[CobrastanJorji]

Yeah, the books are formulaic, but it's a good formula. "Act 1: Okay, here's a neat magic system with well defined rules. Act 4: surprise, there was an extra rule you didn't know about! Act 5: we killed God with the surprise, extra rule."

It's hard for me to fault Mistborn. It has the tightest ending to a fantasy trilogy I've ever seen. And then, as an afterthought, Sanderson somehow managed to end the Wheel of Time, which frankly I don't think Robert Jordan could have managed to do.

[afiori]

The thing that make the formula click to me is that it is written as a thriller.

By the last 10% of the book/serie he has created a problem you are 100% sure is insurmountable but by the last 5% you realise how small hints through the story could be composed to create a solution.

[jmholla]

I think your summary of act 4 is uncharitable. Every book of Sanderson's I've read has been about showing unexpected ways the rules could be combined, not surprise new rules.

[beAbU]

Mistborn left me breathless at the end. During the last couple of chapters of the third book I uttered many a "holy shit" and "no way" under my breath. Much to my wife's pleasure, who bought the books for me on a whim.

The whole earring thing blew my mind, and it was so obvious from book 3 onwards.

The ending of the Mistborn series is indeed, incredibly tight. The whole series had a roundedness to it that I have not encountered before, every word, theme, event and character has a place in the Bigger Scheme. I think this is because he wrote all 3 books together, so he would regularly go back to book one to make edits based on new things he thought of in book 3.