The follow up to Mistborn: The Final Empire offers the best second act I’ve read in a long time. Very dark, disturbingly violent and, by the end, things are bad bad bad.

This series departs from the typical solemnity of a medieval scholar’s three-part epic form, something captured in the big, Manga-style pay off of the final scenes. There Vin, the woman protagonist, drops from the sky and slices the enemy leader (and his horse!) in half with a single blow from a sword that’s bigger than she is. She then proceeds to take out the rest of the army’s leaders one by one.

This scene is spectacular and over the top, but it also feels very much of our Final Fantasy/World of Warcraft moment. This is not just another rehash of timeworn, pre-Christian mythologies, and the form of the spectacle broadcasts that.