I liked it! And I am aware that Mistborn: The Final Empire was published only a year later. But it felt like a Brandon Sanderson novel was trapped inside of a realm, struggling to get out, and every so often a flash would squeeze out thorough a small crack but not really get a chance to be free, you know???
It’s always nice to get a little bit extra from a novel–I feel like these works are true encores, not the fake sorts of encores you get at gigs these days (band: we’re leaving but all the equipment is still on stage and the lights are still low and we haven’t played our three biggest songs but you’re going to have to BEG US FIRST) (also: how old were you before you realized that encores weren’t actually the band coming on and performing one more song because you, the audience, were extra special???)
Fun fact this book was written as a gift for a student of Sanderson’s wife who’d done a really intensive book project/report on the original Elantris novel. As a thank you for the work that the student put into the project, he wrote a new story set in Elantris featuring a character with her name (but not her personality) and now they’re all friends and she come to his signings and gave them the original book report as a wedding gift. Which just goes to show you can meet your heroes every so often, and it doesn’t have to be entirely a nightmare.