Elantris, Brandon Sanderson’s first widely distributed book, is named after the ruined city of Elantris, which is the focus of the story. A standalone fantasy novel, the book won the Romantic Times award for best epic fantasy of 2005, was chosen by Barnes and Noble editors as the best fantasy or sf book of the year, and has been released in twenty languages. It is an excellent book and a stand alone story, despite the fact that Brandon does plan to eventually write a sequel. This book started the career of one of the best Fantasy writers alive today and you should not miss out on reading it.

Mistborn is an excellent series and I thoroughly enjoyed every book in the original trilogy: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages. I was completely drawn into Sanderson's world of Allomancers and all of the interesting things they could do right from the start. For the uninitiated, Allomancy is the art of "burning" an ingested metal to enhance your own physical and mental abilities. One of these metals let you mentally push yourself off of nearby metal objects and another lets you pull the metal towards you. With each metal having a unique ability Sanderson is able to create a society where Allomantic powers are used in very creative ways and the magic system alone makes this series a win. There are 8 metals that can be ingested/burned and most Allomancers can only burn a single one; however, there are rare individuals who can burn all 8 and these are known as Mistborn. All 8 powers in one person - that's when things get really interesting.