning.

Mistborn: Secret History builds upon the characterization, events, and worldbuilding of the original trilogy. Reading it without that background will be a confusing process at best.

In short, this isn’t the place to start your journey into Mistborn. (Though if you have read the trilogy—but it has been a while—you should be just fine, so long as you remember the characters and the general plot of the books.)

Saying anything more here risks revealing too much. Even knowledge of this story’s existence is, in a way, a spoiler.

There’s always another secret.

Ratings and reviews

This was an awesome book. It was a bit disjointed as he mentioned, and I do have to admit one part of me disliked the idea of continuing this fan favorite character, seems like something usual authors would do. However, the other side of me loved it so much, especially the way it brought in the basic backstory for the Cosmere. This is the first place I heard about Adonalsium, and honestly I'd prefer learning this lore in a book rather that having to look it up online. And also, even though bringing back a main character after death is kinda cliché, it SPOILER ALERT explains how Kelsier is back in "The Lost Metal" and it also does seem like something Kelsier would do, being the Survivor and all. Overall, the good outweighed the bad, and I give it 4.5 stars. But since I can't do half stars, I rounded up. So, 5 stars.

has an awful lot of "pertinent exposition" (read as; boring stretches)... normally, I can read these without going back to the source material and just sort of Bob along recalling the material as I go. But not this time. I'll be going back to the Wax & Wayne series as soon as I'm done writing this.

This is a wonderful novella. It was wonderful to find out what happened after Kelsier died. The drive and amount of information was amazing. I absolutely loved this journey.

About the author

Brandon Sanderson is the author of bestselling series such as The Stormlight Archive and The Reckoners. He lives in Utah.