This is one of my boyfriend's favorite books, and for whatever reason, I kept putting off reading it. I always have a million TBR books of my own, that sometimes I am unwilling to add in recommendations from people I love. But this spring, I promised him I would read this book before the end of the year. And dammit, I am so pissed off at myself for not reading it sooner. Because this book was incredible, and simply one of the best fantasy books I have read in years.

Vin is a street urchin who has known little but thieving and starvation for most of her life. But that is the way of her people, the skaa, who are the lowest of the castes. They are abused and killed and raped for the amusement of the nobles, with zero consequences of their actions. They all live under the corrupt Lord Ruler, who is an immortal God and a tyrant, who rules with power and terror.

But after she is recruited by Kelsier, a man who is attempting to create a rebellion to free the skaa people and kill the Lord Ruler, she discovers that she is more than just a thief with a little bit of Luck. She is a Mistborn. Mistborns are powerful Allomancers who can digest and burn metals that give them special abilities. Now, the fate of the entire Final Empire is in the palm of her and her other crew-members hands, and though she knows how ridiculous and impossible the plan is, she can't help but hope for a better future for her people.

I honestly don't even know how to describe how awesome this book is. It had everything you could ever want from a fantasy novel: action, magic, bad-assery, exceptional characters, intrigue, etc. I never knew what was going to happen next; 75% of my predictions were totally wrong. And I loved it.

Vin was an excellently written character, and a strong female protagonist--and it is extra awesome that she was written by a male author. She was strong, but beaten down and waiting for a little bit of hope. She was suspicious of everyone and untrusting, but as the book progressed, the reader watched her gain confidence and risk her heart and her life for people that she grew to love.

It did take me about 70 pages before I started to get really into this novel though, but that is something I can look past because the rest of it was freakin' rad. The only thing I can really complain about was the writing. I'm not used to the writing style of adult fantasy novels, so I was a little confused when the characters would do something with zero explanation of how they were doing--until 30 pages later. But by the end of the novel, that seemed to disappear, or at least I was used to it and it didn't bother me anymore.

All I can say in conclusion is that I have The Well of Ascension next to me and plan on starting it the second I finish this review.