Mistborn was built for someone like me. I read for the machinery of a thing. The reader who wants to know precisely how the magic works and gets irritated when it runs on feelings and destiny. I like when the author shares the rules and limitations of the magic system with the reader beforehand. So that when the characters use it cleverly we, as readers, can appreciate it.

Sanderson does exactly that: the magic he sets up with strict rules and then allows the characters to bend them logically. Certain people swallow specific metals and burn them for power, and each metal does something specific. But is employed in creative ways. The clean part: sometimes this can be literal (steel can literally push you from something metal, and iron literally pulls the wielder toward metal).

Then it gets good. Street urchin Vin doesn't know that she is a Mistborn until the enigmatic thief Kelsier finds her and offers to teach her to use her power, and once she can burn all of them the fights turn into physics that actually holds. Push on a smaller object than yourself (say a coin) to send it flying away from you. Push on a larger object than yourself, or push said coin against an immovable object, like the ground, to send you flying in the opposite direction.

That is the coin-jumping flight, and what nags at the clean scheme is the extra metal nobody can pin down. There is also the mysterious eleventh metal that appears to have a major role in defeating a tyrant who seems invincible, and a few reviewers muttered what I did: "don't even get me started on the 11th metal..."

The world is grim, a world of no colour, where ash falls from the sky and the skaa (peasants) have to struggle to simply exist. But I'm here for the systems, and Sanderson's Allomancy is the best magic system I've seen in a book so far. It was apparent that he spent a GREAT deal of time thinking about the practical applications and limitations of Allomancy, and I respect the sheer engineering of it more than I can say.