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Interview #689: Alloy of Law Midnight Release, Entry #20

Question

With the Alloy of Law being more Steampunk-style, and your genre of choice being fantasy, what things have you done differently in this book than in your previous ones?

Brandon Sanderson

Just a quick caveat—I don’t really view Alloy of Law as being Steampunk, but they put goggles on the cover, because Steampunk’s really popular, but I don’t view it as being Steampunk because it doesn’t fit the Victorian feel. It’s much more Edwardian, it’s later era, the book is really based off of 1910 New York, the feel and the culture that is there, but it’s really a Mistborn book. I think when you read it, you’ll feel that it’s more a Mistborn book than it is a Steampunk, or a Western, or anything else. It’s Mistborn. It’s Allomancers with Guns instead. (laughter)

So what have I done differently? I really wanted it to feel like a Mistborn book, with some new elements. It’s really more of a Sherlock Holmes feel than anything else, because I wanted the mystery feel, and I wanted the character dynamic deal with things like that, so this was just a conscious choice to have two or three compelling main characters be in a more episodic story, and I was more focused on that than if it’s Steampunk, or whether this is what, I really want this thematically to feel like a Mistborn book.

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