Chapter Seventeen

So, now the Watcher is named. I didn’t originally intend him to remain mysterious for so long. In fact, in the original draft, I had a viewpoint from him fairly early on. That’s been moved back in this version, to make things flow more quickly at the beginning, but also so that you could form your opinion of him externally first. He has a. . .particular way of seeing the world, and I felt it better to introduce that later, so that it wouldn’t overshadow the other aspects of his personality quite as much.

One of the things I wanted to do with these books was to slowly transform characters so that their weaknesses became strengths. It’s an odd little theme, hardly visible, I think–and not really that important. However, it’s there. Vin is learning to be a scholar, despite how much she protests and fights against the transformation.

This fight is for the Allomancy junkies. I don’t think there’s another one quite as technical as it is in the entire rest of the series.

I try to give variety to how my fight scenes are handled. The spar between Ham and Vin was quick and visual. This fight is all about pushes, pulls, and weight. I fear that it’s pretty hard to imagine, and unless you’re really into Allomancy, I suspect that many of you skimmed most of it.

Yet, writing a book is about putting in lots of things for lots of different people, I think. Allomancy is fun because of its versatility–I can to all kinds of things with it. This was just one of them.

So, if you really like how Allomancy works–with the pushes and pulls, the vectors, mass, acieration, and all that, this is a present for you. A chapter really showing off what two Mistborn can do when expertly manipulating their powers.

If you didn’t see the Zane/Kelsier comparison later, I bring it up here. In a way, Zane’s purpose in this book is to represent things that Vin never really had an opportunity to choose.

She ended up with Elend. However, there is another option, and that was the option that Kelsier represented. The option that Zane represents. Despite her assurances to Elend that she didn’t love Kelsier, there WAS something there. Kelsier had a magnetism about him, and since he died, Vin didn’t ever have to choose between him and Elend.

Oh, and I don’t know why Kelsier didn’t think of the coin in the mouth trick. Probably since I didn’t think of it until this book–so, if the one who created the magic system can miss that little trick, then I figure Kelsier is allowed to.