Upon hearing the premise of The Alloy of Law, I imagine the two most likely reactions are to either sigh in relief or to hold one’s breath in terrified anxiety. Brandon Sanderson takes us back to Scadrial, the beloved world of Mistborn, several hundred years after Vin, Elend, and Sazed saved, destroyed, and remade the world. There are no more Mistborn. Individuals can still have Allomantic or Feruchemical abilities, but they are limited to a maximum of one power from each category.

Now about the current iteration of the world of Mistborn … Multiverse theory posits an infinite number of universes, with infinite combinations of possibilities. Keep that in mind, and I suppose it’s not that much of a stretch that in this book, Allomancy and Feruchemy exist in a world that is technologically almost identical to late 19th Century England or America. Pistols and rifles, steam engines and horseless carriages, bowler hats and pocket watches … this is familiar territory.

What’s unfamiliar is the new cast of characters. And what characters they are. Waxillium and his sidekick Wayne are lawmen: skilled investigators and gifted fighters, each with a past he’d rather not think too hard about. They meet Marasi, a gifted young criminologist who gets a rude transition from the classroom to the real world. Together, they must stop Miles Hundredlives, a former lawman turned criminal mastermind, bent on bringing down what he sees as an oppressive central government. In the end, Miles is defeated and his plans ruined. But ultimately he served a more important purpose than that of obligatory bad guy. Miles was there, along with the hero Wax, to make us think back to the first book in the Mistborn series and ask: who exactly was Kelsier and why was he the good guy?