64 pages • 2 hours read
Brandon SandersonShadows of Self
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Series Context: Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere
The Cosmere is a creation of Brandon Sanderson, one that connects nearly all of his oeuvre. The Cosmere is the universe that encompasses all the worlds of his novels, including The Stormlight Archive, the Mistborn series, Elantris, Tress of the Emerald Sea, and more. Unbeknownst to many of the characters in these novels, characters like Hoid (who makes a small guest appearance as Wax’s driver in the Mistborn: Wax and Wayne series) travel between worlds. Each world has its own magic system, manifesting in a variety of ways.
Sanderson has hinted, both through the novels and through communications with his fan base, that his novels are building up to both even more connections throughout the Cosmere universe as well as some conflict that is bigger and more dangerous than the conflicts of the novels thus far. For now, each of the series Sanderson has written stands independently from the rest, but he reveals more connections with nearly each book, especially in The Stormlight Archive and the Wax and Wayne series, beginning with The Alloy of Law.
Sanderson included these connections, he states, because he wanted to create a traditional fantasy epic without requiring fans to have to follow each individual book. He weaves together connections to other books across the series to create a kind of hidden epic and has suggested these connections will only continue to become more numerous as the series progresses. Alternate and expansive universes are common to the fantasy genre and appear in such series as The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.
Series Context: The Original Mistborn Trilogy and the Broader Series
All of the Mistborn novels take place on a world called Scadrial, and for the most part, they all take place in a single city (once called Luthadel but called Elendel by the time of the Wax and Wayne series) and a few surrounding cities or regions—all the regions once controlled by the Lord Ruler in the original trilogy.
In the original trilogy, a crew assembled by Kelsier, also called the Survivor (for surviving the Pits of Hathsin), plots, at Kelsier’s urging, to defeat the Lord Ruler. They combine their Allomantic powers and their skills at thievery and deception to infiltrate the nobility and to recruit troops for the skaa (peasant) rebellion. After Kelsier’s death, the crew uses the momentum and anger built by his death to continue their plan, and in the end of the first novel, Vin, the teen Mistborn they had discovered and recruited, kills the Lord Ruler. In the aftermath (in the second and third novels of the first trilogy), they realize that they have bigger threats to deal with than the Lord Ruler. Scadrial was ruled by Ruin and Preservation together, but Ruin has been acting to take total control, working against the people of Scadrial to destroy the entire world. As the world is dying, however, Sazed, the Terrisman steward who collects knowledge of ancient religions, recognizes that he is the Hero of Ages prophesied to save the world, rather than Vin. He takes the power of both Ruin and Preservation into himself, and he remakes the world.
This is the world that Wax and Wayne live in, several hundred years after Sazed saved the world in what they now call the Catacendre. Society is industrializing, and groups of people interact much more often, creating people called Twinborns, who have both Allomantic and Feruchemical powers. Sazed, now called Harmony or God, attempts to care for the world while having to balance both Preservation and Ruin, and he realizes there are more threats that Scadrial will one day have to deal with. The Wax and Wayne series reveals the ways Scadrial is in danger from other gods and other worlds as well as the fact that the people of Elendel and the surrounding areas know very little about the rest of their world.
Genre Context: Fantasy Literature, Detective Novels, and Frontier Stories
Sanderson’s oeuvre remains within the realm of fantasy literature. Like most fantasy novels, Sanderson’s stories are set in worlds that contain magic. His novels differ from genre conventions, however, through his unique magic systems. Many fantasy novels contain the “traditional” magic, rooted in tropes of medieval literature, that one might recognize in series like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, or Wheel of Time.
Sanderson’s magic systems, however, are quite different. For example, in the Mistborn series, the “magic” is more like a science: Those born with particular powers can ingest metals and “burn” them to use certain powers. Each world contains its own magic, and none of these magics are “traditional.” Sanderson also combines tropes and tones from other genres of fiction. The Wax and Wayne series reads differently even from the original Mistborn trilogy in the same world, combining elements of fantasy, detective novels, and frontier stories. The Roughs are the frontier of Scadrial, with the atmosphere and the mannerisms of the inhabitants seeming very similar to those of the Wild West of the 1800s in the United States. These tropes and styles make the novels unique and allow Sanderson to play with the world while creating new problems for the characters.
Sanderson’s novels break the conventions of fantasy literature, but they also create new pathways for the genre moving forward. His novels are considered fantasy because in them he creates new lands, magics, technologies, and more. Sanderson takes world-building to new levels in his Cosmere.
Related Titles
By Brandon Sanderson
