Shadows of Self is the fifth book in Brandon Sanderson‘s Mistborn series. Fortunately, as I remember nothing at all about the prequel, reading it does not require all that much familiarity with the setting or previous events; having read Secret History will be enough (though having read the entire series will of course enhance the experience). It’s solidly entertaining from start to finish.
Bands of Mourning continues from where that left off, but has a distinctively different atmosphere. It’s more of an ensemble story with most scenes involving three or more members of the now core group of Wax, Wayne, Marasi, Steris, and MeLann. While the cast expansion works however, the setting and scope expansion does not. The new city ends up a vestigial speedbump, the airship and related ‘lost civilization’ are badly integrated, and the ‘evil ancient god’ subplot comes across as extraordinarily arbitrary. It does finally resolve the issue of Wax’s uncle (which is nice I guess)… but I just can’t see his replacement as an improvement.
Apparently there’s going to be one more book to conclude this segment of the series (it was supposed to have been released by now but allegedly got delayed by the creation of an unrelated YA series), but honestly I’m not all that interested in it if it’s just going to effectively be retreading ground the early Mistborn novels already covered.